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Should the Raptors blow it up? | VanVleet making things difficult | Giannis and the Bucks are in town

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Cover Photo by Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images

10 things: Raptors bench badly outplayed, while VanVleet fades in fourth – Sportsnet

The Raptors continue to underperform on defence. That’s not to say there aren’t flashes of potential, such as when the Raptors pressed Haliburton into seven turnovers, or a play in the fourth quarter where O.G. Anunoby, Christian Koloko, Barnes and Achiuwa all blocked a shot at the basket on the same defensive sequence. But they were also lacking discipline in how often they conceded fouls, and also in focus with the way Indiana was able to score in transition even after made baskets.

The Pacers are not an easy team to defend in the slightest given how many playmakers they have, but the Raptors did the hard part of getting the stop more often than not in the halfcourt. Where they fell short was protecting the defensive glass, bailing out possessions with fouls (the most regrettable being Siakam diving for a loose ball with 0.2 seconds left on the clock), and not making a fully committed effort to get back. Toronto is not the type of team to trade baskets with any team since its offence is just middling on a good day.

NBA execs watching closely as struggling Raptors begin crucial homestand – Sportsnet

It seems inevitable that changes will be coming, with the Feb. 9th trade deadline a referendum on how much faith Raptors president Masai Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster have in their current direction.

The rest of the league is waiting anxiously.

As one league source who has been monitoring the Raptors situation closely in recent weeks put it to me: “Toronto are the first domino. What they do will affect teams all across the league: Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Atlanta – not that it’s about deals with any particular team, just that people are going to be waiting to see what the Raptors do before they make their moves. Toronto could set the market.”

The problem is that according to multiple league sources, with the season approaching the halfway point, an obvious path forward hasn’t materialized. Instead of things becoming clearer, the waters seem even more cloudy.

“No, I don’t know when they’re going to pivot” joked one league source when contacted recently.

Said another: “It’s all very nebulous right now.”

They’re in 12th place now (a half-game out of 10th, the final play-in spot and 4.5 games out of sixth the sixth seed). If they ride it out and the team doesn’t respond they’ll end up in the mushy middle, missing out on positioning themselves for a top pick in a potentially historic draft class and be at risk of losing talented players in free agency – Gary Trent Jr. or Fred VanVleet for example – for nothing in return.

Whatever direction the Raptors decide they ultimately want to take, it would be hard not to see it as a wasted year.

Fighting for the fringes of the play-in tournament and ending up 11th is one place the Raptors don’t want to be in. Recall that “Play in for what” was the mantra Ujiri introduced as he engineered the ‘Tampa Tank’ during the latter half of the 2020-21 season. There is no indication that this line of thinking has changed in the years since.

But if they pull the plug, are they committing themselves to a rebuild or reboot that wouldn’t fit the timeline of their best player, Siakam, who turns 29 in April? Are they over-investing in 21-year-old Scottie Barnes, who has been playing better recently, but has still raised eyebrows internally and externally for his lack of progress in his second season? It’s a big bet to make on a player who doesn’t quite look like the surefire all-star he did as his rookie year played out.

Or maybe they go all in and consider trading Siakam and Anunoby for what would likely be massive returns of picks and young talent. “A shitload” was the ballpark estimate provided by one league insider.

But they are the kinds of decisions that reverberate at every level of an organization.

That the Raptors could be the biggest domino at the trade deadline perfectly encapsulates the Raptors’ odd predicament. On one hand, in Siakam, Anunoby, VanVleet, Gary Trent Jr. and Precious Achiuwa, Toronto has several players in or approaching their prime and on good contracts. They have good reason to believe teams across the NBA would line up for their services.

On the other, the group hasn’t performed, the organization seems to be lacking in quality depth and lacks an obvious way to fix their roster’s shortcomings without pulling away at the core. Oh, and all of those players referenced are either pending free agents or will be looking for hefty extensions this summer or next. As is head coach Nurse, who will be entering the final year of his contract in 2023-24, which is when in-demand coaches start wondering when talks about their contract extensions might start.

