A Toronto Raptors season tends to have a lot of highs and lows but this season has to be one of the most tumultuous in team history. They’re currently on pace for 48 wins so it hasn’t exactly been bad and their recent pace suggests that they will finish somewhere between that 48 and last season’s 56 wins. They’ve just swung between extremes and it can be tough to predict what the future holds because we still haven’t seen the current roster at full strength but it’s easy to imagine some great basketball being played by this squad in the near future.
It might be tough to imagine when you watch them play now but after a brief stumble out of the gate the Raptors opened the season on fire, looking ready to challenge for a spot among the history’s best offensive teams. All of their shooter were shooting at or near career highs from outside, DeMar DeRozan was embracing the facilitator’s role and their centers were making the most out of the few opportunities they got in the paint. The defense was shaky and uninspired but it didn’t matter because opponents simply weren’t able to match the offensive pace – in a 22 game stretch from early November to mid-December the Raptors topped 110 points eighteen times and 120 points eight times. It’s not likely that the Raptors would have been able to continue at that pace but they had a variety of weapons so it wasn’t unrealistic to assume that their regression would still have had them near the top of the league in offensive efficiency.
Unfortunately we never got to find out, because shortly after that the Raptors spent two months with half of their all-star backcourt and their super sub in and out of the lineup as DeRozan and Patrick Patterson struggled with injuries. This was the second stage of the Raptors season, where the team that couldn’t be stopped and never quit but couldn’t defend became the team that was frequently stopped, came with questionable effort and still couldn’t defend. Some of what we saw during that stretch may have been the worst regular season basketball we’ve seen the team play since Dwane Casey was brought on board. They bottomed out with a 16 game stretch where they went 5-11, with eight of those losses being to sub-.500 teams and one of them being a humiliating 35 point defeat at the hands of the Charlotte Hornets.
Thankfully Masai Ujiri has completely remade the team for the fourth time in as many seasons. He has a knack for making high impact roster changes that completely change the way the team plays while somehow keeping what most would consider the core intact. When the team needed more offense he was able to bring in bench scoring to supplement the starters output and keep the offense afloat while they rested. When they needed to add some defense and toughenss he brought in glue guys from established winning teams to fill out the rotation. This season the Raptors were having issues with overall effort and defensive IQ he managed to find two perfect fits in Serge Ibaka and PJ Tucker that have completely changed the mentality of this team and have even managed to shame DeMar DeRozan into playing defense. No matter how hopeless the Raptors situation may seem in the moment it’s important to remember that they have one of the best front offices in the game and they have managed to addres the flaws with their rosters more often than not.
The new look Raptors are a gritty defensive team, sort of the polar opposite of the early season model. Instead of setting the league on fire with their offense they’re stifling opposing offenses – they’ve been 4th in the NBA in defensive efficiency since bringing on Ibaka and Tucker but have slipped to 17th in offensive efficiency. They haven’t been what you’d call a consistent team and the offense is prone to long droughts but the team is somehow winning without Kyle Lowry, something that was considered almost impossible as recently as one month ago.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this up and down Raptors season is that we’ve seen three completely different teams take the floor and there’s still a chapter left. We still haven’t seen a single minute of what could very well be the best version of this team, the one with both all-star guards healthy and what is possibly the best frontcourt in team history bolstered by a bench that is still able to go 10 deep. It’s impossible to say what this team will be like, but barring any lingering injury issues Lowry directly addresses the lineups issues with outside shooting and offensive consistency while also being among the better defenders on the roster so it’s almost certain to be a better product.
That’s what’s so exciting about where the Raptors are right now. After a year of ups and downs that seemed to be leading toward a disappointing conclusion the team is a Kyle Lowry recovery away from playing what may not only be their best basketball of the season but some of the best basketball in franchise history. There have been a few good Raptors teams but never one with this combination of top level talent and depth. The Ibaka-Tucker era Raptors are very up and down but the addition of Lowry should make those highs higher and those lows not so low and allow this team to reach their full potential. Last year’s Raptors team stole a couple of playoff games from the Cavaliers after Cleveland got bored of beating them up and got blown out of every other game; this team could very well be one that can stand toe to toe with them if they can ever get all of their pieces together. For a team that started the season unable to get it done against most the league’s elite and as recently as one month ago was unable to get it done against anyone that’s a great place to be.
