Raptors get look at real tank job
TORONTO OPTED FOR DIFFERENT TEMPLATE THAN ONE MINNESOTA IS USING
The annual visit of the Minnesota Timberwolves to Toronto on Wednesday provided a chance for local fans to get an up- close look at what might have been.
That phrase is not intended to be used in its normal wistful manner. It’s just that what the Timberwolves are now is what, not long ago, everyone around these parts hoped the Raptors would become.
Just two seasons ago, Toronto was coming off five straight years outside the playoffs, with a new general manager who inherited a mess of a roster. It wasn’t bad enough that the season could be written off in pursuit of a rebuild, but it didn’t look good enough to be anything more than stuck in the dead zone of the NBA’s mushy middle. It was like a fridge full of leftovers: there was enough there to cobble together a meal, but you weren’t happy about it.
There was, at the opening of the 2013-14 season, a decent argument that the best thing the Raptors could do was blow up the roster, lose games by the bushel and hope the draft lottery balls somehow managed to give them a shot at Andrew Wiggins, the Toronto-area kid with the superstar potential.
That this plan left an awful lot to chance was a minor problem to its advocates. A 10- per- cent shot at transforming the franchise was better than the alternative of perpetual mediocrity.
Masai Ujiri, the GM, almost went down that path. But when a Kyle Lowry trade fell through and a Rudy Gay trade didn’t, suddenly the Raptors were transformed anyway. The ingredients fit together and I have probably pushed the food analogy as far as it can go.
Instead, it was the Timberwolves that embarked on the kind of youth movement that so many in Toronto had envisioned. They traded Kevin Love, their best player by some distance, to Cleveland for Wiggins, which turned a middling team into one that stunk. That turned into the top pick in last year’s draft, which turned into seven- footer Karl-Anthony Towns, who is almost certain to succeed Wiggins as the NBA’s rookie of the year. All of a sudden Minnesota — Minnesota! — is full of scary potential, with Wiggins, Towns and the occasionally dazzling guard Zach LaVine. Wiggins is the old man of that bunch and he just turned 21.
But the Timberwolves are also a fine indication of how even a successful rebuild does not have an immediate payoff. After their 114-105 loss to the Raptors on Wednesday night, they are 18- 40 on a season in which coach and GM Flip Saunders died after a short, sudden illness. But they are 4- 5 in February, which each of those wins over playoff teams. The offence has been the best in the league over the past two weeks, even if the defence remains abysmal. Sam Mitchell, the interim head coach — and former Raptor boss — said that his kids are starting to understand that there is more to the NBA game than just showing up and matching talent against talent. “Early in the year, we were just playing,” Mitchell said. “Now we are PLAYING,” he said, hitting the last word hard to denote that the Wolves have more structure, purpose, cohesiveness, however you want to define a team that gets it now more than they did.
They are likely still years away from being consistently good, even with another high draft pick coming, and in part because they play in the crucible of the Western Conference. The local fans, who rank 27th in average attendance among the 30 NBA teams, appear inclined to wait it out before they get too excited. Even the best tank jobs have some rough patches to overcome.
Which brings us back the Raptors, or the tank job that wasn’t. They are, as has been noted pretty much since the season began in October, a very good team with the cloud of two straight firstround playoff losses hanging over it. Their ceiling is unclear, mostly because their biggest off- season acquisition, forward DeMarre Carroll, has played 23 games and missed 33. He arrived in large part to help them get over the playoff hump, but whether he will be back in time from knee surgery to fit into a lineup that has churned along in his absence is the biggest question of Toronto’s remaining 26 games.
But they are on a 55-win pace, six better than last year’s franchise record, and the other acquisition, Toronto- area guard Cory Joseph, has been fantastic. A degree from the Gregg Popovich Academy in San Antonio will do that for you.
No one knows what this Raptors team will become, just that they aren’t at the post-tank phase that once seemed like their wisest fate.
But this path has worked out OK, instead.
THAT THIS PLAN LEFT AN AWFUL LOT TO CHANCE WAS A MINOR PROBLEM.