Spurs continue to win Jakob Poeltl trade as former center continues to struggle

The San Antonio Spurs hoodwinked the Toronto Raptors in 2023, trading center Jakob Poeltl back to his original team in exchange for multiple draft picks. It's a trade that only looks better with each passing day.

At the moment that the Spurs traded away Poeltl, they were in the midst of a terrible season that would land them the No. 1 overall pick. Because Poeltl was less terrible than the rest of the Spurs' moribund frontcourt, he popped in many analytical models. That drew interest like moths to a flame.

The Spurs traded Jakob Poeltl

Months before the Spurs would draft a new center, one Victor Wembanyama, they traded away their veteran big at the deadline to the highest bidder. That turned out to be the Raptors, the team that originally drafted Poeltl in 2016 before sending him to the Spurs in the Kawhi Leonard deal.

San Antonio got two seconds and a lightly-protected first-round pick for Poeltl. That first-round pick became No. 8, and they shrewdly flipped that to the Minnesota Timberwolves for a pair of high-upside future picks.

It was a savvy sequence of moves for the Spurs' front office, but it hasn't actually yielded any benefits in the present. The second-round pick they kept, Sidy Cissoko, hasn't panned out. The other second was flipped for a future pick. If Poeltl had taken off in Toronto, it would be easy to argue that the Raptors had won the trade.

Poeltl has struggled in Toronto

That has not been the case. Poeltl provided average levels of center play over the past few seasons, missing significant time due to injury. Somehow, the Toronto front office decided that combination necessitated an above-market contract extension last summer, locking Poeltl up for years to come.

That was a terrible decision that has gotten worse with time. Poeltl's play dropped off even further as he entered his 30s, he missed half of the season with a chronic back injury, and his monstrous contract extension scared off all potential trade partners at the deadline.

What's worse, Poeltl's one calling card has always been his strong on-off numbers. Belying the eye test, they suggested that Poeltl had some secret superpower that was impacting games and that if the Raptors moved on from him they would regret it.

The Raptors have better options

That superpower is gone. The Raptors are now markedly better when Poeltl is off the court vs when he is on. Toronto added a pair of centers last summer, drafting smallball defensive wunderkind Collin Murray-Boyles and signing stretch-big Sandro Mamukelashvili away from the Spurs.

When Poeltl is on the court without another big (in competitive situations), the Raptors outscore opponents by 0.7 points per 100 possessions. When "Mamu" is the lone big, the Raptors are +6.3. Put in Murray-Boyles and take the other two out, and they have a +7.8 net rating.

The Raptors traded legitimate draft capital for an average center, paid him like a Top-10 player at the position, and paid him earlier than they needed to. The result is that they now have one of the five worst contracts in the NBA on their books, while the Spurs are armed with draft capital to maintain a contender around the league's best center.

The Raptors lost the trade, and the Spurs won it. With each passing game, Poeltl illustrates that he is not the player the Raptors hoped he would be - making the trade all the more bitter, and making the Spurs bigger and bigger winners.