It’s why Nurse was fully supported internally in his recent decision to come down harder on his team after some poor performances. If anything, the hope was that it might have happened sooner. That it didn’t isn’t hard to understand. Nurse himself called the move “a roll of the dice,” knowing that calling out his team publicly for their effort can easily backfire if the results don’t follow. The tactic paid off in Toronto’s win over Phoenix, and regardless of the outcome against Indiana, effort wasn’t the problem.

With six weeks before the trade deadline, it stands to reason that before any decisions are made on the roster, you want to make sure any in-house fixes have been explored and players are being pushed hard and held properly accountable for their effort.

It’s a fine line for a coach to walk, however. As one person familiar with the organization put it, “there is an antsiness” around the team. It’s not tension or dysfunction, but with the core pieces having been together for so many years, the lack of success so far this season, the uncertain direction the team is heading, and the contract issues ever-present in the background, it wouldn’t take too much to tip things over.

That there is some frustration among the coaching staff about the lack of depth on the roster – Toronto’s bench was out-scored 54-7 by Indiana’s bench on Tuesday night – seems like a safe bet.

Sense of urgency kicking in ahead of make-or-break stretch for Raptors | TSN

The Raptors were in a similar position a year ago. They would win a couple games here and lose three or four there. They would show flashes but consistency was hard to come by. They lacked depth, their young players were experiencing some early growing pains, and they didn’t have an established identity to fall back on.

That began to change in early January. With a six-game winning streak to open the New Year, Toronto was starting to figure things out. Guys like Scottie Barnes and Precious Achiuwa emerged, the bench got a little deeper, and they became one of the league’s hardest playing and best defensive teams. After a 14-17 start, they went 34-17 and finished the 2021-22 season fifth in the East.

They’ve done it before and, if nothing else, that should be a source of optimism that they can do it again. However, if they’re going to go on a season-saving run, it needs to happen soon. This could be a make-or-break stretch for this iteration of the Raptors.

As the club wrapped up its Tuesday afternoon practice session, team president Masai Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster looked on from the middle of the gym. With the Feb. 9 trade deadline five weeks away, they’re watching closely. Getting a read on this team and what it’s capable of hasn’t been easy, given all the injuries and inconsistency, but they’ve got 19 more games to evaluate before making a decision – or series of decisions – that could alter the trajectory of the franchise for years to come.

The injury excuse isn’t likely to carry much weight going forward, if it ever really did. It’s true, they’ve been one of the league’s most banged-up teams this season. They’ve used 18 different starting lineups, the second-most in the NBA, and Monday was just the sixth time in 37 games that they had all of their top-six players available. Off-season addition Otto Porter Jr. remains out indefinitely with a dislocated toe he sustained a couple months ago, but with Fred VanVleet and Precious Achiuwa returning to the lineup in Indiana, this is as healthy as the team has been since October.

It’s also true that the schedule has done them no favours; it’s been the third-most difficult in the NBA to this point, according to basketball-reference.com. They’ve played 25 games against teams with a .500 or better record – only Utah has played more – and are 9-16 in those contests.

However, their next six games will come at home, where they’re 11-8. There are some tough opponents in that slate – including Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks, who come to town on the second leg of a back-to-back Wednesday – but this stretch seems manageable. The question is whether or not they can take advantage.

It’s hard to gauge which direction they’re heading in. There are some encouraging signs, to be sure. Siakam continues to put together one of the very best single-season performances in franchise history. After a slow start to his sophomore campaign, Scottie Barnes has come on recently; Monday’s game was one of his best all-around outings. Gary Trent Jr. is red hot, having scored 20 or more points in each of the last four contests while hitting 50 per cent of his three-point attempts over that stretch. And while it’ll take some time for Achiuwa to get his rhythm and conditioning back after missing nearly two months with an ankle injury, getting one of their most versatile defenders back should help.

Raptors must hope minutes don’t catch up to their starters | The Star

“I don’t want to sit here and say that the (bench players) didn’t help (the starters) that much,” Nurse said after Tuesday’s practice.

But that, of course, is exactly what the coach was saying.

“The facts are there. You guys saw it, and the stats, and all that stuff back it up,” Nurse said. “But it doesn’t mean they can’t help ’em starting today and that’s what we gotta shoot for.”

