Doing nothing can be best thing
When you’re this close, you go for it, right?
Well, not necessarily. There’s the cost of adding players, and there’s always the issue of how even one new player can upset what has been working smoothly.
But the Toronto Raptors would surely have been forgiven Thursday if they’d gone for broke. Maybe not do what Cleveland did — who does what Cleveland did? — but perhaps do something aggressive, a bold move that could “put the team over the top,” as the saying goes.
Instead, they did nothing except wave bye-bye to Bruno Caboclo. Ah, Bruno. It was fun while we knew you, although we never really knew you. Never got the chance. Just saw those long arms and imagined something that never materialized or, at least, hasn’t yet. Some prospects are suspects, as Caboclo is as he moves along to Sacramento. Maybe the Kings will figure out the puzzle. (Contrary to some early reports, the Kings aren’t, in fact, buying Caboclo out.)
Otherwise, Masai Ujiri and his basketball head office stood pat. Which was the right thing to do.
What? Right thing to do? While good players like George Hill and Elfrid Payton were on the move, it was the right thing not to make a move? Yep. In this case, absolutely. For starters, this is already the best Raptors squad in team history. Some thought that was the case last year, and it wasn’t. This year’s group goes 10 deep and, on many nights, the “second team” led by Fred VanVleet is better than the first group led by Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. Poor Norm Powell. He was a starter at the beginning of the year, and now he can’t get any min- utes unless it’s garbage time. But he’s put himself there with the quality of his play.
VanVleet, meanwhile, has proven to be a significant upgrade on Cory Joseph, while Delon Wright, Pascal Siakam and Jakob Poeltl are maturing and improving with every game, seemingly. C.J. Miles hasn’t been great or consistent, but he helps with this group.
The quality of this Raps team was shown Tuesday when, without good nights from DeRozan and Jonas Valanciunas, they destroyed firstplace Boston. It was just one game so you have to be careful not to attach too much meaning, but it had more meaning than your gardenvariety game in early February. The Celtics are a very good team, but they haven’t proven anything more than the Raptors have. They still don’t know if they can go the distance.
Then there are the Cavaliers. What to make of that team? They’ve been awful for a couple of months, sent Isaiah Thomas, Dwyane Wade, Channing Frye and Derrick Rose packing on Thursday and brought in Hill, Larry Nance Jr. and some other bodies. They have LeBron, and maybe that’s all that really matters. On Wednesday against Minny, he tied the game in the dying seconds of regulation, and then in the critical moments of overtime, blocked Jimmy Butler’s shot and followed that up with a fadeaway jumper over Butler’s outstretched fingers to win it.
A virtuoso performance by the game’s best.
Still, the Cavs certainly look more beatable than they did last year, even if they can pull their new group together before playoff time. From Kyrie to Thomas to now, this team has undergone tremendous turbulence in less than 12 months. A championship run now would be an incredible achievement.
Face it, this is the best chance the Raps have ever had to make the NBA final. They have quality and depth. Sure, you’d like more experience in that second group but youth will be served, and there’s nothing so extraordinary about what VanVleet, Wright, Siakam and Poeltl are doing that suggests they can’t do it in the post-season.
It’s not like hoping against hope that Terrence Ross can score 51 again, right?
If there was one thing Toronto could have used, it would have been a spot shooter to drill corner threes. They’re one of the worst teams in the NBA at that specific shot. But you wouldn’t give up OG Anunoby to get that player, or Siakam. Powell, the way he is right now, probably wouldn’t get you the quality of shooter you’d need.
So you sit tight, go with the 10 bodies that have got you to 38-16 and on pace for a team record in wins. You may not have a team that can beat the Golden State Warriors — who does? — but you’ve certainly assembled a squad that appears to be competitive with the best of the East and better than it was a year ago.
Might they crumble again in the post-season? Sure, that’s always possible. But if DeRozan and Lowry get cold again when the playoffs begin, it certainly feels like there are more realistic options available to Dwane Casey than was the case a year ago. Beyond that, this team appears to have finally divorced itself from the old isolation game that used to define it, and that’s a major job accomplished by Casey and his staff.
The Raptors have already surpassed the expectations of many. Some saw Casey as a dead duck this season given Ujiri’s public pronouncements about having this team learn to play a different way. Cleveland was presumed to be the presumptive favourite to win the East.
Instead, the Cavs are one giant question mark and Casey could be coach of the year for the way in which his team is playing, shooting threes at a pace that was unthinkable last season. Boston didn’t do anything on Thursday, either, despite all kinds of Tyreke Evans chatter. So the balance of power between the first- and second-place teams in the East didn’t change.
NBA transactions are so bloody complicated it’s hard to imagine what the Raptors could have done without significantly tinkering with what they already have. You’ve got a team on which Powell is really the lone underachieving story, and a team displaying a heightened mentality of sharing the basketball.
Let ’em go and see what’s possible. That was the decision on Thursday, and it was the right one. Damien Cox’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday.