CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Where do the Toronto Raptors go from here?
Well, in the literal sense, they get to go home. The Raptors have played 17 road games in the span of six weeks. For perspective, RJ Barrett who was traded to his hometown team on Dec. 30th, has played more than twice as many games on the road with the Raptors than he has at Scotiabank Arena.
“I forgot what that’s like,” said Barrett. “I’ve been on the road since December.”
So there’s that. But there are a lot of other questions that will need to be answered in the short and long term. The Raptors come back to Toronto and immediately face a stretch of four games in six nights, so it’s not like the schedule gets any easier.
Who they will have on their roster for those last four starts before the all-star break is the most obvious one. The trade deadline is 3 p.m. ET on Thursday and for a team that’s already made two significant trades and has a number of players who could be on the move – or not – it can’t come soon enough.
“It’s not easy. It’s not easy on coaches. It’s not easy on players. It’s not easy on front office,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “But all of this is a part of the business. We got to be prepared for everything. Right now, the roster for both teams, from my understanding, is still available. So all they got to do there is be focussed on a game and have a task ahead of us.”
Ah, yes, the game. The Raptors did manage to come back from down 15 points in the third quarter to win 123-117 on the strength of an impressive fourth quarter on both ends. The Raptors finish their six-game road trip 2-4 and improve to 18-33 on the season. Charlotte lost their ninth straight and are 10-40.
It was not the most compelling match-up and the announced crowd at the Spectrum Center of 11,720 seemed generous and was bolstered by a surprising number of Raptors fans in any case. No wonder tickets were plentiful given the Raptor had won just three of their previous 16 games and the Hornets, who had won three of their last ….twenty-nine.
It would be tempting to suggest that the game had significance for draft position. If the season ended tomorrow the Raptors would be tied with Memphis for the league’s sixth-worst record and the Hornets would be tied for third worst. But even trying to suggest that it could have some significance for standings on draft night is a bit of a stretch. The Hornets are 4.5 games at this point behind the Raptors and given they are a team that’s expected to be trading away some quality pieces by the deadline, they look every bit the part of a team that will find a way to lose a lot of games as the season goes along.
The Raptors likely will too, but making up ground on the Hornets will be tough.
For bookkeeping purposes: The game turned in the early part of the third quarter when Rajakovic called a timeout and could be heard blistering his team from the middle bowl of the half-empty arena. Toronto was down 10 at the time and was behind by 15 a moment later when Miles Bridges hit another of his six threes on his way to a game-high 45 points, but the Raptors began to heed their coach’s message at that point.
“I was not happy with the intensity. I was not happy with our communication. Just the urgency was not there,” said Rajakovic. “In order to win on the road, we needed to be better. I just expressed my feelings, in a soft, Serbian way.”
The Raptors responded with vigour in the fourth, holding the Hornets to 25 per cent shooting. Barrett scored eight of his Raptors-high 23 points in the final period and Jakob Poeltl had a tip-in and blocked shot in the 82 seconds to put the Raptors up five and then preserve the lead, plays which proved to be the distance as the big Austrian centre finished with 12 points and 12 rebounds.
So the Raptors – on this night anyway – were better than the Hornets.
So the bigger question really, is where the Raptors are going existentially, basketball-wise, if that makes sense.
They have some challenges, which are mainly that they don’t have enough quality players at this stage, and the path to acquiring them could take some time, if the Raptors end up having to rely on draft picks. We’ll know more about that after the trade deadline.
For some perspective, Hornets head coach Steve Clifford can’t help but speak plain English when it comes to the game.
What does it take to go from where his team – and the Raptors – are now teams that can measure seasons in something more than where their draft pick might fall?
“To be competitive every night is where you want to get to be, in a general sense, you want to have five legitimate starters and nine legitimate rotation players.” said Clifford. “And when you have that you can have developmental parts or … more veterans at the end of the bench. [In the past] you didn’t want to have younger guys. You wanted veteran guys who could step right in and play for two or three weeks. And along with that, I would say, a good backup is good enough to compete against starters, just like a good third-string guy is good enough to play against rotation players. [But]I think that’s a simple way to look at how you want to build your roster.”
The Hornets, under new ownership, are in the early stages of trying to do just that. Rookie Brandon Miller, taken second overall in the draft last summer, is certainly trending toward being a quality starter if not something much more than that. He had 20 points on 17 shots. Mark Davis – who was injured and didn’t play against the Raptors – projects to be a decent NBA starter. LaMelo Ball is a dynamic guard when healthy but the fact that he’s hurt so often and barely plays defence when he is on the floor means that even for all the talent the No.2 pick in the 2020 draft has, the jury remains out on him. Their best player right now is Bridges who missed all of last season due to a conviction for domestic violence. Overall, the Hornets have some other interesting pieces, but they are realistically a ways away from achieving Clifford’s standard for a competitive roster.
How about the Raptors? Barnes obviously qualifies, and not just because he was named an all-star on Tuesday. He’s just 22 and has plenty of things to improve, but he’s clearly a game-changing talent if it all comes together. Even on a quiet night by his standards, he had 18 points, five rebounds and five assists. After that, you have Immanuel Quickly (18 points and four assists) although exactly where his ceiling lies is still to be determined. Barrett has certainly played well since joining the Raptors, is still just 23 and has a decent contract given his level of play. Poeltl is a quality NBA centre but given he’s seven years older than Barnes there could be questions regarding his long-term fit. He’s also mainly a working-class pro at this stage. But after that, the Raptors roster has plenty of question marks.
The hope is that some expert development work can help some players improve to the point they can contribute to a good team and be traded for players who can.
“Obviously we are a team that made changes in the middle of the season. The focus becomes much more of individual, group, and team development and how that needs to be translated into games,” said Rajakovic. “Obviously, everything we do is to prepare the team to win games. And, the best way for a young team to do that is not coming up with new x’s and o’s, but actually teaching them fundamentals of basketball: how to close out, how to pass the ball, how to be on balance on the shot, how to read simple pick-and-roll reads and all of that … I’m always challenging myself to be creative as much as possible and to find, I don’t want to say shortcuts, but the most efficient ways how to accomplish that.”
The Raptors will have time to do just that as the season unfolds, and not a lot of pressure to see results.
