 What's the word, y'all? The Toronto Raps are finalizing trade to send O'Gian and Obie to New York Knicks for a package, including RJ Barrett, Emmanuel Quickly, Draft Compensation, Presto Truya, Malachi Flinder also in this deal in that Draft Compensation ended up being a 2024 second round pick via the Pistons, which is basically the 31st overall pick in this year's draft. And just like that, the first trade of the NBA season is done. I thought that we would never see today where O'Gian and Obie gets traded. This man has been in trade rumors for as long as I can remember. And on this channel, I don't even know. It had to be six months ago or eight months ago in the offices and I said, hey, I won't even talk about O'Gian and Obie as a trade piece. I won't talk about Pascal Siakam as a trade piece until they're actively dealt. Cause I'm just tired of thinking about the rumors or the prospect of this player plan for this team when I didn't know what Masai Ujiri was thinking about doing. And now we know what his grand scheme was to get RJ Barrett back to Canada. This is basically what it was. Now this trade happened two hours ago and usually if you've been around the town, you know, I'm a guy that's on top of it. I get my videos out relatively fast. But this trade happened out of nowhere. It's disappointing. You know, this is the one day I decided to take some time to myself. I woke up this morning and go to the movie theater. I went to go see The Board and the Heron and a nine out of 10 movie, top three of the studio's production, if you ask me. And my phone start buzzing about an hour into the movie, like buzzing, buzzing. I'm like, oh, somebody must be calling. I look and it's Woljah Shams going back and forth, back and forth on compensation and so on and so forth and boom, we got the deal. And I'm sitting there watching this legendary movie and I'm like, man, all I can think about is old John and Obie in the Nick's jersey. Oh man. And now this trade happened two hours ago, right? So I've been refreshing Twitter a little bit since I got home and the general consensus on the internet, at least as of right now without watching these teams play with their new adjustments, is that the Knicks gave up too much. The Toronto Raptors fleece. And personally, I don't know if I feel that way. Now, this might go into a broader discussion around some of the moves the Knicks have done over the last year and a half, two seasons. But if I'm looking at this trade at face value, I see why the Knicks would agree to this deal and I see why the Toronto Raptors would agree. I wanna tackle it from the Knicks perspective first because it seems like that's the one everybody on Twitter is like, I can't believe they did this, whatever, whatever. The first thing is obviously you hate to lose the menu quickly, especially if you're a New York Knicks fan, you watch this man become the player that he is today where he is one of the more impactful off the bench players in all of basketball. Counter stats, advanced stats, you name it. They all love Emmanuel quickly. The ITES loves Emmanuel quickly. That brother's been in trade talks for a little bit too. It was very obvious that the Knicks were not thinking about giving Emmanuel quickly whatever bag he's worth this off season. So it's like, hey, why not leverage him now before we're pigeonholed to giving him a big old contract, i.e. what we just did with RJ Bear 16 months ago and trade him away for a player that we want to get into the door. Now it is inherently a risk because O.J. Nobby is an expiring contract, but we get him into the dough, we convince him to love the city of New York and love the New York Knicks. We give him an extension so we trade Emmanuel quickly before he's worth, have a many millions of dollars, he's gonna get this off season. And I mentioned RJ Bear, right? 16 months ago, have a long ago, RJ Bear signed a four year, 107 million dollar contract that goes until the 26, 27 season. That is a lot of money for RJ Bear's production. He is an up and down NBA player and when he's good, he's really good, but when he's bad, he's really bad. And we've seen times throughout the season because the New York Knicks have so much wing depth where RJ Bear, who's guaranteed $23 million a season, is on the bench while Dante DiVincenzo is closing out of game or Josh Hart is closing out of game. So by trading away RJ Bear, again, if we go broad a scale, maybe the idea of giving RJ Bear this contract in the first place is this trade right here is trying to cover up the fact that they did that but trading him, getting rid of that money now and getting back a player that fits perfectly to what you're trying to do offensively and defensively, I can see why the Knicks did it. Now, I am not off RJ Bear at Island. I still believe that he could blossom into a really good player. Again, we're talking about a player that's right now only 23 years old. I feel like he's been in the league forever, 