Much to learn from 2014-15 Raptors season
Four ways to rebound from team’s spiral
The Toronto Raptors seemed ascendant. Coming into this season, they were coming off of a surprise year in which they won a weak Atlantic Division out of nowhere, spurred on by some moves by a new, hotshot general manager. Sure, they lost as a higher seed to a more experienced New Jersey team the previous year, but that was supposed to be a lesson that would pay dividends this year. Instead, the Raptors sputtered down the stretch of the regular season, and got manhandled in the first round of the playoffs.
Amazingly, this is not the first time that this has happened to the Raptors. In 200607, the Raptors, a year removed from a 27-win season, won their division, eventually losing to the Nets. In the off-season, general manager Bryan Colangelo splurged on threepoint shooting, signing Jason Kapono, hoping he would make his good, young team more complete. Instead, the league passed them by (Boston acquired Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett that off-season, winning the division and the title, in the process) and the Raptors slumped to a 41-win season. The Raptors then lost in five games to Orlando in the first round.
That is when things began to get truly ugly for Toronto. But there are some lessons to be learned so that the team can avoid repeating the bleak past:
Don’t overreact to playoff debacle
Orlando centre Dwight Howard dominated the Raptors in the playoffs, averaging 22.6 points and 18.2 rebounds per game in the series. He dominated the Raptors’ collection of big men — Rasho Nesterovic, Chris Bosh and Andrea Bargnani.
Accordingly, Colangelo traded Nesterovic, T.J. Ford and the 17 th overall pick for a past-his-prime Jermaine O’Neal, a move that sabotaged the Raptors’ next few seasons. Toronto traded O’Neal after a few months, acquiring Shawn Marion. They used the room created by Marion’s free agency to sign Hedo Turkoglu. The O’Neal move began a cycle of them chasing their own tail. Sure, this went as bad as it possibly could have gone for Colangelo — luck plays a bigger part in sports than we would like to acknowledge — but it all started when he identified the Raptors as being one need away from true contention.
Fortunately, the Raptors’ problems this season were so numerous that it is hard to think of a trade GM Masai Ujiri could pull off that would fix things, even in theory.
On a related note …
Hold on to your draft picks
The Raptors are slated to pick 20th overall in the first round this year. Success rate at that slot varies wildly. Still, the Raptors should not trade that pick, unless a true star becomes available to them (let the DeMarcus Cousins era begin).
Indiana used the 17th pick acquired in the O’Neal trade on Roy Hibbert, who has morphed into one of the league’s best rim protectors. Other players chosen after that pick: Ryan Anderson, Courtney Lee, Serge Ibaka, Nicolas Batum, Nikola Pekovic, DeAndre Jordan and Goran Dragic. All of those players would have helped the Raptors down the road, and certainly provided more value to the franchise than O’Neal did.
Young, cheap talent is important, and the Raptors’ core is not good enough to succeed without it. Young players do not automatically improve just because they are young
After the Orlando series, the Raptors had two years of information on Andrea Bargnani. Toronto continued to treat him as a core player for at least four more seasons after that, signing him to a five-year contract extension after the 2008-09 season. That was, uh, a mistake. That does not mean that the Raptors should move on from Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross this off-season. In their third seasons, both disappointed to varying degrees. However, the Raptors now have a lot of knowledge about the two young players, and more information on them than the rest of the league has. Take advantage of that, and do not commit to them because you have the option to do so.
ensure you believe in your coach
Sam Mitchell won coach of the year in 2006-07, and the Raptors gave him a new fouryear deal in the off-season. Then the Raptors disappointed, regressing from 47 to 41 wins. Still, Mitchell remained as head coach … temporarily. The Raptors fired Mitchell 17 games into the 2008-09 season. If that is all it took for the team to lose faith in Mitchell, he never should have been allowed to run an entire training camp in the first place.
If Ujiri believes in current coach Dwane Casey and his preferred defensive-focused style, that is great. Get him a few cheaper players who fit in with what he is preaching, and give him the year to work it out. If Ujiri does not believe in Casey, do not prolong the inevitable. If training camp is as important as coaches say it is, young players who will be with the franchise for a while should not spend it learning a system that will be thrown out in a few months. Even if next season does not come with championship aspirations, it is valuable time.
Do not fall in love with your core
In moving Ford, Colangelo doubled down on the core of Bosh, Bargnani and Jose Calderon. Bosh eventually left, netting the Raptors nothing in return; Colangelo traded Calderon in a desperation move for Rudy Gay in early 2013; and moving Bargnani was left to Colangelo’s replacement, Ujiri.
Next year will be Kyle Lowry’s 10th NBA season, DeMar DeRozan’s seventh and Valanciunas’s fourth. They can hope that the young centre will take some steps forward, but Lowry and DeRozan are in their primes. Ujiri has seen what they can do — the good, and the bad. Do not break them up in a panic. Just know that if you have to take a step back in order to eventually take a few steps forward, that is OK. Raptors fans will understand.