It’s over. One of the strangest and — by record, certainly — worst seasons in the Toronto Raptors‘ 29-year history has finally come to an end, on the court, at least. The off-season will be interesting, but as interesting as what has come before? That’s saying something.
“This season, I feel that it threw everything at us, and everything that it had at me as a first-time head coach in the NBA,” said Darko Rajakovic. With their season-ending 118-103 loss to the Miami Heat on Sunday, the Raptors finished with a 25-57 record, the fourth-worst ever for the team, ‘surpassed’ only by their expansion-era 16-win season in 1997-98, their 21-win season in their inaugural 1995-96 campaign and their 22 wins in what was the final season for Jay Triano as head coach in 2010-11.
Their reward may or may not come on draft night. The Raptors won’t find out if they keep their first-round pick until the lottery balls stop tumbling on May 12. By losing 19 of their final 21 games they assured themselves the league’s sixth-worst record (there were some really bad teams this season) and a 45.8-per-cent chance of picking in the top six, leaving a 54.2-per-cent chance that their first-round pick goes to the San Antonio Spurs to complete the trade for Jakob Poeltl made at the deadline last season. If the Raptors keep their pick, they would owe a top-six protected pick to San Antonio in either 2025 or 2026.
So many unusual things happened this season. This is a team that twice set the franchise record for largest home loss and then the largest ever loss (when they lost by 48 to the Minnesota Timberwolves) in the space of less than a month.
How weird of a season has it been? Let’s review:
The Raptors got sued by the New York Knicks
This takes us back to the doldrums of the off-season when in late August the Knicks filed a lawsuit claiming Ikechukwu Azotam, hired by the Raptors as a video co-ordinator after serving in a similar role with the Knicks, had acted as a ‘mole’ stealing proprietary scouting information from the Knicks and funnelling it to the Raptors before leaving the Knicks to join Rajakovic’s staff. The Raptors sought to have the suit dismissed and the Knicks sought $10 million in damages. It remains unresolved. It’s believed to be the first time an NBA team has sued another team. The Raptors and Knicks went ahead and made one of the biggest trades of the season on Dec. 30 when OG Anunoby, Precious Achiuwa and Malachi Flynn were traded to New York for Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett.
The Raptors were going to trade for Damian Lillard
Only Raptors president Masai Ujiri can say for sure how real this was, but per sources Toronto was willing to put all their available future draft capital — three future firsts and two pick swaps at the time — along with rookie Gradey Dick into a deal for Lillard, who eventually was traded by Portland to the Milwaukee Bucks. It seemed like a risky move at the time — would a core of Lillard, Pascal Siakam, Scottie Barnes and Poeltl have moved the needle in the Eastern Conference? Well, it would be a lot of draft capital — not to mention a trade asset the calibre of Anunoby — to finish somewhere between 14 and 17 games behind the Boston Celtics, which is where the rest of the East’s playoff teams have ended up, Lillard’s Bucks included.
Joe Mazzulla’s coach’s challenge
Were the NBA’s unwritten rules written down somewhere, near the top of them would be that it’s impolite and uncool to call unnecessary timeouts or, say, a coach to ask for a call to be reviewed in the final moments of a blowout win. But Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla has no objection to going against the grain.
For example: Boston was up 27 with 3:39 in the fourth quarter on Nov. 11 when Mazzulla challenged an out-of-bounds call. He was right, the call was overturned, but Rajakovic wasn’t happy about Boston calling for a review when everyone really just wanted to go home and told Mazzulla about it. The Celtics head coach was non-plussed, saying it was his responsibility to coach as hard for his end-of-rotation guys as for his starters. Rajakovic just gave it a ‘no comment’ and we all moved on.
DeMar got mad
The unwritten rules crib sheet was in the other pocket a couple of weeks later on Nov. 24 when Siakam put up a three with three seconds left and the Raptors leading the Chicago Bulls by 12, which is typically bad form. Except point differential was a tie breaker in the in-season tournament and the Raptors bench was yelling at him to take the shot. In that context the Raptors were within their right, unwritten rules aside. Problem? The Raptors had already been eliminated from the tournament before the game started. Former Raptor DeMar DeRozan got so mad at the transgression that he eventually was ejected, and Rajakovic looked a bit silly when it turned out later he didn’t know the score had no bearing on anything other than a win or a loss.
The Raptors break the Pistons’ losing streak
In theory, the Raptors weren’t yet a rebuilding team when they rolled into Detroit on Dec. 30. They had lost 11 of their previous 15, however, and they had finally pulled the trigger on the trade that sent Anunoby, Achiuwa, and Flynn to the Knicks. But the theory was the Raptors would remain competitive with the addition of Barrett and Quickley, two young starters acquired to grow alongside Barnes. The problem was the Raptors arrived in Detroit shorthanded — missing the outgoing players and not having the incoming ones yet. The outcome was that Toronto became the team that ended the Pistons’ NBA-record 28-game losing streak.
