David was never supposed to beat Goliath in a fight. He was small, and Goliath was…well…goliath. But he had a slingshot, and he had destiny on his side.
All this to say: Things don’t always work out in reality the way they’re supposed to in theory.
There’s a lot that has gone wrong for the Raptors that was very expected. The lack of shooting, the lack of interior presence, the lack of proven bench creators, the lack of players able to pressure the rim. (Wow, that’s … a lot.) But each member of Toronto’s top four was supposed to be extraordinary at complementing one another.
It hasn’t worked out that way.
Pascal Siakam is and has been the superstar. He’s been phenomenal with the ball, better than any reasonable observer could have expected. And he was one of the best players without the ball before his meteoric rise, a killer on corner threes, running in transition, and cutting across the court. But he hasn’t been able to sustain both. He takes fewer than one shot a game out of cuts and has made only 11 corner triples all season, connecting on 33.3 percent from that range. It’s not fair to blame any of Toronto’s miserable season on Siakam, but it is fair to say that he and Toronto are both at their best when the ball is in his hands.
Fred VanVleet has been up and down all season, but he’s played two dominant games in a row against the Milwaukee Bucks and New York Knicks. His drives have been purposeful, his defense ferocious, and his pull-up jumper returned to relevance. But his catch-and-shoot jumper remains wayward, now at 32.8 percent on the season, after a long, long career of success there. VanVleet has said he’s had trouble adjusting to a new role. And though his overall numbers — whether usage, touches, touch time, shot frequency, or anything else — throughout games are remarkably similar to last season’s, his usage has been significantly lower when he’s on the floor with Toronto’s presumptive starters. He can dominate the ball and run plenty of lineups successfully, but if his catch-and-shoot jumper doesn’t return to at-least-passable levels, he’s no longer the perfect running mate for Siakam that he was once.
O.G. Anunoby had all sorts of rumours swirling around him before the season about wanting a bigger role, and though he said he was happy in Toronto when questioned about the trade rumours in training camp, he hasn’t ever denied he wants a bigger role. And for much of the season, he has been better with the ball in his hands, especially on the drive. (He’s still not great in the pick and roll, but his usage there is dropping off.) But his 3-point shooting has fled him, and he’s down to 34.8 percent on the season. He was one of Toronto’s best play finishers last season, particularly when others created advantages, but he hasn’t been this year.
Scottie Barnes has been wonderful at creating for teammates out of the pick and roll and the post, but his usage with the ball away from the rim has limited his success without the ball near the rim. His scoring on cuts is down slightly, and his efficiency on putbacks is down greatly. He was one of the league’s premier players in the dunker spot last season, especially forming up around Siakam, and the addition of other components to his game — although positive for his long-term development — has taken him out of the dunker spot. Elsewhere, excitement about his jumper improving early in the year has all but fled; his accuracy is now below what it was last season, and he’s turning down uncontested catch-and-shoot looks. Again: not a play finisher this season.
That’s four players who, by virtue of their own, changing skillsets or the team’s long- or short-term plans for them, want the ball in their hands. Not want, but need. That’s four players who are at their most successful with the ball in their hands.
Which means that the Raptors’ four most important players have not been successful with the ball out of their hands. That’s a disaster. (If you want to say Gary Trent jr. has been one of Toronto’s four most important players, I wouldn’t argue with you. He’s been awesome. And he’s been awesome especially without the ball, as a second-side attacker. The pop shows And he’s looked especially awesome when his teammates have the ball because no one else on the team has.) Some overlap in the NBA is good, and some is bad. The overlap of turning the tired “there’s only one ball” cliché into reality? Wow that’s a bad thing.
It means the Raptors can really only have one action in the half court at a time. Players are not sprinting through off-ball stuff, if they run off-ball stuff at all. If the action fails? Oh well, run a new one. There is no advantage being transferred from one moment to the next, and not a lot of guys are able to create advantages anyway. Plus, because the shooting has fallen off, there’s not much advantage conversion. Offense is not supposed to be this hard, and it looks like the offensive explosion sweeping the nation just never bothered to come to Toronto.
The Raptors are learning that not all sports teams have fairy tale endings. The team has spent almost a decade living a Disney life. The raw-draft-pick-turned-home-grown-star in DeMar DeRozan and ornery-journeyman-turned-megastar Kyle Lowry pounded their heads against the antagonist LeBron James for years. Then the Raptors finally exorcised their ghosts (and Vince Carter’s too), in trading for a rent-a-championship in Kawhi Leonard. Then the kids grew up without Leonard and were the best team in basketball in 2019-20 until a global pandemic got in the way. The sidekicks eventually became superheroes of their own.
Toronto was on its way to extending the dream sequence, the movie script. VanVleet was ready to step into the shoes of Lowry. Siakam was ready to become a scorer just as detailed and unstoppable as DeRozan. The season 2021-22 was supposed to be just the start; 48 wins was one more than the most the Raptors had ever won until Lowry joined the team (and the same total as the team won in Lowry’s first season), and that’s what they totaled the year after him. The poetry of the moment continued to be deafening.
That’s what hurts the most about Toronto’s current path. Lots of teams lose games, and the Raptors have more than enough holes to justify the losses. But this team was supposed to be special. The home-grown stars and the special rookies and the undrafted All Stars and the rest: the narrative weight of the team was more powerful than any opponent they could face. At the very least, this Raptors team was supposed to earn its own trials and tribulations, its own myth and lore, its own years tasting heartbreak and victory so deep inside that they feel like grit and gold in the mouth.
But instead we’re left with this. With a sad fade into irrelevance and online and in-person pointed fingers. It’s possible that VanVleet, Anunoby, and Siakam — who came so far together, from the Bench Mob (minus Anunoby, who came the next season) to the championship to becoming stars together — won’t all be teammates for long. The revolution will not be televised, but Toronto’s slow, unfeeling drift back to the basement after being an Eastern Conference powerhouse for so long will be. Not everything has a fairy tale ending, not even sports teams that look like they’re chasing destiny.
Fate is a powerful force, but it can’t outweigh the doom of four stars all needing the ball in their hands.