It is when the rain reaches its fever pitch, when the pummeling patter of precipitation pounds the present flat, that reveries of the next sunny day are most powerful. We dream of the future when we're bored in the present, invent new and exciting games if only we could go outside. And by that same token, the Toronto Raptors are caught in a downpour. Against the Brooklyn Nets, the Raptors were missing, depending on your individual preferences for players, perhaps five of the top eight in their rotation. The present may be painful, but there's much that we can take as a lesson for the future.
For various reasons, both contractual and contextual, the Raptors are probably not going to ask Gary Trent jr. to come off the bench. (Even if perhaps they should.) Though he's in a cold shooting streak, he is the team's highest-volume catch-and-shoot 3-point shooter, and the only players attempting reasonable volume who are more accurate than he on such shots are Fred VanVleet and...Scottie Barnes. Toronto's other starters are entrenched, as VanVleet, Barnes, O.G. Anunoby, and Pascal Siakam especially are the stars upon whom the weight of the team's success will lie most heavily.
So the starters are likely not, barring unforeseen and extreme variance of play, up for debate. But the bench rotation very much is. And once the team is finally healthy, it will look dramatically different from the last time the Raptors were whole.