2019 draft. So it's not over for RJ. The version of RJ that you got right now is not the end of him, but when you look at the Knicks and you look at their current timeline, which is Jalen Brunson playing at his value and Julius Randall who started off the season really slow through the first seven A games, getting back to all NBA form, we can't really have it be like, oh, us hitting the next level is reliant on RJ Barrett hitting the next level because I feel like you've told yourself that for the last couple of seasons or so. So now you're bringing a guy, Ogya Nanobi, who a lot of people will agree is one of the more impactful trade pieces that were actively on the market. Like I feel like people are gonna watch the Knicks play now with OG and recognize that that man is one of the, what, three best perimeter defenders in all of basketball? And you add that to a team that already has some guys offensively that can get their own bucket, that they were kind of missing another one of those big, rangy wings again. He's one of the best in all of the game at that. So yeah, you cover up the fact you gave RJ Barrett all that money and you don't have to pigeonhole yourself. And I'm only speaking from the perspective of the Knicks. I believe that Emmanuel Quickly is probably gonna be worth whatever money he gets in free agency this season, but they have believed to themselves that Emmanuel Quickly is not gonna be worth the money that he's going to be warranted. Because as good as Emmanuel Quickly has been so far in his NBA career, there's one spot that he has been not very good at all. And that is the postseason. Here are his playoff numbers for the first three series of his NBA career. It's a significant drop off. We can specifically look at these two because 2021, what is that, is rookie season or something. So let's go last year's playoffs hinted up planning in eight of those games. And you can see the percentages. You can see the numbers. Like this isn't the final version of Emmanuel Quickly, but if you're thinking from the Knicks perspective, the version of Emmanuel Quickly that can be, let's say an all-star or something of that caliber was probably not gonna happen in New York. The idea of having Jalen Brunson and Emmanuel Quickly be your back court of the now and the future, it's just tougher to win, again, the Larry O'Brien that when you have two guards that are really, really undersized. Like Jalen Brunson makes up for it a lot by fighting all every single game and he's got a stock of your body. But at the end of the day, he is an undersized point guard and Emmanuel Quickly is also an undersized guy. So you leverage the value that is Emmanuel Quickly now before you have to pay them yourself and you realize that maybe our best lineups when it mattered the most may not have Emmanuel Quickly in them. So do I wanna pay Emmanuel Quickly? I'm making up a number. I never really know how to scale contracts now. $25 million annually. If we go to the playoffs and we're closing out games and he can't be on the floor because Jalen Brunson is also on the floor, right? So you trade those pieces away and you get back OG where there's no lineup imaginable that the Knicks can run where OG Ida Nobby won't be able to fit in. I've seen both sides of the corner where OG Ida Nobby where sometimes people talk about him and I'm like, man, you're highly overrating him and I've seen times where people are highly undervaluing him. So it only time will tell, now playing in a bigger market in New York Knicks where everybody's gonna get a full grasp of who OG Ida Nobby is as a player. But I also can't help but look at this and think to myself, this can't be all that Leon Rosen am I thinking about doing. This kind of, and I'm just saying this, I'm not a cap expert, right? I can look at the salaries and everything, which let's do that. So I look at the salaries. So you think about making that ultimate trade, the one that brings in a superstar because of RJ Barrett's contract being out the door, they don't really have that super salary-soaked guy, like Evan Forney is $18 million and maybe a disgruntled Quentin Grimes is one of the young pieces that goes with this, but that's only $21 million in salary cap. So where else do you make it up? Are you getting rid of Josh Hart or Dante DiVincenzo to bring in that superstar player? I mean, they still do have all of their draft capital. They only gave up the 31st overall pick in this year's draft. I still believe there's more to be done from the Knicks perspective. So again, we're gonna watch it end up happening on the court now, but this feels like a trade to go into another trade. But again, obviously there's inherent risk because OGI Nobby is on the last year of his deal. So you're basically traded for him, not as a rental. You're traded for him as with the mindset that you're going to extend him this off season and what that number looks like, I can't even know, because if I wanna