During the early days of Alexander the Great’s campaigns, even his own soldiers must have thought he was crazy at times. His vision of the future didn’t make sense to those even closest to him. Within a few years of inheriting control of Macedon, and in his early 20s, he invaded Persia — such a mighty empire that Darius III, the ruler, didn’t even bother fighting the Macedonians he saw them as so feeble a threat. But then he defeated a much larger army at Granicus River, besieged Halicarnassus, and smashed Darius himself at Issus. But what did Alexander do after he finally conquered Persia? Kept on going, keeping the compass facing East, to invade India. By that point, it was dangerous not to share Alexander’s vision.
All this to say: If you don’t see the vision for the Toronto Raptors at this point, you’re the one who’s crazy.
It’s hard to say which skills aren’t helpful to overlap in today’s NBA. With how intelligent NBA offenses have become at leveraging advantages in creative and unpredictable ways, having multiple teammates with similar abilities is usually a good thing. Shooting, passing, defending: All are multiplicative. And the Toronto Raptors have built their team with overlap seemingly in mind, rather than as a side effect. Rather than skill, the team has prioritized physical ability. And with Fred VanVleet sidelined with back stiffness, the Vision 6’9 Era has never been more visionary than in Toronto’s 139-109 pounding of the Atlanta Hawks.
The foundational pillars were Pascal Siakam, Scottie Barnes, and O.G. Anunoby. All may have remarkably similar body types, but their skills on the floor are quite different. And their abilities, like their enormous wingspans, seem to be building towards multiplying the value of one another.
There seems to be no danger in any member of Toronto’s three-headed hydra standing in other’s way, developmentally. Players need talented teammates to grow into the best versions of themselves; Siakam didn’t become a star until he played alongside Kawhi Leonard, and it’s not like the Raptors are starving any of the three for touches. Siakam is within the top 10 in the league for touches per game, but Barnes and Anunoby are both fairly high as well, near comparable to the per-game touches of star or pseudo-star wings like Devin Booker, Brandon Ingram, Kevin Durant, or Zach LaVine. And as I’ve said before, Toronto’s read-and-react offense is a choose your own adventure that gives each player (relatively) equitable opportunity to build his own role. There’s enough ball to go around.
At the same time, each player helps what the other does, and wants to do, with the ball in his hands.
Siakam is a postup and isolation king, and Barnes is one of the best cutters in the league, particularly ducking along the baseline for easy dunks when Siakam’s back is to the basket. Anunoby is one of the best catch-and-shoot shooters in the league. (It helps that Barnes is now up to 11-of-21 from deep on the season, including some audacious pullup bombs against the Hawks.) When Siakam reaches the paint — if he doesn’t have angles to score — Barnes cutting in front of him or Anunoby moving to create open passing lanes above the break are both great passing targets.
Barnes has morphed into a gigantic point guard with a nasty handle and the length and balance to finish over crowds even when he’s not particularly close to the rim. He likes to get his touches in the pick and roll and on the elbows. Anunoby just so happens to be a terrific pick-and-roll screener, particularly as a decision maker on the short roll. The two haven’t had a ton of chances to work together, but the look can be used as a great opening gambit to shift the defense and create space on the weakside for Siakam to attack in space.
Anunoby, like Siakam, is a postup devil, but he in particular has shown a great knack for running in transition and sealing the paint before opponents have size to challenge him. Transition is always good offense. When he’s in the post, he also has great vision for wraparound passes on the baseline; Barnes’ baseline cutting again is ideal there, as is Siakam’s corner 3-point mastery. Anunoby is a solid cutter from the corners and the elbow extended, giving Siakam and Barnes lots of 45 cuts and other looks to create easy layups.
No matter where each of the three has the ball, the others are usually in advantageous positions. More broadly, all three are fantastic cutters. All three are plus passers. Anunoby is an elite shooter, Siakam a good one, and Barnes an unproven one on a hot streak to start the season. All three are gigantic and can reach the paint with ease in isolation. All three are highly efficient in the paint.
There’s a lot there to like on the offensive end. The offensive rating hasn’t showed the ceiling of the trio in all their minutes together, with the three only slightly winning their minutes together across 2021-22 and 2022-23, but that’s because so much of their fit requires nailing the details. Their success is in cutting and timing. Ethereal basketball. It’s hard to make that work. And it doesn’t take into account the fact that all three are quite different players now than they were for much of last season. Siakam is playing like a legitimate MVP candidate, and Barnes has molded his game to suit Toronto’s needs alongside the Cameroonian star. But Siakam, Anunoby, and Barnes won their 22 shared minutes against the Hawks by 14 points. When it works, it’s deadly. As they learn and grow together, it ought to work more frequently.
Of course much of that success draws on the defensive end. The Raptors thrive on forcing turnovers, and their entire identity is based on having more possessions than their opponents. They can enable that by playing risky defense and allowing oodles of corner threes. Or they can just take the ball from their opponents — Anunoby stole the ball six times against the Hawks, many of which came as he simply snatched the rock from fateful ballhandlers. He now leads the league in steals. But when he doesn’t do that, he’s also an off-ball hawk, reading passing or dribbling lanes and snapping his bear-trap paws onto the ball whenever opponents make a mistake. Those mistakes often come when his fellow gigantic wings stand up ballhanders, turn them around, and force a risky pass across the court.
All three have elite steal rates, and Barnes and Anunoby have elite block rates. All three contest between seven and eight shots a game — great numbers for forwards. All three can stunt and recover like madmen. All three can defend anywhere on the court, whether in open space in isolation, the post, in the pick and roll (guarding the handler or the screener). They can switch interchangeably across any position. Players who can defender 1-5 are extraordinarily rare; the Raptors can almost play entire lineups of such players.
If the trio is multiplicative on the offensive end, it is exponential on the defensive end. There are no passing windows because the off-ball defenders are so long, which means players have to drive — against enormously aggressive on-ball defenders and long off-ball players who are now stunting into the drive to rip the ball free. Windows close fast or are never open. Any mistakes result in balls ripped free. If Toronto’s Gigantic Wing experiment requires you to squint to see the vision on the offensive end, the obviousness of the vision on the defensive end may as well be holding your eyes open like A Clockwork Orange.
Alexander the Great was killed by chance. A stray mosquito (or perhaps alcoholism) felled him. But he had already turned back from India; his army never lost a battle, but it refused to cross the Beas River. His soldiers were homesick. Just because a vision is successful, becomes so powerful as to blot out all other sights, doesn’t mean it will ultimately come true. Sometimes endeavor is defeated by the weight of its own hubris, the entropy of such cavernous, yawning ambition.
Fortunately, the Raptors aren’t trying to conquer the world. Conquering the NBA is much safer and easier besides. The Raptors are trying to win in the NBA by innovation, by winning with theory as well as practice. And as Siakam, Barnes, and Anunoby are showing together, such clarity of purpose can look awkward to the uninitiated. But soon enough, like the Raptors themselves galloping forward in transition, the weight of such visions can bowl over everything in their paths.
