They were an East leader and definite playoff team with DeRozan and Kawhi. Without them? They may struggle for years to make the playoffs.
Outside of Pascal, their youth is rather uninspiring. Van Fleet? Meh. Jonas? He’s medicore. McCaw? Nothing special. OG? Has not busted out like many of us had hoped.
Kyle Lowry is worse than Demar and has a worse contract too.
If they lose Kawhi, it’s a big setback. Now, if their cap space leads to landing good free agents and they stay a playoff team; cool, it’s much better. But that seems very unlikely.
What’s more likely is they go the BKY route and use their space to take on bad contracts so they can get picks back and do a rebuild.
There is no guarantee they will be a playoff team for a while if that all goes down.