On Monday night, the Toronto Raptors ended a 6-game winning streak with a home loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, their third loss of the season to the Eastern Conference leading Cavaliers. Although the combined difference in the three losses being 11 points, the Raptors are now a combined 0-5 against the top teams in the league, and although their 14-7 record is good for second place in the East, they’re still lacking a signature win to really cement their place as a top team, and there’s a lot of talk that what the team needs is another star, or superstar, to vault them over the top and put them into real championship contention. While that trade should definitely be pursued, if available – this is a star’s league, and there are few cases where you shouldn’t pursue an available star – a simple swap of depth for star talent might not be the home run many think it is.
On the surface, this is the era of ‘big threes’, and you need three stars to win. The Heat in Miami, the Cavaliers, the Golden State Warriors all had a trio of All-Stars as they headed towards their championship banners, and you could consider the trio of Tony Parker, Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili the first group to set this trend, or perhaps the Celtics group of Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Either way, whoever came first, getting those three top tier stars has worked for several organizations and helped them to build towards a run of Finals appearances and championships.
As far as the path to making a trade happen, Toronto definitely has the assets, with a bevy of young, talented players, given that the organization has the third youngest roster in the league, and all of those players on cap-friendly contracts given the work of Masai Ujiri to retain his players and his brilliance at doing it, locking up Terrence Ross and Jonas Valanciunas early last year on deals that appeared at the time to be questionable, but in the case of both players, their contracts look fantastic now due to the many large deals given out during the summer. So the path to making that game-changing trade looks open, leaving many in the fanbase have asked why that deal hasn’t been made yet.
At the same time, the success of the team, while easy to attribute to two-time All-Stars Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, might not be that simple. First of all, the team has had a top-five bench in the NBA over the last several seasons, and even in those 3 early games against Cleveland this year, the starting lineup has struggled. The group of Lowry, DeRozan, DeMarre Carroll, Pascal Siakam and Jonas Valanciunas managed just a -26.6 net rating in 31 minutes against the defending champions, and the same lineup with Patterson instead of Siakam had a -21.7 net rating in 16 minutes. At the same time, the bench lineups did well, for the most part. The 3-man group of Patrick Patterson, Lucas Nogueira and Terrence Ross played 20 minutes against the Cavaliers, with a 98.0 defensive rating and +22.8 net rating. Those three players, plus Cory Joseph, are spattered across the lineups that have had success against better teams this year.
In this we find what I consider one of Dwane Casey’s biggest strengths as a coach. While I might at times disagree with his rotations, his ability to get the players on this roster to buy into their roles in the system has been impressive, from getting Jonas Valanciunas to embrace his role setting screens and enabling the offensive games of the All-Star guards to Terrence Ross moving from being a 2-year starter to accepting the role of being the microwave scorer off the bench, taking defensive attention away from Lowry and DeRozan and knocking down his shots when they’re presented, where he’s excelled this year, with an effective field goal percentage of 85.2% on wide open shots this season. Going back to the trade scenario, given how Casey has excelled in finding roles that players succeed in, it might be assumed that whoever of that bench group is outgoing to bring back that star, he’ll find a way to sort out roles and get everyone buying in, and maybe that does happen.
But the other side of that scenario is the possibility that chemistry is more fragile a thing than we perceive, and perhaps sending out one, or several, of those players who’ve contributed mightily to the success of the team by enabling the Lowry or DeRozan bench units to dominate opposing benches and help the team get back in games where the starting group struggled changes that equation. Because even the best trade scenarios out there aren’t bringing back LeBron James, or Kevin Durant, and as long as those players play for the Cavaliers and the Warriors, their starting lineups will be favored against Toronto’s, leaving the team’s best shot being winning the minutes that aren’t starters against starters, where the Raptors currently succeed.
The bench unit isn’t enough to beat the Cavaliers, at least not consistently. We’ve seen that through this year and last, winning those minutes won’t be enough, even if Toronto does succeed there. Even though the regular season games have been close, and aren’t necessarily predictive(after all, the Raptors won the season series 3-1 last year before losing in the playoffs to Cleveland), it’s clear Toronto is the lesser of the two teams, leaving Toronto to either try to keep the window open long-term or make a move to try to win now, and either scenario has clear risks, with Kyle Lowry now on the wrong side of 30.
It might seem like a home run bringing in Paul Millsap or DeMarcus Cousins, and it’s easy to love the idea of both of those acquisitions. But that might not be enough, a big three of Lowry, DeRozan and one of those two still isn’t better than the trios of James, Love and Irving or Curry, Durant and Green, and you’d have to sacrifice significant parts of the supporting cast to get there, as well as injury protection which has been valuable for the Raptors in recent years. As I said in the opening paragraph, if those opportunities present themselves, it’d be silly to not at least have the conversation and make the trade if it’s there, but a home run that falls a few feet short is just a fly-out, and that’s the risk that has to be balanced. The things you’d lose are things that are hard to measure, in the value of chemistry and team unity, and it’s also hard to predict how long it would take to rebuild those same elements. So while we’d all love to see Masai at least take the swing, before we get there someone has to at least make that star available to be pursued, and in the meantime we should enjoy what we have, because regardless of the incoming player, there is no guarantee things change for the better.