Dennis speaks his mind
The loss to the Pistons also prompted former Raptors point guard Dennis Schroder — since traded to the Brooklyn Nets for Spencer Dinwiddie, who was immediately waived — to say what was on his mind. He didn’t seem to think the Raptors were all on the same page: “When I got here Darko did a great job of putting this system into the organization, but I think we need to follow that. Everybody just being unselfish, sharing the ball … people need to be grateful, cheering on their teammates when they get a stop, when they dive on the floor, being excited for one another. [With gold-medal winning Germany at the World Cup] I went to war with my brothers on the national team, but we knew we had each other. I don’t feel we have that yet here.”
Darko speaks his mind
Rajakovic had yet to show his, uh, Serbian side when he sat down following Toronto’s one-point loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Jan. 9. That the Lakers took 36 free throws to 13 for Toronto and the 23-2 disparity in the fourth quarter was enough to get his blood boiling:
“I understand. Respect for All-Stars. But we have star players on our team as well,” Rajakovic said. “How is it possible that Scottie Barnes, who is [an] All-Star-calibre player in this league, he goes to the rim every single time with force and trying to get to the rim without flopping and not trying to get foul calls? He gets two free throws for the whole game. How is that possible? How are you going to explain that to me? They get to win tonight? If that’s the case, just let us know so we don’t show up for the game. Just give them a win. That was not fair tonight.
“[…] And this is not happening [for the] first time for us. Scottie Barnes is gonna be [an] All-Star. He’s gonna be the face of this league. And what’s happening over here, during [the] whole season, I’ve been holding it back. It’s complete crap.”
It wasn’t quite at the level of former Raptor Fred VanVleet’s rant about Ben Taylor when the Raptors were in Los Angeles the year before but was in the neighbourhood.
Poeltl sprains his ankle
An ankle injury isn’t that weird, but what happened after was. The Raptors were in the midst of their most impressive win of the season when it all came crashing down, they just didn’t know it yet. With a win over Memphis on the road and a competitive loss in Sacramento, the new-look Raptors absolutely smashed the Golden State Warriors. Barrett had a season-high 37 points, Quickley had 10 assists, and the Raptors romped. But in the third quarter, Poeltl sprained his ankle stepping on Siakam’s foot and he was out of the lineup for the next 11 games, in which the Raptors went 2-9. The Raptors traded Siakam while Poeltl was out and the rebuild was on. The Raptors are 4-29 this season with Poeltl out of the lineup.
Pizza Party
Back in early December, Rajakovic promised his team an all-expenses paid fine dining experience when they won three games in a row. At the time the Raptors were a couple of games under .500 and had missed a couple of opportunities to stretch a two-game winning ‘streak’ into three. Hey, nice, upbeat motivational stuff. But it took on a life of its own when it took the Raptors 10 weeks and 38 games to win three straight, which they finally accomplished with a win over the Indiana Pacers on Feb. 26. The fine dining experience turned into — at the players’ request, apparently — a post-practice pizza party that made the Raptors the talk of NBA Twitter for a fast minute. It was their only three-game winning streak of the season, so no more pizza for you.
Tragedy strikes
The sudden illness and subsequent passing of Nathan Barrett, RJ’s brother, on March 12 was a tragedy, pure and simple. Barrett went on a personal leave and was out of the lineup for nearly three weeks. That period overlapped with the passing of Quickley’s uncle, which kept the Raptors point guard away from the team for six games. Earlier in the season the entire NBA — the Raptors coaching staff especially — was rocked by the sudden death by heart attack of Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojevic in mid-January. Milojevic was a close friend of Rajakovic and Raptors assistant Ivo Simovic with their roots in Serbian basketball, while Raptors assistant Jama Mahlalela worked with Milojevic while Mahlalela was with the Warriors. It was all very difficult and very sad.
Jontay Porter did what?
On March 25, a ‘Woj Bomb’ like no other: as the Raptors were getting ready to host the Brooklyn Nets, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that the Raptors big man was the subject of a gambling investigation. It’s alleged that on March 20 and on Jan. 26, Porter pulled himself out of games early (once with an eye injury, another time because he was sick) so he would fail tp accumulate enough statistics to reach the totals bookmakers had projected him to hit. On each occasion there was reportedly heavy betting activity on Porter falling short of the targets and an unusual amount of money paid out to those who bet that he would indeed fall short. Porter’s been away from the team ever since. The investigation is ongoing but when asked about it at the NBA Board of Governors meeting this past Thursday, commissioner Adam Silver said Porter could be facing a lifetime ban from the NBA if he was found to have participated in the alleged betting scandal.
In a season full of oddities and unprecedented turns of events, this one took the proverbial cake.
“From my perspective as a coach, I never doubt injuries, I never doubt the honesty of players,” said Rajakovic. “Obviously, I never had a situation like this before.”
Neither have I, coach. Neither have I.
