The 2018-19 Toronto Raptors regular season is nearly over and although it’s had its fair share of exciting moments and storylines, there wasn’t a whole lot the team’s front office could’ve gleaned from the past five months or so watching them.
This is because the Raptors are in a state where appraisals about the club’s future can, really, only be determined after the post-season.
“Ultimately, yeah,” said Raptors GM Bobby Webster of if the team will make decisions based off of playoff results on Sportsnet’s Hoops podcast. “I think that’s been the case probably since the first loss to Cleveland – or maybe the second loss since I think making the Conference Final is a great year for everyone.
“Since then I think the expectation has always been ‘how far can we go in the playoffs?’ So we can assess how far we’ve gone since we got to this point, but the playoffs will, hopefully reveal a lot.”
This is a lot of pressure for what, in only the best-case scenarios, amounts to just a two-month period, but it’s the price teams pay when they have championship aspirations.
Heading into the playoffs, it’s going to be relatively simple to see what the future of the Raptors will look like. If they perform well and reach a Conference Final or maybe the NBA Finals, this core group of players will probably be added to. If they fall short of that, however, who knows what ends up happening?
You can listen to Webster’s entire appearance on the Hoops podcast in the radio player above.
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