Masai Ujiri isn’t much of a gambler. In part, he was hired because he isn’t much of a gambler. His predecessor loved throwing all of his chips down on every move, and Ujiri’s risk-aversion helped make him an appetizing replacement.
That isn’t to say that Ujiri avoids all risk in his management of the Raptors. In fact, one risk he took when he first arrived in Toronto is beginning to put a strain on the team’s competitiveness, and that’s his oft-praised decision to load-up the end of the bench with a stockpile of young, unseasoned assets that can be developed and evaluated in-house (hence his push for a local D-League affiliate). On paper the strategy makes a ton of sense, since roster spots in the NBA are precious and teams require a pipeline of talent to help absorb the debilitating effects of age and free agency.
It’s a tricky balancing act to master, though. A team can only employ fifteen players at any given time. If the average NBA playing rotation is eight-to-ten players, those last five players are going to be called into action at points during the season to fill-in for the inevitable injuries that afflict any team. We’re seeing the pain of that right now with the Raptors. Down two starters (Jonas Valanciunas and DeMarre Carroll), and with two more rotation players struggling with reliability (Terrence Ross and Patrick Patterson), the Raptors are hurting for players that can contribute consistently on a night-to-night basis. As well as Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan are playing of late, there simply isn’t the talent around them right now to maintain high-quality play. They’ve dropped out of the top-ten in both offensive and defensive efficiency and that’s despite running Lowry and DeRozan into the ground trying to win games.
You know there must have been multiple times this season when Dwane Casey has looked down his bench, seen a guy like Anthony Bennett and just thought to himself “no offence, but I wish you were Jared Dudley or even Tayshaun Prince right now.” Casey has always been tentative about giving young players minutes. You can almost feel his discomfort when Norman Powell is on the court. Coaches like predictable entities (it’s why the coach/GM title can sometimes create such an awkward fit), and they like to have bench players that they can rely upon for exactly the situation the Raptors are facing now. Casey is riding his regulars hard and is struggling to find dependable on-court combinations without feeding his top-five (healthy) players an aggressive diet of minutes.
Casey isn’t entirely blameless in this equation, either. Ujiri did draft him two NBA-ready assets in Powell and Delon Wright, taking a hit on upside to deliver guys that could log spot minutes today, and Lucas Nogueira has played well in a limited role and could probably handle a heavier load. In Casey’s defence, most of these players either play at positions that don’t require much help (point guard is obviously well taken care of, for instance) or they don’t offer the skills that the team needs at their position (like wing scoring). More than anything, though, Casey doesn’t feel comfortable putting them out there in a tight-game situation, and unfortunately for the Raptors, they are almost always facing tight-game situations these days.
Essentially, Ujiri’s choice to reserve the back-five rosters spots for unproven youth has allowed Toronto’s injury and consistency problems to bite twice: once in losing a valuable player (or a player’s reliability) and again when there simply isn’t enough options deep on the bench to accommodate them. Ujiri may have overcommitted to youth this year, dazzled by the prospect of developing these players in his hard-won Mississauga outfit, considering the team is looking to compete in the upper-reaches of the east and may not have enough usable personnel to do so.
This balance becomes even more interesting with the trove of draft picks that Ujiri has been collecting since he arrived. Toronto has their own draft picks in the next two drafts, as well as first round picks acquired via trade (the lesser of New York or Denver this year, and the Clippers’ pick next year). Combined with Wright, Powell, Nogueira and Bruno Caboclo, that’s a lot of young bodies to account for. The team will almost certainly be forced to start trading their young assets or picks away for sheer lack of roster spots available to fit them all into (and, again, the fact that the team is trying to make some noise at the top of the conference). That’s not a bad situation for Ujiri, he has assets that he can use to improve the team, but eventually he’s going to have to use those assets to acquire players that Casey (or whomever, should the future tilt that way) can use to actually help win basketball games while Lowry and DeRozan are in their prime.
Balancing the today/tomorrow equation is the single hardest part of managing a sports team. You need to provide your coach with enough to today to compete, but also provide the franchise with enough talent in the pipeline that they can continue competing tomorrow. Ujiri has crippled Casey’s ability to compete with the roster that he’s given him today, but the Valaciunas/Carroll injuries and Ross/Patterson issues have exposed the risks in his fifteen-man roster building strategies. The easy remedy is to wait until everyone is healed, which should restore some balance to the rotation, but Lowry and DeRozan burn-out is a real threat, as are additional injuries later in the season. Remember, there are still 55 games left to play this season, before you even begin accounting for the playoffs. The strategy of loading the end of the bench with untested prospects makes a certain amount of sense on paper, but the Raptors are experiencing the real-world ramifications and for a GM as risk-averse as Ujiri, the smart money is on him dialling-back on this well-meaning strategy.
