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Learn more at vertexinck.com. Hello and welcome to the Athletic NBA show.

I'm Dave DeFore, joined by my colleague at The Athletic, our Toronto Raptors beat reporter, Eric Corrine.

Eric, I dragged you in here because you wrote, I don't know, is it a column?

Is it an opinion piece?

I don't know what we would call it, but you kind of nailed this, I think.

And you wrote that Damian Lillard is the wrong trade target at the wrong time for the

Raptors and I could not agree more. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I mean,

column analysis, opinion, some, that's sort of just what I try to do and, you know, you just can't categorize me. You can't keep me

in a box, Dave. I can't put you in a box. Stop trying. All right. Well, let's just kind of catch

ourselves up here a little bit because this week, you know, after months of speculation that

the trailblazers and the Miami Heat were going to work out a deal for Damia Lillard.

It's being reported all over the place that the Toronto Raptors are very interested in

Damia Lillard and may even be the frontrunners, if you believe some of the reports that are out there,

which I have no reason not to. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, given where the rafters are as a team.

And I think that, I think in order to sort of put some context here, compare this team to

the 2019 team that went out and made the Kauai Leonard trade, because this is what people

keep going

back to.

...