Same here I follow many teams around the league but you don't know for sure that their plan was to lose and totally rebuild. After all in the Eastern Conference you can "win" and I use that term loosely while building at the same time. Many said the plan was for Derozan to become their "go to guy" and that they wanted to see what Lowry could do truly running the team. Vasquez and Lowry are both big enough to run them out their together at times so I don't think you can assume that Vasquez was just a throw in to make the trade work. It's quite possible that they actually wanted Vasquez.
You're absolutely correct in that they might have made Vasquez a required part of the trade when it happened.
But here is the thing that I think you might want to consider:
That is, they required Vasquez only because he was an ender on
OUR team. If we had not done the Sign-And-Trade with New Orleans, then the likelihood that we don't do the Rudy trade because Vasquez was on a different team is negligible. If Vasquez was in New Orleans and Jimmer's ender would have worked from a salary perspective then we still more than likely do the Rudy trade because Toronto was looking to move Rudy while not hurting their long-term flexibility, and Jimmer's Ender (in that case) would have worked just as well as Vasquez'.
So not having Vasquez on the roster more than likely does not stop the Rudy trade from happening because they were desperate to unload Rudy and give the reigns to DeRozan and Lowry since Rudy obviously was not working with the rest of the team.
Now since Vasquez was on our roster, then absolutely, you ask for Vasquez and his ender over Jimmer and his ender, but I can't believe that Toronto would have said, "You know what, we really want to trade Rudy to you, but could you see about working out something with New Orleans to get Vasquez included in the deal and sent over to us?"
With all that said, when looking at the SF landscape prior to the off-season, Rudy was one of the last 'high-level' SFs that I wanted on my roster. I didn't think that he'd be a good fit next to Tyreke and Cousins, especially at his salary. If we were going for a 'high-level' SF then my first choice would have been Iggy, then probably followed by Deng, Batum, Howard, and Parsons. Rudy would not have helped the roster as much as these other guys if you paired him with Tyreke and Cousins. But once we lost Tyreke we had to find a 2nd option and all-of-a-sudden Rudy looks like a fantastic option at SF.
So I don't know if I would have been super happy about making the Rudy trade if we still had Tyreke, but I do believe that we could have made that trade with Toronto with Tyreke still on the roster by using Jimmer's ender instead of Vasquez', because Toronto would have basically had no choice but to take Jimmer because what they really were looking for was cap flexibility with the ending contract, and Jimmer would have suited just fine in that regard.
