Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol went ring chasing. Fred VanVleet got rich. But when you add up the numbers of an unprecedented November edition of NBA free agency, there’s no denying the sum total: The Raptors got worse.
Sure, adding big men Aron Baynes and Alex Len while re-signing Chris Boucher avoided a truly disastrous fall-off at the centre position. But on paper the threesome doesn’t make up for the loss of Ibaka’s big-moment toughness and Gasol’s ball-moving, defence-anchoring savvy.
And in a lot of ways, the step back is by design -- a sacrificing of the short-term good for the long-term goals a bigger-picture vision.