The Owen Sound Sun Times e-edition

Raptors ponder trade deadline options

MIKE GANTER mganter@postmedia.com

TORONTO As of Wednesday morning, the Toronto Raptors were through four games of their season-long seven-game road trip. Just four games remained, including last night's matchup with the Jazz in Utah, before the trade deadline arrives.

Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster have been watching intently as this group has shown signs of coming to life at the offensive side, but the defence remains an issue.

Clouding all of it is the injury to O.G. Anunoby, one of the very players that could be on the move at the deadline.

Anunoby is not expected to see the court again before next Wednesday at the earliest and only after he is reassessed. The Feb. 9 trade deadline is the next day.

In the meantime, the team can assess its comfort level if an Anunoby move is in the cards, with Precious Achiuwa filling his spot.

Achiuwa is playing well, although he looked a little less assertive in Phoenix than he had in any of the previous three games on the trip.

Ironically, the only starter who isn't playing at or beyond the level that he was playing before this trip is Pascal Siakam.

Siakam has been the one constant in an up-and-down year for most of the Raptors.

Siakam is still averaging 22.5 points a game for the trip, but assists are down from 6.5 a night to 3.8 since the road trip began.

And the rebounding average has dropped from 8.2 going into the trip to just six since they got on the road.

A lot of that could be simple fatigue from carrying this team for so long.

The NBA announced the participants in the Rising Stars portion of the All-star Game and Scottie Barnes will be back for a second time. The Rising Stars portion of All-star weekend will take place on Feb. 17 in Salt Lake City.

Also invited were Canadian NBA rookies Bennedict Mathurin and Andrew Nembhard of the Indiana Pacers, as well as another Canadian born player in likely NBA lottery pick Leonard Miller of the G-league Ignite.

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2023-02-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-02-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

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