If Scottie Barnes had not emerged in 2023-24, not grown into a monstrous two-way star, the season would have been truly miserable.
The team was sued by another franchise. There was so little development across the bottom of the roster, so few hidden gems discovered, that one of the most exciting development stories was banished from the league for betting on his own games. Toronto had 30 players suit up for its franchise in 2023-24. And if you go up and down the list, you’ll see a cavalcade of players who forgot how to shoot, suffered long-term injuries, are no longer in the NBA, were traded elsewhere, never knew how to shoot, were never NBA players to begin with. Etcetera.
But Barnes did emerge. And that outweighed all the rest by a wide margin. I wrote this in my “what did the season mean” piece.
First and foremost, Barnes became the All Star and dynamic, versatile star that Toronto needed. He became a shooter. He became an initiator. His defense was frenetic, an exclamation mark. His passing remains among the best in the league. He will be one of the better players in the league for the next decade, perhaps one of the very best if he keeps improving.
Sure, there was improvement elsewhere. RJ Barrett, first and foremost, became a hyper-efficient driving machine. But Immanuel Quickley improved, too. Gradey Dick shot from unplayable at the start of the year to very promising at the end. But that was, more or less, the extent of the sources of excitement.
If Toronto last season was an iceberg, all the visible development occurring at the tippy-top, so far this season has been defined by what’s going on underneath the water.
The development across the depth and breadth of this season’s roster has already been breathtaking. Let’s start with the rookies. Jamal Shead has been a monster on the defensive end, imitating early career Kyle Lowry and insinuating himself into a rotation that should have been impossible to crack for an undersized, offensively limited second-round rookie point guard. He takes charges, blows up plays, drives and finishes, and just injects energy no matter what else is going on around him. Jonathan Mogbo had a mixed preseason and then exploded out of the gate to the season. He has steal and block rates above 3.0 percent so far this season, which is obviously small sample size theater, but also something that no player with at least 100 minutes has accomplished this year.
Jamison Battle is, as was expected, shooting the absolute life out of (into?) the ball, connecting on 38.5 percent of his triples on a beefy 7.5 attempts per 36 minutes, after hitting over 50 percent during preseason. That doesn’t include lottery pick Ja’Kobe Walter, whose shot creation and shooting stroke give him likely the highest ceiling of the group of rookies.
And this also doesn’t include the non-rookies, who have popped perhaps most of all. Gradey Dick is looking like the future, the franchise, the bell of the ball. He’s second on the team in scoring and in true shooting percentage, and he’s doing tons of damage off the dribble, taking a wild diet of contested, moving, bailout shots. His jetting around screens, catching and pump-faking, then putting the ball on the floor? That is an offence unto itself. Ochai Agbaji is finishing everything at the rim while getting there with enormous frequency. While the two have succeeded in almost opposite ways, they have also been the only two who have succeeded on the drive — a need, especially when Barrett was out. Dick especially grew into a bizarrely impressive finisher at the rim, pulling tricks and spins like Tony Hawk en route to the feathery finishes.
If Jontay Porter was one of Toronto’s most exciting fringe players last year, in part because the cupboard was so bare, then at least that problem has been solved and then some. There are oodles of players that delight and surprise now at the end of Toronto’s roster. Youngsters improving and leaping up the depth charts with every game. There is a stable full of horses.
But until Toronto’s Oct. 28 game against the Denver Nuggets, the big names simply weren’t carrying their weight. Quickley and Barrett have been out — which is no fault of theirs, of course, and has opened up the minutes and touches for the youngsters to thrive. But the biggest factor was that despite a very promising preseason, Barnes had disappointed. His jumper abandoned him, and he hadn’t had the downhill driving pop that he so desperately needed to add. He was shooting less efficiently on drives than he did in 2023-24, and he was frequently settling for short midrange floaters and push shots, rather than using his strength to reach the rim. He was catching and holding the ball, often killing the momentum of a possession. He had recorded the worst on/offs on the team by a wide margin.
All that changed against the Nuggets. With Barrett back and ready to carry so much offensive burden, Barnes looked unshackled. The change was subtle but profound. Barnes wasn’t trying to do too much, wasn’t trying to hit homerun passes out of standstill actions. He got off the ball quickly, moved, cut, made rapid choices, and was able to make secondary passes rather than primary ones. He trusted his teammates not just to finish his creations, but to actually do some creation of their own within the flow of the system. As a result he collected three assists in the first three minutes alongside the new-look starters (with Barrett replacing Agbaji) as he morphed into less the entirety and more the framework of the offence.
Meanwhile, Barrett was scoring as efficiently as he was last year as a Raptor, at least as long as he was alongside Barnes. He cut, drove in transition, hit triples, and even threw in a dunk late when the Raptors looked to be stumbling. (They did, of course, eventually stumble.) Barrett looked tired early and then very tired late, and he fouled plenty, but he was clearly lifting Toronto in his minutes on the floor. And sure, he missed a potential game-winning pull-up triple, but that’s life. It was a powerful return.
And with the top of the roster performing, the depth didn’t vanish. It simply transformed. Abaji continued hitting shots — especially corner triples and layups. Also a cutting dunk in traffic that Barnes baited perfectly. Battle cut and finished and even forced a miss on Nikola Jokic defending him in transition. Chris Boucher swatted shots and remained an integral and consistent part of the rotation, even if just for a brief stretch.
The best part was watching how the rookies coalesced within the structure provided by Barrett and Barnes. Shead became at times a second-side attacker, Mogbo a dunker-spot lurker, cutter, and pass receiver.
Until Toronto’s best players played like its best players, the growth and development of the hidden gems didn’t matter. Well, it didn’t matter yet. It was latent improvement, waiting to impact games once the framework was there within which the hidden gems could succeed. For a time, it all blossomed together against Denver.
Barnes was always going to bounce back. He was simply too good last season, for too long, for it to have been a fluke or anything like that. All teams struggle against the length and defensive composure of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Minnesota Timberwolves. He was always going to find his footing this season, play more dynamically, and start to dominate — even to the extent of looking like maybe the best player for times on a court that also featured Jokic. It’s easier to look good when you have players like Barrett on the court with you. Of course, he left the game with an elbow to the eye, so excitement for the future — and even the present — will have to wait, again, to bloom in earnest.
But the excitement is right there waiting on the edges of this team. If Dick was this promising when the offence centered around his cuts and shooting gravity, how good will he be when he has shooters on the floor, and when Barnes is doing more to create good looks for him? If the rookies were this impactful early, how much better can they be when they play opposing benches, rather than starters due to Toronto missing the top end of its rotation? Promise begets more promise.
Despite the loss — oh yeah, the Raptors lost to the Nuggets! — the Raptors look to be in a great position for the future. But the precondition is that Barnes, Quickley, and Barrett return to the paths laid out for them before the season began. Barnes and Barrett were back, both on the court and playing like themselves. Until Barnes left. But he should be back soon, the hope has to be. And Quickley should be returning soon. That’s when Toronto’s future starts. Again.