Following the departures of Danny Green and Kawhi Leonard last offseason, the Raptors didn’t have a ton of money available to replace them. They’d need to rely on Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster and Dan Tolzman to find a few diamonds in the rough (read: affordable guys) to round out the roster.
Just a day after Leonard’s departure, the Raptors announced they’d signed Stanley Johnson to a very reasonable two-year contract, reportedly worth about $7.5 million. A former eighth-overall pick, Johnson’s rep as a defense-first small forward whose offensive game needed work seemed to fit well with a Toronto team that hung its hat on its defense, and had a top development program.