There’s an old saying in sports: You’re either selling wins or selling hope.
And you can count yourself in the befuddled majority if you’re not precisely sure what the Raptors are peddling in the wake of Thursday’s non-event of an NBA trade deadline.
So maybe it’s best to enumerate what they’re most certainly not doing. They’re sadly not contending — not while occupying 11th place in the East, only a single victory removed from a nine-game losing streak.
They’re definitely not tanking — not with 35-year-old Kyle Lowry still around for at least the rest of the season after the deadline market for his services proved softer than team president Masai Ujiri expected, and certainly not with the likes of Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam under long-term deals.