TORONTO — A year ago, expectations were low for the Toronto Raptors — and for good reason.
Teams that pick high in the draft lottery — fourth in the Raptors’ case, in June 2021 — don’t typically make a playoff push the following season, for one. Coming off the ‘Tampa Tank,’ there were question marks all over the roster.
What to expect from Pascal Siakam, who was coming off a concerning season in 2020-21 and off-season shoulder surgery to boot? How would Fred VanVleet manage in his first season without the on and off-court mentorship of Kyle Lowry? How soon could Scottie Barnes — their lottery prize — be an impactful NBA player? Who was Precious Achiuwa, and wow, Goran Dragic was starting?
And how would a team with no centres and spotty perimeter shooting even win games anyway?
“I think we had no idea who we were a year ago,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “I think that everybody thought we were going to be really, really bad, right? Like 12th or 13th in the East. And we didn’t really know who anyone was, from Precious to Scottie to Pascal coming back from his injury… there were all kinds of things going on.”
Predictably, the Raptors started 14-17 and looked lost. But eventually, the answers came, slowly, then all at once. VanVleet played the best basketball of his career in the first half of the season, driving the offence, anchoring the defence, and making threes at a Steph Curry-like clip. Barnes showed his promise early, and by March and April was playing 40 crucial minutes a game. Achiuwa looked like one of the most athletically talented players in the league on more than a few nights and Siakam played the best basketball of his career from Jan. 1 on.
The Raptors finished 48-34 and made the playoffs as the fifth seed. And then they added pieces to what should be a passable NBA bench in Thaddeus Young, back for a full season after a post-trade deadline cameo last year, Otto Porter Jr. who started for the Golden State in the NBA Finals, and Juancho Hernangomez, coming off a brilliant run for Spain at the European championship. You start doing the math on what a full season of good health for OG Anunoby and a full off-season of preparation for Barnes and Siakam could mean and presume VanVleet returns to the form that earned him his first all-star nod last season and it’s easy to believe.
Last season, the Raptors topped pre-season oddsmakers’ projected win totals by more than a dozen. Do that by half this year (46.5 is the over-under) and Toronto could start thinking about pushing for the Eastern Conference Finals.
The journey starts Wednesday night against the Cleveland Cavaliers at Scotiabank Arena.
“I think we’re gonna have a great team,” said Anunoby, who could help that cause considerably if he can make threes at the 39.5-per-cent clip he did in the two seasons before last year, where he slumped to 36.3 in an injury-riddled campaign that saw him limited to 48 games.
“I think everyone will come back improved. We’re all on the same page. Last year, the beginning was more of a learning process. Everyone was trying to get up to speed. We have a lot of guys back. So I think we’re gonna be smooth at the start, for sure, and we’ll try to peak at the end.”
Nice plan, but it would be a good idea to try to peak at the beginning and stay at or close to that level. That’s what happens when expectations start ramping up: setbacks resonate a lot more.
It’s not as if this season is make or break — it’s not title or bust.
But it’s definitely ‘let’s see some progress or maybe we’ll give a long, hard think before we start doling out multiple nine-figure contracts to players who can’t lift a team out of the first round.’
The unrelenting pressure of NBA economics pushes the pace on these things.
VanVleet can be a free agent next summer; Gary Trent Jr. will be one. Siakam will have one year left on his deal next summer and will be looking for a massive five-year extension. Achiuwa will be eligible for his rookie extension and every good few games he has drives that number up. Anunoby also will be in position to be extended next summer, though given the most the Raptors will be able to offer him is something in the range of $100 million over four years — which won’t be enough in a rising salary-cap environment — he’ll likely be headed to free agency in the summer of 2024.
The Raptors may give the vibe of a young, growing team, but they’re a team that is in a hurry, too.
If the Raptors do surprise the NBA again and complete a rebound from the 2020-21 lottery to contender status in two short years, re-investing in the carefully curated talent and hoping that linear improvement from Barnes (and maybe Achiuwa) can lift them that much higher could be a reasonable strategy.
But a sideways season — or even a slight regression — could, and probably should, signal a rapid shift in direction and personnel.
So, yeah, a good start for a team that has brought back 13 of 15 players and every significant rotation piece and which trained as a unit in Las Vegas in July, Los Angeles in August and Toronto in September doesn’t seem like a big ask.
“You would hope so,” said VanVleet when asked if he thought the Raptors’ choice to invest in continuity should help early on. “You don’t do all of that to not get off to a good start.”
It seems just about mandatory.
“It’s very important. Like usually, teams can inch into the season,” said Young, who will be lining up for his 16th NBA campaign and has the grey hairs to prove it. “We can’t inch in. We have to make sure we take care of business each and every game… I think guys know exactly what we can do. Last year was the spark to the fire, and this year we’re just ready to just make sure that we piggyback off what we did last year, and just continue to improve and get better.”
The challenge the Raptors will be facing is the East itself. They aren’t the only team thinking they have improved. As an example, the Cavaliers traded their future for Donovan Mitchell, a 26-year-old, three-time all-star. Injuries were the source of their late-season swoon that saw the Raptors surge past them on their way to fifth place.
But now Cleveland boasts a lineup with three current all-stars in Mitchell, Jarrett Allen and Darius Garland, and their star rookie — Evan Mobley — is considered the player with the highest ceiling on the team.
After the opener, Toronto travels to Brooklyn to face the star-laden Nets, who may not have disassembled by then, before heading to Miami for two games against the Heat, who were No. 1 in the conference last season, and then come home for two games against Philadelphia, the choice of many to be No. 1 in the East this season.
It just keeps going.
“I think the East looks really good,” said Nurse. “There were a lot of moves made in the off-season that ended up landing in the East… it was great last year… I think it’s super deep [but] I don’t really get all that much into it. In front of me is [Wednesday] night. We’ll figure out how to win and play hard and then we’ll fix what we didn’t like the next day and keep what we did like and keep trucking down to the next game.”
And the one after that and the one after that. It’s going to be a long road. It always is. But the difference this year is that the Raptors don’t have the option of moseying along until they find their way.
They have places to be, and an expectation that they make their way there pretty directly.