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Nurse’s chief quibble was the second unit’s defensive lapses, which were frequent and egregious. Maybe chief among the culprits would be Chris Boucher. At his best, he is one of Toronto’s most reliable sources of energy and shooting off the bench, Boucher has slumped of late, with his dismal three-point accuracy seemingly pulling the rest of his game into the pits. But defence is a collective effort, and Nurse clearly wasn’t pointing to one player.

“Yeah, (the bench players) are just not getting any stops,” Nurse said. “We had (the Pacers) really bottled up and they weren’t scoring at all and the floodgates kind of opened. I don’t expect (the bench) to go out there and maintain the same level of defence that the first unit has, but they gotta at least maintain a little bit.”

If you can sense Nurse’s patience running thin, it’s because the Raptors are running out of time to make a case to management that this is a team worth improving upon before the Feb. 9 trade deadline. Considering the team entered Tuesday 4 1/2 games out of the sixth playoff seed — the final seed not involved in the play-in tournament that see Nos. 7 through 10 fight it out for the final two playoff spots — it’s hardly unfathomable that the Raptors might consider selling assets with an eye toward improving their draft-lottery odds. Opt-out-eligible Gary Trent Jr. would be an obvious candidate for the trading block. Ditto VanVleet, although given the point guard’s place as the beating heart of the club that’d be a more difficult conversation. Let’s just say this coming six-game homestand, when the Raptors play host to sub-.500 Atlanta and woeful Charlotte, the latter twice, will be vital to keeping alive the notion that this is a season worth saving.

“I think that this is a perfect opportunity in front of our home crowd,” Siakam said. “I just want us to continue to stay together. Hoping that the atmosphere in the arena is great and we come in with a lot of energy as players. This is an important stretch.”

Raptors Say Otto Porter Jr Has Yet to Progress Toward Return – Sports Illustrated Toronto Raptors

Otto Porter Jr. doesn’t appear to be coming back anytime soon.

The Toronto Raptors forward has been sidelined for almost two months with a dislocated second toe on his left foot and remains without a timetable to return. Asked if Porter has made progress toward a return, Raptors coach Nick Nurse told reporters Tuesday, “he has not. He has not.”

Porter has played in just eight games this season after suffering a hamstring injury in the preseason and a dislocated toe back on Nov. 14. Nurse had previously said Porter would be back in about a month on Dec. 13, but the latest update suggests he’s not particularly close.

“It looks like they’ve decided there’s probably not an imminent surgery needed so we are gonna try to start ramping him up,” Nurse said of Porter last month.

The 29-year-old was seen lifting weights and doing non-basketball activities with the team’s training staff during Tuesday morning’s practice. He has yet to resume basketball activities.

Porter was Toronto’s big offseason addition over the summer, signing a two-year $12.3 million contract with a player option for next season. He was supposed to provide some much-needed three-point shooting off the bench but his inability to stay healthy created a serious dearth of bench scoring for the Raptors.

Recipe for a rebound is staring Raptors in the face | Toronto Sun

“I can come here and talk about positivity all I want, but winning is going to cure literally everything,” Siakam said. “That’s what we have to find a way to do. It’s easier said than done to be positive when you’re losing, especially if you care about the game the way that I do, for sure.

“I come in, I take it really seriously and I work very hard and I put everything into this, this is what I do every single day,” Siakam said. “And I want to win, I want a reward from it and when you don’t get it, it’s hard to be positive. But, again, that’s what we have to do. We have to stay together and find whatever we need and get it done.”

Siakam’s faith in his team’s ability is not wavering, nor is his confidence in himself. He still feels more optimistic than pessimistic, but it’s telling that perhaps the most optimistic player on the entire roster is finding it hard to stay positive.

Nine losses in 12 games will do that to a guy, even one who is individually having an all-star-type season.

When losses mount like that, even one’s that might not be so egregious smell like real stinkers. That was a little of the case on Monday vs. the Pacers.

But if we were to steal a little of Siakam’s positivity, it would be to suggest that the recipe for exactly what Siakam suggested was needed by this team — namely a win streak — is staring the Raptors in the face.

The injury woes that have been a major factor in the current swoon, at least on the surface appear to have subsided.

