This Raptors team has very clearly reached an end of the road moment. The team as it currently exists went 25-25 in 2015, looked despondent and unenthusiastic and just got brutally swept by a higher seeded team in the first round of the playoffs. Changes will undoubtedly be made, somewhere between wholesale and considerable. So, who stands most likely to move?
Dwane Casey
From an outsider’s perspective, it seems hard to justify how someone could argue for bringing Coach Casey back. The team has stagnated badly going all the way back to December. Tuning a coach out is one problem, and Kyle Lowry certainly spawned a handful of stories implying that case based on his comments the other day, but my problems with Casey go much deeper. This team hasn’t made any kind of major adjustments in months. When it became obvious long before the mid way point of the regular season that the book on his team was out and teams knew how to take away the simple things they wanted to do offensively, there was no adjustment whatsoever. Reports in the last week have indicated that the coaching staff wasn’t concerned about the growing inefficiency of their isolation heavy offence, thinking that it would essential and effective once the game slowed down come the playoffs. The coaching staff proved themselves as out of tough as the NBA’s playoff marketing campaign with their ‘hero ball’ strategy there. On both ends of the floor Casey’s coaching was dominated by one trend: stubbornness. He stubbornly refused to trust his younger players enough to encourage their development and best utilize their skills over the last few years. He stubbornly refused to adjust his defensive scheme to reflect the abilities of the roster at hand. He stubbornly refused to adjust the offence in the light of it’s increasing inability to generate quality shots. His play calling, over reliance on veteran players who understood his defence even if they couldn’t play it, his minutes management, in-series adjustments and his development of young talent has all been less than impressive. I haven’t heard a single person even try to make the argument for bringing him back, which made ESPN’s Marc Stein’s report that the Raptors were planning on bringing him back all the more surprising. It’s hard to believe news like that leaking out so quickly from the notoriously tight lipped Raptors front office, but we will soon find out either way.
Terrence Ross
Ross had a lost season that only got worse in the playoffs. Ross currently inhabits the zone garnering the most irrational or emotional knee-jerk reactions from fans, which is never a good sign. Is he in the team’s long term plans? It’s hard to say, but it’s also hard to see him moving, just as a reality. His value has never been lower. Ultimately, it depends on how harsh the internal conclusions about Terrence are. The word was a year ago that his name was the sticking point in some bigger trades because of how highly the front office valued him. If they believed that then, it’s not outrageous to think that the would conclude that a different coaching staff could help turn his game around. It’s hard to imagine him occupying anything other than a contract filler slot in a trade based on his value.
DeMar DeRozan
Will DeMar be a cornerstone of the rebuild, or an asset used towards a specifically built team? DeMar is arguably at his best sell high point. If you don’t think he’ll ever be able to find reliable 3 point range and dramatically improve his decision making and shot selection, then he’s already basically reached his ceiling. To be clear, I’m not advocating for cutting ties with DeMar. I’ve been genuinely surprised and impressed with DeMar’s progression each season and what is obviously an exceptional work ethic. He’s a player, and a high character role model for teammates. But he also might be more valuable as a sellable asset to this team in the long run right now then he could be as a player depending on how other teams value him.
Patrick Patterson
Patrick Patterson has great value either to the raps or someone else. But sooner or later the raptors need to start thinking about roster balance. He can’t be your 4 playing against small ball teams. He spaces the floor well with Valanciunas, but the two of them struggled defensively together, failing to communicate and both getting burned in the pick and roll. Patterson is a very capable offensive player on a decent contract who is still younger than people realize. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him kept or traded, though it’s starting to become clear that sentence can probably apply to anyone on the roster.
Greivis Vasquez
Vasquez is a very good backup point guard. You’re happy with him running your second unit. But he quite simply can’t be the first guard up off the bench to play with the starters. The Raptors got punished defensively whenever he played for any of the 3 starting wings in the starting lineup. He needs to work the pick and roll to be most effective offensively, which means him having the ball more than he often did with Lou Williams this year, and you’re best when you can hide him on defence. Vasquez size for a PG allows him to be hidden in a wider array of players , and that isn’t usually a problem against second units. If the roster stays somewhat in tact though, the raptors need a 3 and D guard to play his minutes with the starters.
Jonas Valanciunas
JV needs to grow. It’s hard to imagine the raptors punting on a young 7 footer with potential if they’re not somehow getting another or more established one as a part of any deal. He should have been getting 32-36 minutes a game and close to twice as many touches to develop his game, and help him figure out the rotations and angles of defense. That was much more important than winning 49 games instead of 43 or 44 games, which isn’t a slam dunk argument to make either. Delaying Valanciunas development in an effort to maximize this teams regular season seeding could not have possibly failed more disastrously. The Raptors will be in a much better position with Valanciunas reaching his ceiling in the next couple years than they will for almost anything else they could pull off trade or free agent wise this summer.
Nobody knows what Masai’s plan for this team will look like. My best guess is that he’s going to gauge the value of everyone on his roster across the league and that his decisions will reflect what the return on any given player might be and how that return will help him best build whatever type of team he personally has in mind. It should be an interesting off season, and it could be one that wears tough on fans emotional attachment to their favourite players. Change is definitely coming, we’ll see how it looks.
