A rebuild seems like the only way out for the Raptors. Will they commit to one?
Whatever way you slice it, the Toronto Raptors are stuck.
Sitting 12th in the Eastern Conference with a record of 11-18, the Raptors have won just three games since November 25, going 3-10 in that span.
They’re 0-8 against their own division, 3-9 on the road, and have strung two consecutive wins together just twice this season, never hitting three in a row.
Saturday night’s 126-119 loss to the Utah Jazz was arguably Toronto’s ugliest home defeat this season, coughing up a 17-point second half lead while getting outscored 41-21 in the fourth quarter by a team similarly outside of the play-in picture in their own conference.
And while the team’s final loss before Christmas was one that left the Scotiabank Arena crowd heading home disappointed, there’s one question that lingers over every defeat: what exactly is the direction of the franchise?
Scottie Barnes might be having his best NBA season to date in year three of his young career for the Raptors, but there’s little else to be positive about right now in Toronto.
A rebuild seems like the only course of action to fix the team, but… is one coming? And what exactly would one look like? Only Toronto president Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster seem to have those answers, with no indication if what — or if — is coming.
Toronto currently sits 24th in the league-wide standings, just inside the range where they’d have to trade their top-six-protected first-round pick to the San Antonio Spurs as part of last year’s Jakob Poeltl trade, depending on the results of next spring’s draft lottery.
Both Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby have found themselves in frequent trade rumours, with both possible to hit free agency this upcoming summer.
And there’s no real clear answers for what exactly will ail the current roster’s issues. The team ranks 22nd in the league with 112.4 points scored per game, while allowing 114.8 points a night, 18th per game in the league.
Three-point shooting woes that were a clear flaw heading into this season haven’t gotten much better, going up from 28th-best 33.5 percent to 27th league-wide at 33.9 percent.
“I always tell them what I see on film, what I believe is the right thing, but at the same time I’m trying to stay very positive with our guys, to encourage them to stay on the path, to stay together,” Raptors first-year head coach Darko Rajakovic said prior Saturday’s game in response to a question asked by Daily Hive. “I’m not a guy that’s going to come into the locker room and scream and yell and do all of that, but I’m going to love my players and support them and help them in any way possible.”
Postgame, Rajakovic was singing a similar tune of honesty, but still no real clear options on how to get the Raptors out of their rut.
Rajakovic alluded earlier this month to possible starting lineup changes, but even he admitted that he’s not quite sure of the best course of action on what the right move is based on the players he currently has.
“Sure, we can mix up our rotations… we were mixing them up during the game. But it’s not like we have Steph Curry sitting on the bench and I’m not putting him on the court,” Rajakovic said Saturday.
In a sense, it seems like he’s well aware of the roster’s restrictions as currently constructed, and that even a few tweaks to his approach won’t change an 11-18 team into a contender. A frustrating loss or three aside, Toronto seems like they’ll need to undergo wholesale changes if building around Barnes long-term really is the front office’s plan.
Earlier this month, Rajakovic suggested he was pushing for the then 9-14 Raptors to put a full effort towards winning every game — a solid sentiment, but one that hasn’t quite come to fruition.
“There are no empty games in an NBA season. Always at the end of the year, you look back and say if we won *that* game, it would be *this*… I don’t want to be in the position to talk about ‘ifs’,” Rajakovic said on December 13 prior to playing the Atlanta Hawks.
With a little over two months between now and the February 8 trade deadline, the Raptors could look completely different come the late winter. Only time will tell.
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