Don't bank on the tank: Ingram deal points to Raptors' hybrid rebuild

One of the theories in support of the Toronto Raptors' widely panned acquisition of Brandon Ingram last week was that it was a low-commitment deal, a free look at an All-Star that might amount to nothing.

About that: never mind.

The Raptors have reportedly agreed to sign the pending free agent to a three-year, $120-million contract extension, removing any suggestion of an end-of-season trial period. Toronto has given Ingram and his shaky injury history big starter money without first assessing his fit alongside Scottie Barnes.

It's a deal that will set off another round of What Is Masai Doing? Instead of keeping space on the balance sheet for the rebuilding Raptors to use when they're further along in that process, the front office has spent it on a distressed asset, using up almost all of its cap space on a four-player core of Barnes, Ingram, Immanuel Quickley, and RJ Barrett.

Those who were skeptical of the Ingram trade a week ago will be even more confused now. Last week's flawed Raptors roster is this week's flawed and quite expensive Raptors roster.

But there's another way to view this deal, and it's admittedly an unusual one in today's NBA: The Raptors, a bad team, are trying to improve.

I know, I know: crazy.

The widely accepted view around the league is that bad teams should get even worse. Spend multiple years, several if you must, losing 50-plus games and amassing lottery picks and prospects. Eventually, a bunch of elite talent will grow into a contender. See, for example, the Oklahoma City Thunder. Or, in a year or two, the San Antonio Spurs.

The advantage of this strategy for front offices is everyone celebrates losing for a while. NBA watchers are so tank-brained that if you lose 32 of your first 42 games, as the Raptors did this season, the response is "good job" and a pat on the head.

The problem, though, is tanking requires commitment. One year of suffering isn't enough to replenish the prospect pool, which means your players need to spend a lot of time losing before management actively tries to win. Flipping that switch is tricky. For every team like OKC, there's a New Orleans, which has earned the No. 1 overall draft pick twice over the past 14 seasons and won exactly one playoff series. Or the Philadelphia 76ers, the most tank-tacular team of all time. They came out the other side with a playoff contender but never made a conference final and are now teetering on the edge of collapse.

The alternative route to the full tank is the more complicated process of acquiring talent however possible and trying to make it all work. This has been the Masai Ujiri way. He didn't tank when he first arrived in Toronto - although he tried - and he didn't tank when Kawhi Leonard left after the championship season. Ujiri kept resisting it through multiple trade deadlines, except during the Tampa Raptors season, acting as a buyer instead of a seller.

Not until last year did he half-heartedly wave the white flag, trading Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby while conceding he'd tried to make a flawed team work for too long. Ujiri called this season a rebuilding year and acknowledged that losses would be in abundance.

But it shouldn't be surprising that it didn't really take. Given the chance to add a talented 27-year-old, even an oft-injured one, Ujiri grabbed it. The contract commitment also means there's no hurry to put him back on the floor while he recovers from an ankle injury. There's similarly no rush to give him reps next to Barnes or Quickley to assess their long-term fit. The Raptors should still lose a lot more games to preserve their chances of landing a high lottery pick, especially if their core pieces see limited action the rest of the way. The tank rolls on, just a little longer.

In the end, will Toronto's expensive core four, plus a lottery pick and the rest of its mostly young roster, be good enough to be a title contender? Probably not. But that was also the case when the Raptors were built around DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry. Eventually, the off-season machinations broke Ujiri's way and he was able to land Leonard, the franchise-altering piece.

In the new NBA landscape of salary aprons and luxury-tax penalties, it's at least possible that some part of Toronto's odd collection of assets could be turned into a blockbuster that can't even be imagined yet.

But that's a question for much later. For now, or at least for next season, the Raptors will try to win games again. It's funny that this is so widely viewed as a negative.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.