This piece is part of a new weekly series chronicling trade trees in Toronto Raptors’ history, if you have a trade you want to see written about, make a suggestion in the comments!
Last week, we went back to 2013 to look at the Rudy Gay trade that set the Raptors up for the long haul and helped the Knicks secure their first championship in over 53 years. This week, we’ll go back a little further to look at a series of trades that saw Jonas Valančiūnas being traded twice before ever stepping foot on an NBA court.
This story begins on February 13 2009 when the Toronto Raptors finalized a deal to send Jamario Moon, Jermaine O’Neal, a 2011 first round pick and a 2010 second round pick to the Miami Heat for Marcus Banks and Shawn Marion.
Let’s break down this trade.
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The Heat Side: Jamario Moon
Moon had a fascinating basketball career, prior to joining the NBA as a 27-year-old rookie, he bounced around a lot. And I mean a lot. After leaving college in 2000, Moon played for 10 different teams across seven different leagues and even had a brief stint with the Harlem Globetrotters. In 2007, the Raptors signed him to a two year contract after they threw together a three day mini-camp searching for players to fill out the roster and Moon thoroughly impressed the Raptors scouting department. Moon was solid in his season-and-a-half in Toronto, finishing 5th in Rookie of the Year voting. After he was shipped to the Heat, he played out the rest of that season and then signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers. After a season-and-a-half in Cleveland, Moon was once again traded, this time to the Los Angeles Clippers alongside Mo Williams for Baron Davis and a 2011 first round draft pick that miraculously jumped to 1st overall and was used to select Kyrie Irving (it was a slim chance for the jump to 1st, but man this looks so bad for the Clippers). That was pretty much the end of Moon’s NBA journey, he played just 19 games in Los Angeles, and spent some time with their D-League team before getting picked up by the Charlotte Hornets at the end of the 2012 season. For the next little while Moon bounced around a few more clubs, finishing his professional basketball career having played for 19 different teams.
The Heat Side: Jermaine O’Neal
O’Neal was already near the end of his career when he came to Toronto, he had played the past 12 and a half seasons in Portland and Indiana and was 30 years old when he came to the Raptors. In Miami, O’Neal played out the rest of the year and one more before signing with the Boston Celtics in the 2010 offseason. He played in Boston for a couple of years before being waived. O’Neal finished his career with one season stints with the Phoenix Suns and the Golden State Warriors.
As for the two picks that Toronto traded, the 2nd rounder became Da’Sean Butler who never really had an NBA career, and we’ll get to the first round pick shortly.
The Raptors side: Marcus Banks
Banks played just 31 games for Toronto over 3 seasons, and on November 20, 2010 was packaged alongside David Andersen and Jarrett Jack in a trade to the New Orleans Pelicans for Jerryd Bayless and Peja Stojaković .
Bayless played 91 games in Toronto over two seasons before signing with the Memphis Grizzlies on July 13, 2012. Stojaković played just two games in Toronto and was waived on January 20, 2011 (the Raptors really loved to trade for big names towards the end of their careers). He then signed with the Dallas Mavericks for the remainder of the season and played a role in their 2011 championship run.
The Raptors side: Shawn Marion
Marion only stayed with Toronto for the rest of the 2009 season, and on July 9, 2009 the Raptors traded him to the Mavericks as part of a 4-team trade involving the Memphis Grizzlies and Orlando Magic. I won’t go through every single piece of that trade, but essentially the Raptors traded Marion, Kris Humphries, Nathan Jawai, and a 2016 second round pick (that became Wang Zhelin) and in turn received Devean George, Antoine Wright, and Hedo Türkoğlu. Marion was also a member of the Mavericks championship run.
The Marion Branch: Devean George and Antoine Wright
George was only a member of the Raptors for 20 days, on July 29, 2009 he was traded to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for Marco Belinelli. Belinelli was then a member of the Raptors for one season before being traded to the New Orleans Hornets for Julian Wright. The Raptors was Wright’s last stop in the NBA, he went on to play for various teams overseas.
Antoine Wright played one season in Toronto, and in the 2010 offseason signed with the Sacramento Kings who waived him in November of 2010.
The Marion Branch: Hedo Türkoğlu
Since for some reason no one stayed with the Raptors for long back in the early 2010s,Türkoğlu also spent just one season in Toronto, and on July 14, 2010 he was traded to the Phoenix Suns in exchange for Leandro Barbosa and Dwayne Jones.
Barbosa actually stayed in Toronto for a season-and-a-half before he was traded to the Indiana Pacers for cash and a 2012 2nd round pick that became Tomislav Zubčić who never actually played for the Raptors but was traded in 2015 to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Luke Ridnour and cash, the Raptors waived Ridnour just 10 days later.
Jones was waived a month after being traded to the Raptors.
The second trade
Now at this point you’ve probably forgotten that we’re supposed to be talking about Valančiūnas … I did too. These trade trees are an endless rabbit hole on Basketball Reference, and truthfully it’s impossible to get from point A to point B without getting sucked in to the depths of NBA history. I’m dragging you all with me now, so buckle up because we’re now getting to the second piece of the Valančiūnas pick saga, his return north of the border.
In the summer of 2010, LeBron James made ‘the decision’ to leave his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat, while that had it’s own far-reaching impact on the league, the more relevant element in our story is that the Raptors’ franchise star, Chris Bosh was also heading to Miami to play alongside Dwyane Wade and James.
Since the Heat didn’t have the cap space to sign Bosh outright, the Raptors facilitated a sign-and-trade in which they received their own 2011 first round pick back, the Heat’s 2011 first round pick and a trade exception.
The Raptors traded the Heat’s first round pick to the Chicago Bulls in exchange for James Johnson, who spent two years in Toronto before the Raptors traded him to the Kings for a second round pick that became DeAndre Daniels (Johnson would later return to Toronto in 2014). Oh, and by the way that 2011 Heat pick became Norris Cole who was traded on draft night in 2011 to the Heat, so yet another full circle moment in this winding trade tree.
The Raptors own 2011 draft pick, which was traded to the Heat and then traded back to Toronto for Bosh, became the 5th overall pick that year and was used to select Jonas Valančiūnas. In a strange move that you would never see in the present day NBA, the Raptors left Valančiūnas in Lithuania to allow him to develop for another season before bringing him to the NBA. In 2012, he finally made his NBA debut, and went on to play 7 seasons in Toronto before the 2019 trade deadline saw him shipped to the Grizzlies alongside C.J. Miles and Delon Wright in exchange for Marc Gasol. We know how that story ends, Gasol was the final piece of the Raptors’ championship puzzle, and I truly believe that. They don’t win the series against the 76ers without Gasol.
All in all, essentially nothing from that original trade in 2009 stayed in Toronto for very long, the Raptors swapped various aging players in and out of their lineup over the years. The only piece that really ended up mattering, was the original pick that they traded away and only got back because Bosh wanted to leave. That 2011 pick came back to Toronto and gave them seven seasons of one of the franchise’s best centers and eventually became the missing piece of the franchise’s only championship.
