VANCOUVER — The greatest team in Toronto Raptors history was elevated to its ultimate peak by Kawhi Leonard.
He wasn’t the only future Hall of Famer on the 2018-19 Raptors. Kyle Lowry was the team’s heartbeat and Marc Gasol was its backbone, but Leonard was the one whose talent turned the dream of lifting a trophy into a reality.
And now that Leonard is back in Toronto for his reunion tour, it’s hard not to be excited about what adding his still-formidable skills to the Raptors lineup could mean for a next generation of dreams.
But there is more that goes into building a winning team than handing the ball to Leonard, even if he did average a career-high 27.9 points per game for the Los Angeles Clippers last season.
Which is where rookie Allen Graves fits into this picture.
How exactly is a bit of an unknown at this particular moment. The 19th pick in the draft this past June wowed in Summer League in July, was generating steady buzz during summer workouts and right through the informal scrimmages in early September. But a minor groin injury has kept him out of the Raptors' first pre-season game last Saturday in Quebec City.
However, there is optimism he’ll be available when the Raptors host the Los Angeles Clippers this Saturday in Vancouver, their second of five pre-season games before the season opener on Oct. 21.
Leonard won’t be playing as he continues to work himself into game shape — a process that will hopefully make him available when the Raptors host the New York Knicks on Tuesday in Toronto.
In the meantime, these are important development opportunities for the rest of the roster and the youngest members of it in particular.
What role Graves could play Saturday or at any point in the near future is an unknown variable, but one the Raptors would love to nail down.
Finding playing time for young players was a priority over the past three years as the Raptors were very clearly rebuilding. Now, having made the playoffs last season and added Leonard in the summer, the windows of opportunity might be harder to pry open.
But Graves is open to any chance there might be, in any form.
“I feel like no matter what my role is, I feel like I impact winning whenever I'm on the court,” he said Friday after the Raptors practice at Rogers Arena. “And if they allow me to be in the rotation, then that's what I'm gonna do. Either way, though, I'm just gonna work and continue to keep my head down, and you know, just help the team in any way I can, whether that's being in practice or whether that's being on the court.”
But here’s the thing: the Raptors very much may need Graves to be on the court sooner rather than later.
For all the justifiable excitement around Leonard’s return, the Raptors' championship era was defined — retrospectively — by the quality of their youngest players. Pascal Siakam was in the third season of what ended up being a thriving NBA career that has earned him two all-NBA selections and three all-star nods and counting; OG Anunoby was just a rookie on that team and sidelined for the post-season due to appendicitis, but it wasn’t that hard to project he would eventually emerge as what he is now: the best 'role' player in the NBA and a championship starter on virtually any team in any era.
Fred VanVleet was beginning his ascent to all-star status and Norm Powell was showing signs of becoming the kind of microwave scorer that earned him an all-star berth last season, while Delon Wright and Jonas Valanciunas were valuable enough players at that stage of their careers that they were worth being included in the mid-season trade that netted the Raptors Gasol.
It’s pretty easy to identify who is manning the engine room of the Raptors now — their ceiling will depend on how much horsepower Leonard and Scottie Barnes can generate. But the team’s floor will be determined by the kind of contributions they can get from other places in games in November, December, January and February, which can get lost in the shuffle of a long NBA season but very much set a team up for success in April, May and — who knows — maybe even June.
“I absolutely agree that when you look at the depth of our roster… there’s a lot of young guys that we expect to contribute,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “On a nightly basis any of those guys can be in a lineup, and they need to help us. We're definitely counting all the depth of our roster for carrying the whole season.”
It’s probably not fair to compare the current group of young Raptors to the championship era years, just because the probability of drafting — in the space of three seasons as the Raptors did from 2015-2018 — four players that earned all-star or all-NBA recognition and another (Wright) who played 10 NBA seasons as a valuable role player is low.
But the current group does overlap with their predecessors in that the Raptors have shown again that you don’t have to draft in the high lottery to find capable players, as Jamal Shead (45th pick), Ja’Kobe Walter (19th pick) and Jamison Battle (undrafted free agent) have already demonstrated to varying degrees.
All of them are being counted on significantly this season to play supporting roles on nights when Leonard is driving the action but, perhaps more importantly, as key players on the nights when Leonard inevitably has to sit out. It’s always worth remembering that the Raptors were 17-5 in the 22 games that Leonard didn’t play during their championship season.
Can Graves keep up the Raptors' streak of finding contributors deeper in the draft and do it soon enough to help this team this season?
It’s a lot to expect for a first-year pro who was coming off the bench for his college team at Santa Clara as a redshirt freshman last season.
But no one is ruling it out, which is telling. Graves was excellent at the Las Vegas Summer League. That he averaged 16.8 points, 6.8 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 2.2 steals and one block in less than 28 minutes a game while shooting better than 50 per cent on two and three-point field goals certainly jumps off the page. Watching it in person, however, it was that he was able to do it seamlessly and without commanding any specific accommodations, which was perhaps even more impressive. To be successful in the NBA you need to stand out, but fitting in as a young player can be a big part of it too.
“He brings a lot of things with him: the intangibles, how hard he plays. He's got great hands. Creates a lot of steals. He's very disciplined when it comes to rebounding the ball, and he's a player who is pretty good catch-and-shoot three-point shooter,” said Rajakovic. “As a coach, you're always looking for players where there are things that they catch on to and can build on, and he’s that type of player. So I believe that he's going to be able to help us throughout the whole season, and I can see him being on the floor very soon.”
Graves has worked accordingly. An obvious shortcoming with the Raptors lineup is that they don’t have an abundance of three-point shooting and it goes almost without saying that the more spacing they can provide around Leonard and Barnes will only make life easier for the stars.
Graves apparently read that email. He shot the three well in college — 41.3 per cent — but had just shot 92 attempts. If the work he’s done since being drafted is any indication, the plan is to put up a lot more.
Graves opened some eyes the other day when he was knocking down shot after shot from a taped line the Raptors have at the OVO Athletic Centre that sits about four feet behind the official three-point line. It looked repeatable and remarkably comfortable for someone who was playing back-up centre in college just last season.
“The four-point line, we call it,” said Graves. “My pre-draft workouts really helped me with being able to get adjusted to the NBA line and then even, you know, expand my range even further to the four-point line. I won’t be shooting too many from there but I’m just trying to get adjusted and continuing to work on it.”
Graves is so early in his NBA journey that projecting where it leads is a fool’s hobby. But the Raptors' journey in the Kawhi 2.0 era will require as many able hands as possible to help the team reach its potential on the nights he plays and especially on the nights he doesn’t.
It’s a formula that worked incredibly well eight years ago and the progress of Graves and some of the Raptors' other young talent will be crucial if it is going to work again.