remind you that there are many teams that were interested in OGI Nobby, that's gonna have us shift off to the Toronto Raptors perspective of this deal. There were a lot of teams interested in OGI Nobby last deadline. There's been a lot of reports last deadline. I think it might have been Zach Lowe or some of the other guys that are ear to the ground when talking to these organizations that the Indiana Pacers and the Mifers Grizzlies both offered three first round picks and some stuff for OGI Nobby and Masayu Jir. He said, no, we good, we gonna sit on this and we gonna get something else. So as a Raptors fan watching this video, you tell me, would you rather have Emmanuel Quickly and RJ Barrett, or would you rather have the draft capital stuff that was introduced by the Mifers Grizzlies or the Indiana Pacers? I don't really know. But I am super excited to see Emmanuel Quickly in a role now with the Toronto Raptors that allows him to spread his wings. Not saying that he was pigeonholed because when he did play with the Knicks, he was obviously a six-manity or candidate. Last year, he was the runner-up and this year, he's in the conversation as well. But the Toronto Raptors are a team that desperately needs guard production, specifically guard creation for them himself and for others around them. And Emmanuel Quickly can provide that to the highest degree. But on the flip end, everything that we just talked about with the New York Knicks about them not wanting to pay Emmanuel Quickly or getting off the contract of RJ Barrett, that is now the Raptors' burden at the moment. They're guaranteeing RJ Barrett the money for the rest of his contract and then you're gonna have to pay Emmanuel Quickly come off season. So you gotta think about it. Again, hypothetically, let's say Emmanuel Quickly's worth $25 million annually. That's about $50 million in cap that you're getting to those two players. I'm happy that they ended up making a decision because Woj had talked about it two days ago on one of his articles or something or maybe he was on threads replying to NBA stuff. Either way, he was asked about what the Toronto Raptors are doing. He said, hell, the Toronto Raptors haven't made a decision one way or another on what they were gonna do with Pascal Siakam and OG and now we got the trade. This also tells me that they're gearing up from a Pascal Siakam trade as well, which I think you just have to do at this point. Go completely in on building around Scottie Barnes, but it's interesting to see them go player production versus draft capital. And that makes me think that the Raptors aren't thinking about a rebuild but rather a retooling with a little bit of potential incentive, right? Yeah, Emmanuel quickly has the potential to spread his wings and hit the next step, but actively he's good at the moment. And I think that maybe the Pascal Siakam trade could do something very similar or he did the one trade that can bring in players that can help now and then the Pascal Siakam trade is for draft capital, but I wanna remind you that Pascal is also on an expiring contract. So what is the value of a guy like Pascal? Our team's gonna be willing to make a trade for multiple draft picks or multiple decent players now that have potential to be good later down the line for a flight risk. And again, that is the decisions that Masai has to really come up with. What's the right deal? What's the wrong deal? But given the circumstances and given that Toronto is one of those places that you need to get people foot in the door for a long amount of time, trade for RJ Barrett, I don't hate the idea. Who knows what he can be? He's 23 years old. He's 23 years old at the moment. And now you got him in the contract for four years to really get a valuation period to figure out is he a part of the Scottie Barnes team in the future, right? The Toronto Raptors notoriously is not a team that's gonna have to take all of this cap space and go get a superstar player in free agency. They're gonna have to do it the good old organic way of making good trades here. They're drafting really well and we can say that they drafted really well with the Scottie Barnes pick a few years ago because he's blossoming. He's said seven, three pointers the night before. And now take a, do I want to say flyer? Because RJ Barrett's got his average 20 points per game in his career. You know what I'm saying? Basically 20 points per game for his career. So I didn't want to say flyer because he's a good player. He's just maybe not worth the contract that he's guaranteed over the next couple of seasons. One thing I'm very curious about because RJ Barrett is a guy that I feel like he's at his best when he's putting the ball on the floor and getting into the basket. If I remember correctly, I can't show you this for too long, I'm paying good money to see this but I just want to show you that RJ Barrett so far this season has played with the worst spacing in all the basketball. The