Let’s start this thing with a disclaimer right up at the top: this piece in no way argues that there are positive results from COVID-19. It is an ongoing catastrophe. But it seems as though the NBA will be returning to play, despite the pandemic, and despite a variety of reasonable qualms raised by players like Kyrie Irving. And when the games do return, the long layoff will be a competitive reality. This piece does not advocate for any moral judgement of the NBA’s return. But as competition becomes a reality, so too do advantages and disadvantages that play out on the court.
With that said, the Raptors could benefit — from a competitive standpoint — when games return. Based on the plan, each team will have only eight games to prepare before the playoffs begin. Of course, there will be practices and workouts beforehand, and those have already begun, but nothing can replace game experience. And eight games is not enough to get into ideal shape for the playoffs. So teams will not be at their best when the playoffs begin.
That could be good for the Raptors; they’ve spent all year winning despite rarely playing at their best. Toronto spent little of the season healthy, and many of its players’ injured layoffs came in pieces rather than all at once. That means that the Raptors have plenty of experience integrating and re-integrating players on the fly. This isn’t a direct correlation to the current return to play, but there are some similarities. So let’s look at some of those returns from injury in more specific detail.
In the eighth game of the season, Toronto lost both Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka to injury. The losses impacted the Raptors’ style of play, but they didn’t impact Toronto’s wining ways. After losing Lowry and Ibaka, the Raptors romped through a West Coast trip and continued winning, including a classic over the Los Angeles Lakers. But when the two returned, both in the twentieth game of the season, for the first time in the season, Toronto faltered. The Raptors lost that game to the Miami Heat, and though he played incredible defense and baited his way to eight free throws, Lowry shot 2-for-18 from the field. That marked both the worst Lowry shooting game of his Raptors’ career and the third-worst Raptors’ shooting game of all time, behind only Antonio Davis and Andrea Bargnani.
And then the Raptors went on to lose to the Houston Rockets and Philadelphia 76ers and slid into losing four of five, which was the worst five-game stretch of the season for Toronto. Not an ideal return to health. But also, not Toronto’s only kick at that can, so to speak.
Fred VanVleet also left with injury in the season’s 22nd game, returning in the 28th, in which he played well but shot poorly. His return didn’t seem to change Toronto’s fortunes, although the Raptors did notch its franchise-best comeback victory over the Dallas Mavericks a few nights later. VanVleet, however, was a net negative in the game, so let’s call his first return a mixed bag.
Norman Powell and Marc Gasol left with injury in Toronto’s 27th game of the season, and Pascal Siakam left in the 28th. Those three all returned between games 39-40, which prompted a 15-game winning streak, Toronto’s longest winning streak in franchise history. Gasol and Powell, especially, were brilliant in their respective returns, scoring with ease and supercharging Toronto on both sides of the ball. VanVleet also returned from a five-game absence in Toronto’s 42nd game of the year and scored an efficient 29 points. Toronto’s winning streak coincided with the return of three players from injury.
There were other absences and returns, including more injuries and succeeding heroics from Powell. The general trend-line over the course of the season indicated improvement. As the season went on, Toronto improved at integrating players returning from injury. That is a team-wide skill. And when the NBA returns, the Raptors will have an advantage as the NBA quickly transitions from layoff to games because the Raptors have experience doing it.
That’s not the only element that will stand Toronto in good stead.
Chemistry is an ethereal concept, but the Raptors seem to have found the secret sauce. The Raptors haven’t recorded a losing season since 2012-13, which not coincidentally was the year the Raptors traded for Kyle Lowry. Since then, the Raptors have had multiple head coaches, multiple Presidents and General Managers, multiple scoring leaders, but only one Lowry. His leadership is forceful, omnipresent, like the sun. As long as he is employed by the Raptors, the team will win games like clockwork. They know how; it’s in their genetics.
There is more than Lowry, however, that drives the team’s chemistry. VanVleet has been with the team since 2016-17, as has Siakam. Powell was drafted a year earlier, in 2015-16. OG Anunoby the following year, in 2017-18. None of the four have known another NBA team. Even without Lowry, the four have a net rating of 15.3 when they share the court together, 20th-best in the league this year among groups that have played more than 200 minutes together. (Over half of the better four-man groups included Chris Paul, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, or Giannis Antetokounmpo. As a second aside, that foursome didn’t play a minute with Lowry also on the court, but my educated guess would be that they would be pretty successful.)
Toronto has an institutional memory ingrained into its players’ brains. This knowledge takes years to acquire; most teams never have the chance. But the Raptors know where each other will cut. When they’ll pass or shoot. When they’ll crash for a rebound, block out, rotate, switch, or leak out for a fastbreak chance. They pass information with glances, nods, smiles. Like twins who can communicate without saying a word. The Raptors don’t need time to get on the same page; they are fastened together by their experiences., and those years already spent playing together means the Raptors need less time to reach their on-court peak than other teams. Other teams with little experience together, such as either team in Los Angeles, or the Heat, or the Sixers, will not have enough time to reach a peak before the playoffs begin. They could be susceptible, even into the middle rounds.
The Raptors will enter the playoffs rested and healthy, which, for a veteran and injury-plagued team, is no laughing matter. They are a defense-first team that will feast on out-of-sync offenses. Nick Nurse — the odds-on favourite to win Coach of the Year — has had the long layover to inhabit film and build wild new schemes. The NBA is a grind, and coaches have to divide their time between a million different things. Nurse lost the distractions during the the break; who knows what he’s invented during this lengthy stay in his lab?
Toronto is far from guaranteed playoff success because of these advantages. The games, of course, still need to be played. But if the Raptors turn into a buzzsaw and annihilate any and all competition when the playoffs start, don’t be too surprised. They’ve always found ways to turn seeming obstacles into advantages. With Nurse and Lowry at the helm, the time off will only be another tool that the Raptors re-purpose to fit their own success.
