The Eastern Conference standings are still so ambiguous. Flipped on its head as we near the all-star break, the East looks nothing like what anyone would have predicted in October. This season’s standings have been extra interesting. Of all current playoff seeds, no team is at .500 or lower – a sharp contrast to last season where Brooklyn’s 38-44 record was enough to squeeze into the playoffs, as was Boston’s 40-42 record.
Keep going back all the way to the 2011-212 – that was the last time a team under .500 didn’t make the playoff cut. The East is better, but crazy enough, the teams we expected to be better are not. The Wizards may not make the post-season at all. Even if they make a surge with Bradley Beal’s return, they will still have to overcome a hungry and talented Charlotte and Detroit. Boston, meanwhile, looks fantastic. Brad Stevens is doing a tremendous job in Beantown and the Celtics could spark an upset in this year’s playoffs. I’m not sure anyone would really argue against them being the third best team in the East this season.
But here’s the crazy part – and perhaps a testament to how good the Raptors are – as good as the Celtics have been, they’re as close to the 10th place Wizards as they are to the 2nd place Raptors. 5.5 games in all. And that’s an improved Conference, mind you, and the Raptors have put themselves on the same plane as Cleveland – separating themselves from the pack.
In a weird way, it means nothing, hence why the standings are still ambiguous. The seeding could be flipped on its head by the time May rolls around, and the Raptors still need to come out of the first round at the very least. It’s not going to get easier – mostly because of depth issues. DeMarre Carroll and James Johnson will be back eventually, but Dwane Casey has the difficult task of making sure the team doesn’t burn out before their two integral wing defenders come back. Norman Powell starts, but doesn’t eat a ton of minutes, and the Raptors will still have to play Kyle Lowry for large chunks of the game. Need I remind you the Raptors were in dreamland this time last season until they spiraled after the all-star break and Lowry broke down?
Here’s something worrying
The Chicago Bulls are spiraling. They’ve lost 3-straight and 7-of-10. Jimmy Butler’s injury will see the Bulls’ star out for the next month or so. Somehow, they are not even that impressive (until they play the Raptors) even when Butler is in the line-up, and without him, the struggles will be magnified three-fold. The Bulls are now nearly in the bottom half of the league when it comes point differential, and Jimmy Butler is a huge reason why the Bulls have had any success at all this season. Butler now joins Noah on the injury list which won’t bode well for them defensively.
The burden is now on Rose to get the offense going in the back-court. Rose has shown flashes of his prime this season, but overall is completely unpredictable and is not only in-and-out of form, but also in-and-out of the lineup.
Here’s why this whole predicament is worrying for the Raptors: Chicago is currently 7th, and if the playoffs started today, they would face the Raps. It might be premature thinking, but it’s something to consider. For all the tough work the Raptors have put in this season, it would be pretty tough to match-up with the Bulls assuming Chicago will tread water until Butler gets back and squeak into the 7th or 8th seed when they become healthy in the post-season. The East is wildly unpredictable right now, but if there’s room for any reasonable predictions, it’s that Toronto and Cleveland can finish 1st and 2nd, and the Bulls can slide to 8th or remain 7th. It’s also possible of course, that the Bulls slip far enough down out of the picture and one of Charlotte / Washington takes their place. In that scenario, give me Washington any day of the week.
The reason it would be worrying for the Raptors to face a healthy Bulls squad in the playoffs is pretty clear. While the Raptors are the better team this season, they just can’t seem to match-up well with Chicago who always find an extra gear against Dwane Caseys’ men. The Raptors haven’t beaten the Bulls since 2013, and even this season when the Raptors looked like they had finally broken the curse, they blew a big lead and conceded a whopping 40 points to Jimmy Butler in the second half to lose by a hair.
Trade scenarios are getting ridiculous
Since last Wednesday’s column, I came across an article Frank Isola – beat writer for the New York Knicks – posted, suggesting Carmelo Anthony requests a trade to a contender. Sound reasoning. Melo loves New York for various reasons, but he’s also lacking a ring, and the clock is ticking. Among the teams shortlisted as a contender who might gamble on acquiring Melo was the Raptors. Fine.
But then the NY Daily News followed it up with this trade scenario:
Melo, Amundsen, for Carroll, Ross, and Joseph.
