full YouTube link here<\/a>), where Chalmers said: <\/p>\n“I don’t know. I just don’t see Giannis [Antetokounmpo] fitting, I won’t say ‘Heat Culture’, but the Heat team. You gotta put a lot of shooters around him, on that team, which I think is doable, but I just don’t see him going. “<\/p>\n
Mario Chalmers, Sep 15, 2025<\/p>\n
Robinson would directly ask, “Do you think Toronto was a better fit?” to which Chalmers replied:<\/p>\n
“Yeah, definitely. Definitely. More active, more up and down team. They got a bunch of young, hungry guys that like to run and get up and down, so that’s Giannis’ game. “<\/p>\n
Mario Chalmers<\/p>\n
I think it\u2019s pretty noteworthy when you have a guy \u2014 Mario Chalmers, just to be clear, he’s not some legendary NBA star by any means \u2014 but he\u2019s definitely connected to Heat history. And to outright say he doesn\u2019t want to see a superstar like Giannis in Miami really highlights his honest feelings about Toronto and the \u201cGreek Freak\u201d being an appealing pairing. <\/p>\n
If Toronto can retool much of its roster without completely dismantling everything in a Giannis trade, it could turn into a really exciting team to watch \u2014 just like Chalmers suggests. But I find it hard to imagine a scenario where they wouldn\u2019t have to include at least one, maybe two or even three, key Raptors pieces in such a deal. <\/p>\n
The Heat might be in a spot where, as a destination, perhaps it\u2019s more attractive and has a bit more star pull, but Toronto could still be right there on the same level, capable of convincing Giannis to leave Milwaukee if the opportunity comes up. That said, it\u2019s worth noting that Toronto\u2019s main leverage in any potential Giannis trade talks used to be their former president of basketball ops, Masai Ujiri, who left the franchise earlier this summer. <\/p>\n
Ujiri’s departure will probably make things a bit more complicated if these trade rumors come back around, but hey, stranger things have happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just a few months ago, the NBA rumor mill was buzzing with speculation that Toronto might make a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-151555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}