We’re not naïve enough to believe that some players, probably most of them, aren’t currently playing with or through some sort of ailment. That’s just life in the NBA. But at least for now the kind of ailments that keep a player out of the lineup are limited to veteran reserve Otto Porter Jr.

And waiting on his return sounds futile based on Nurse’s response yesterday when asked if Porter was making any progress from a broken (fourth) toe he suffered two months ago.

“He is not,” Nurse said bluntly. “He is not.”

The other part that seems to be breaking Toronto’s way right now — at least over the next six games — is the schedule.

All six of those games will come at home with nary a back-to-back in sight. The team does not head out on the road again until a three-game trip that starts a week from Monday.

That’s a whole lot of home cooking and familiar beds and manageable practice times and shootarounds.

We would normally talk about strength of opponent at this point for those six games as well, but if this year has taught us anything, it’s that these Raptors have shown themselves to be equally capable of beating a top-five team as they are of losing to a bottom-five team.

So, the fact that they get Milwaukee, the Knicks, Portland, Charlotte twice and Atlanta over this stretch is really irrelevant.

“I think that this is a perfect opportunity in front of our home crowd,” Siakam said. “I just want us to continue to stay together. Hoping that the atmosphere in the arena is great and we come in with a lot of energy as players. This is an important stretch. For us, I don’t care if it’s home or away, we’ve just got to come in and get some games together where we play well, we play to our identity and we do the things we know we can do well at a high level and have great energy.”

Dial 905: Raptors 905 split series vs Iowa Wolves to kick off regular season campaign – Raptors HQ

The Raptors 905 opened up their regular season with a split against Iowa Wolves. They won the first leg of their baseball series, 127-118, behind the heroics of Dalano Banton’s career-high 37 points. Unfortunately, the Raptors 905 could not survive Reggie Perry’s foul trouble for the second consecutive game, and that was the difference in a 128-124 loss before they moved on to their Long Island Nets series.

Banton averaged 36 points, 9.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 2.5 blocks during this series and had to shoulder the scoring load for the most part. He’s shown flashes of his perimeter shooting, whether pull-ups or catch-and-shoot. Banton definitely came down to shake off some rust, as his three-point shooting looked off during his season debut against Greensboro Swarm during the Showcase Cup. His perimeter shot is starting to look more fluid, and he’s inching towards the shooting prowess he showcased last season, where he shot 39% from behind the arc.

Saben Lee was back with the Raptors 905 after a short stint with the Philadelphia 76ers as a two-way roster player, and it was an adventure watching him play with new faces. While his numbers were down for this series (11 points, seven assists, and two blocks), he brought some defensive stability to the backcourt.

Ron Harper Jr. upped his production from the Showcase Cup, going from 16.9 points to 19 points in the regular season. More than half of his FGAs come from the perimeter, and he’s shooting a blistering 43.8% behind the arc. Most of his counting stats are up; he averaged 8.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocks in this series.

Reggie Perry was great whenever he was on the floor, as his utility as a hub on the elbow provides some balance on the Raptors 905’s offense. However, he was in foul trouble the entire series — partly due to his aggressiveness but somewhat because his teammates put him in a tough position as well.

I know that the “scheme is the scheme,” but sometimes, in-game and situational adjustments must be made for various reasons. Perry’s been in foul trouble for half of the games played this season, including the Showcase Cup, and that number can be lessened if his teammates’ point-of-attack defense provided more resistance. Also, the scouting report should matter.

If Perry is at risk of getting deeper into the foul trouble situation, there’s no need to “switch-all” and allow the opposing team’s guards to target him. For example, D.J. Carton is a career sub-30 % perimeter shooter, so there’s plenty of time for the Raptors to go under on screens and dare him to shoot rather than let him explode to the basket.

Sterling Brown’s glue guy contribution to the team makes him a seamless fit as a starter. His ability to knock down his perimeter shots and put the ball on the floor to create his own or for his teammates is an upgrade to what the team had before.

The new-look Raptors 905 roster now bolster a competitive and balanced bench rotation, with the likes of Gabe Brown, David Johnson, and Hassani Gravett providing the firepower. Perry’s backup, Kenny Wooten is in-and-out of the lineup, while Aaron Epps has yet to suit up for the Raptors 905.

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