Not exactly the most exciting scenario for the Knicks.
The Raptors are already right there with the Cavs among the best teams in the East, and sending Anthony to Toronto, a divisional opponent, could haunt the Knicks for years to come.
But Ross and Joseph are young (both are 24) and Carroll gives them some toughness and positional flexibility in the frontcourt.
Raptors GM Masai Ujiri has gotten the better of the Knicks in trades before — as GM of the Nuggets he orchestrated the 2011 Anthony trade to the Knicks and in 2013, with the Raptors, he got the Knicks to give up a first-round pick (this year’s, in fact) for Andrea Bargnani.
Would the Knicks really want to make a third deal with him?
POSSIBLE KNICKS POST-TRADE STARTING 5:
G — Langston Galloway
G — Arron Afflalo
F — Terrence Ross
F — Kristaps Porzingis
C — Robin LopezPOSSIBLE RAPTORS POST-TRADE STARTING 5:
G — Kyle Lowry
G — DeMar DeRozan
F — Carmelo Anthony
F — James Johnson
C — Jonas Valenciunas
Trade scenarios are getting out of hand, and the thought of the NY Daily News actually publishing an idea like that induces headaches. It also doesn’t help their cause that Valanciunas’ misspelled surname made it all the way through to the publishing phase.
In other news, I – like every other dude who likes to spend hours on Trade Machine – came up with a scenario that works. The green button is visible, therefore the trade must work!
The Knicks once gutted their entire team to acquire Melo and didn’t get very far afterwards. That was five years ago when Carmelo was entering his prime. He’s now 31. Technically that makes him both young and good enough to bring in in a ‘win-now’ move – but not at the expense the above trade scenario suggests.
It seems hypocritical to give attention to this trade idea after criticisng the fact that it even got published, but somehow dissecting these ridiculous ideas can be fun, and it would be fair to at least state why it wouldn’t work.
Here are the pros of acquiring Melo:
- He’s having a really good season, and is far from finished. At just over 21 ppg, Melo’s scoring is down compared to his peak, but he’s dishing out a career-best 4.2 assists and playing improved defense. If the Raptors are worried that adding Melo would be a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen, you could argue that Anthony is in a position where he understands the team game now and would be invested in improving the team en route to chasing a ring without boasting a massive usage rate.
- He could stretch the floor at the four spot in certain scenarios, and would do a better job of guarding the perimeter than Luis Scola. I realize that is a trivial point, as anybody can defend the perimeter better than Luis Scola, and Melo is still not a great defender by any means. But consider this: The kind of spacing DeRozan and Lowry would enjoy with having a bonafide star on the perimeter would be scary. How would defenses cope with something like that? DeRozan would have some fun not being the focal point of drawn defensive attention
The idea of acquiring Carmelo is interesting. But last week I talked about gambling on Al Horford in a flat-out high-risk win-now move, and that move made far more sense. While adding Anthony could boast a ridiculous starting line-up on paper, it would completely gut the Raptors’ depth. In the above scenario, they would lose CoJo, Carroll, and Ross. Two of those guys are the best defenders on the roster, and the third, Ross, is one of the better defenders on the team. The Raptors would be giving up defense, youth, and depth for a 31-year-old offensive star who isn’t a great defender. The team would get gassed quickly, unless you can assume the Raptors can acquire fillers before the deadline, which would be a difficult process on its own. Either that, or you bank on increased usage for Delon Wright, James Johnson, and Norman Powell – hoping that it could somehow work.
Verdict: no thanks, NY Daily News.
This is dope
The NBA paid tribute to Vince Carter and compiled his best dunks as a Raptor. Seriously, watch it. It will take you back to good times – or bad, depending on how you look back on the Vince era. The what ifs are plenty, but we can’t deny there was a few seasons of momentous basketball in Toronto surrounding Vince Carter that we should always be thankful for.
Shutout to Mark Kowgier
During last week’s column – the first of its kind – I mentioned that I will be posting a column like this based on my relevant observations over the past week every Wednesday. I also mentioned I wasn’t happy with the name ‘Hump Day Ramblings’, so I put out a call for suggestions and got a bunch of neat ones. Ironically, I went with the corniest one – ‘3 in the Kiy’. A play off my name, and a subtle hint on how to pronounce it properly. Big daps to Mark.