Knicks just don't have positive spacing. That's one of the reasons why they traded for OJ Adonobi who's a catch and shoot three point they don't have that. Okay, so it's not much better in Toronto. I didn't think it was, but I wanted to see. So it is slightly better for RJ as far as the spacing on the court but it's not by a lot. It's not like he's going from a team with zero spacing to a ton of spacing but at least he's got that kind of, I don't know, opportunity to get to the basket a little bit more, I don't know. You know, the one thing about the Knicks though obviously you give up off the bench super score like a guy that could come in and do 15 points in a row. Like that's the type of product you got for men you quickly off the bench and obviously you trade in two pieces in exchange for one. I know a lot of people are high on Pressatouya coming back in this trade. I've watched a lot of Pressatouya in my career and I'm never gonna be on the point of like giving up on NBA player because I've seen careers completely turned around with some chains of senior reason stuff. I just want to tell Knicks fans don't get your hopes up too high. He's gonna be better than Todd Gibson playing minutes. I tell you that much, but with time they'll trust him more like he trusts Todd Gibson. You gotta remember who your coach is. You gotta remember that Todd Gibson and Thibs are like this until the day of one of them pairs, you know? So they ended up getting that back in the trade and my homie is really how Amalekai Flynn I couldn't give you a scout report one way or another. So out of nowhere trade, I really do like this. I'm curious to see what the Raptors potential starter lineup looks like. I think that we kind of know the Knicks starting lineup for the future and listen to they make the next trade if the next trade happens. But I'm curious to what the Toronto Raptors decide to do because I've been in love with Pointe Scottie so far this season and he may as quickly doesn't take the ball out of his hands, anything, but they just need more spacing and they need guys that can create for themselves. So I wonder do you put him back on the bench and say, hey, reprise your role as a sixth man for the rest of the season or do you insert him back into the starting lineup? Because again, they've been waiting for guard production. Dennis Schroeder has been fine this season. He's had a lot of ups and downs and he started off really well. But now it's just like he does some things every once in a while. Are you okay with just giving that spot completely too quickly? Or do you start both of them when you're talking about small backcourts? I don't know. I mean, luckily on the back end, you still do have like a RJ Barrett, you still have Scottie, you still have Pascal, but like there's a world where quickly comes off the bench. There's a world where it's quickly RJ, Scottie, Pascal, and Jaco Pertle. I'm excited to see the lineup that has quickly and I know Garrett Tran Jr. has been very, not so great this season, but quickly Garrett Tran Jr., RJ, Scottie and Pascal. Like I feel like they can close with that quite a bit. So they have a little bit more options and I'm curious to see under Darko's new offense, having another guy that can catch and shoot and create for himself might help them on the offensive side of the ball because Ojiada Nobi just wasn't that too much. Somebody asked me on Twitter, who's the best player in the trade? And I can undoubtedly say that it is, it is Ojiada Nobi is the best player in the trade, but I still believe that there's a world where, I don't know, two years, three years down the line, we're like, damn, that Emmanuel quickly guy got traded in this deal and now he's averaging this. And now he's consensus this in all the basketball. So again, I enjoyed this trade from most perspectives where I understand what the mindset is. Grades, are we grading? There's something to be said about getting the best player in the trade. Like historically, when you get the best player in the trade, you end up winning, not all the times now, but Nix B- and that can definitely change with a secondary trade when this looks a lot better. B- I'm gonna go even B for the Nix and maybe B plus for the Toronto Raptors. The 31st overall pick of something I didn't even talk about. That's pretty, that's a pretty good penny. And that's, I just get you like a podcast segment. Hey, go listen to the Kenny Beecham podcast. I will probably be talking about this more in depth. I film an episode tomorrow. We've been having a lot of fun with the episodes. I'm just saying, if you like these videos, you're gonna like that because though the podcast is an extension of it, where I talk for 30 minutes to an hour about specific stuff. And I try to think a little bit deeper than these surface level videos here. I'm just saying, go check it out. The link is in the description. Let me know who is the winner to trade your personal opinion.