Lewis: How the Raptors capitalized on a ‘golden’ gamble

Published 4:13 pm Saturday, June 15, 2019

Gambling is the ultimate sport of risk versus reward. 

You risk the potential of losing your assets at the hope that you’ll acquire more if your bet is paid off. 

For the Toronto Raptors and many others across the world their bets paid off on Thursday night in Oakland. 

The Raptors delivered their first championship in franchise history with the dismantling of the defending champions in a 4-2 series win. 

But the bet that was paid off for them was a large wager by Toronto’s president of basketball operations, Masai Ujiri. 

Ujiri made many gambles to give the Raptors a chance to make a run at the championship. 

The first and possibly the biggest risk was firing Dwane Casey after he won coach of the year last season. Then hiring Nick Nurse who had no experience as an NBA head coach to replace him. 

If Nurse couldn’t live up to expectation that gamble would’ve set Toronto backwards, not forward. 

After making that decision Uriji made the next gamble. 

He traded all-star and Toronto’s adopted son DeMar DeRozan for the equivalent of three magic beans. 

He sent DeRozan to San Antonio for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green. Leonard played in just nine games the season prior and it was not clear if he’d be able to return to pre-injury form. 

The combination of these moves is the reason that the Raptors won the championship. Nurse was a coach who used his experience outside of the NBA to support him and Leonard is the prototype of a low-profile superstar that is needed to endure the NBA playoffs. 

It helps that Leonard missed 22 regular season games for load management—courtesy of Nurse— so he was fresh during the post season run. 

But Ujiri didn’t stop there. He acquired another cornerstone piece when he traded Jonas Valanciunas for Marc Gasol. 

The Raptors were able to overcome deficits in each of the Eastern Conference playoff series. Once they made it to the finals it was clear that the moment wasn’t too big for them. 

Especially since two of their young stars had already won a championship. 

Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam won the 2017 D-League finals together and they made sure to give their contributions once they got to the NBA Finals. 

In the closeout game, Siakam scored 26 points and had 10 rebounds while VanVleet scored 22 points off the bench. 

VanVleet was an undrafted free agent out of Wichita State and Siakam was the selected No. 27 in the 2016 NBA draft. 

Both were gambles that paid out in nearly 50 combined points in the championship win. 

But the sum of all gambles turned out to be golden.

Now Ujiri is faced with one last bet. 

He and the city of Toronto have the task of convincing Leonard to stay in Toronto for another season. 

But they have a great bargaining chip in their championship.