Raptors make a necessary move in adding Ibaka

The Toronto Raptors finally got their man. Or, at least, the next best thing.

Serge Ibaka is not Paul Millsap - he doesn't fill quite as many needs, and won't move the needle to the same extent - but he's about as good a contingency as the Raptors could've asked for.

Let's be clear: Acquiring Ibaka assures Toronto of nothing. It still has a long way to go, with a handful of good teams to overcome, even to repeat last season's feat of reaching the conference finals. This deal also doesn't change all that much when it comes to toppling the Cleveland Cavaliers (unless, perhaps, Kevin Love's knee injury drags through the playoffs, and probably not even then). But whether or not this puts the Raptors in the Cavs' stratosphere isn't really the point. They weren't getting there with Terrence Ross, either - not this season, and not in the two years Ross had remaining on his contract. The point is, the Raptors had a clear area of need, and the trade market was their only real means of filling it in the near future.

They're already capped out, and with both Kyle Lowry's and Patrick Patterson's contracts expiring at season's end, Toronto had no way to improve via free agency. The Raptors' draft pick should fall in the 20s again this year, which likely won't deliver anything resembling an immediate contributor, especially given how full their development pipeline already is. Their best option, then, was to try and deal from a position of strength to address their position of weakness. They did exactly that, moving wing depth in Ross - and a draft pick they had virtually no use for - in exchange for a sorely needed upgrade in the frontcourt.

Patterson's recent injury had thrown into sharp relief the reality that Toronto had no other usable power forwards. Like, literally zero. Rookie Pascal Siakam busts his tail, but he's overactive, his feel for the game at this point is tenuous, and defenses completely ignore him. DeMarre Carroll's balky knee has made it untenable for him to play the four for more than a couple minutes per games. Jared Sullinger returned from a long injury layoff looking about as mobile as the statue of Masai Ujiri the Raptors should be commissioning as we speak.

The team ultimately resorted to playing two-center lineups, with rookie Jakob Poeltl and lanky non-shooter Lucas Noguiera alongside the plodding Jonas Valanciunas. It should come as no surprise that Patterson's absence has coincided with the Raptors' worst stretch in the past two years.

Though he isn't quite as dynamic or athletic as he once was, Ibaka has just about everything you look for in a modern big. He can protect the rim, switch capably onto ballhandlers, and show and recover. He'll be more effective than any Raptor - with the possible exception of Patterson - in the aggressive high-walling approach Toronto favors when defending side pick-and-rolls. He can stretch the floor on offense, and his 38.8 percent 3-point mark this season is actually better than Ross' (37.5 percent).

Ibaka should also be able to soak up significant minutes at center, and a frontcourt pairing of him and Patterson would allow the Raptors to go four- or five-out without sacrificing anything at the defensive end. And, though his overall effectiveness has trended slightly downward the past couple seasons, Ibaka's still just 27.

Meanwhile, the Raptors are basically killing two birds with one stone here. In moving Ross, they'll immediately open up a ton more playing time for promising second-year wing Norman Powell, who's been blocked for far too long, and whose future projection the franchise should be doing everything it can do to decipher as soon as possible.

Broadly speaking, this deal just makes the Raptors better. It balances their roster, bolsters their leaky defense, and gives Lowry and DeMar DeRozan a much-needed release valve on offense. For a team whose recent struggles have probably been overblown by some bad luck in close games (during their 4-10 swoon, seven losses have come by five points or less), those across-the-board improvements could start paying major dividends right away. At the end of the day, it likely won't be enough to get the Raptors out of the Eastern Conference. But it puts them right there at the top of the second tier, and they could well be the team that reaps the benefits in the event that things do somehow go sideways in Cleveland.

Perhaps most importantly, this should send a strong message about the team's ambitions to Lowry, who spoke cryptically about the need for changes after the Raptors' latest meltdown. He's turning 31 in a month, and this season he's played the best basketball he's ever played, and possibly ever will. The Raptors have been content to be patient in the past, but that wasn't really an option with the franchise's beating heart just a few ticks from unrestricted free agency.

Ibaka is slated for unrestricted free agency himself, but that doesn't necessarily mean this will be be a short-term fix. In acquiring his Bird rights, the Raptors can blow past the salary cap to lock Ibaka up long-term this summer - very much part of their plan - while still retaining Lowry.

Keeping the two of them and Patterson will be difficult, especially if they aren't able to shed a big salary in Carroll or Valanciunas, or possibly even Cory Joseph. Even then, the Raptors could find themselves up against the luxury tax, and that's before factoring in Powell's restricted free agency in the summer of 2018. This could all still blow up in their faces. For now, though, the Raptors made the best possible move to improve their outlook for the foreseeable future.

Hard to quibble with that.