The good Raptors become the good Raptors
President Ujiri has kept Toronto competitive in the short term while keeping an eye to team’s future
Now is the time to catch a breath and take a break. The work of the summer is all but done for the Toronto Raptors and their future impossible to predict. Many want to know, “Are they better?” Even more can’t wait to find out, “Will they play differently?”
And the biggest question of all, “Can they legitimately challenge the East’s gold standard, the Cleve- land Cavaliers?” Maybe. Perhaps. We’ll see. One thing is for certain as the summer shenanigans come to a close: Raptors president Masai Ujiri has made the moves he thinks are necessary to rejuvenate and re-energize a franchise that’s not in a bad spot at all.
Ujiri basically traded Cory Joseph, Patrick Patterson and P.J. Tucker for C.J. Miles, Serge Ibaka, Norm Powell and Delon Wright — tweaking rather than re- constructing his rotation.
As well he should have, because the last thing the Raptors needed was a complete overhaul.
This isn’t a bad team. It wasn’t a bad team at the end of last season, and it won’t be a bad team at the start of next season.
Had the Cavaliers finished atop the East instead of punting away the 2016-17 regular season, it’s conceivable Toronto would have once again advanced to the conference final.
That would have validated the progress they had made the season before. That would have eliminated some of the angst that has appeared this off-season for no real reason.
Back-to-back seasons of more than 50 wins, an all-star backcourt and a top-10 ranking in both offence and defence by one advanced metric put the Raptors in some heady company.
And Ujiri’s “culture reset” comment during an end-of-season media session he didn’t really want to do, probably got taken a wee bit out of context.
As Ujiri said this week, it was more about a rededication mentally, some tweaks strategically and a need to change what he saw as creeping complacency into a sense of urgency.
He didn’t want the Raptors to try to be the Golden State Warriors or Houston Rockets of the East, a nearimpossible goal. He wants more accountability from coaches and players and he wants a slight modification to how the team plays.
Will he get it? We’ll find out over 82 games of the regular season. It’s guesswork right now and that’s not worth spending too much time on.
But even Ujiri knows that no one really knows anything until the season starts. The addition of Miles, for instance, looks like a solid move to create floor spacing and juice the team’s three-point shooting, but there are no certainties.
“On paper it looks like it will be a good fit for us and, like I always say, you never know how these things work out,” Ujiri said. “We have to get to the basketball court, but hopefully a shooter like him is always valuable to a team.”
One thing Ujiri made clear was that it is pretty much the team that will assemble in Victoria for training camp in September.
There are two roster spots open and the team remains slightly under the tax threshold, but major moves are unlikely as everyone heads off on vacation.
“We’re going to add a couple different players, maybe they’re non-guarantees, I don’t know. We’ll see how the market fares now,” he said.
And that brings us to two of the more intriguing lightning rods on the roster: Jonas Valanciunas and, to a much lesser extent, Bruno Caboclo.
Ujiri made it clear — it was before to anyone who understands the chatter that goes on when an executive ponders roster remakes — that Valanciunas’s name came up in some trade scenarios, as did everyone on the team as the franchise awaited Kyle Lowry’s decision.
It doesn’t mean they don’t want the seven-foot Lithuanian and it doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t play. Now that the summer work is done, roles are going to be more clearly defined.
“Sometimes we need to go to his strengths a little bit, which I think might not be a big percentage in post-ups, but I think offensive rebounding and catching and finishing is something big,” Ujiri said. “I think his shooting touch we need to take advantage of, if he gets a little bit better at it, and they’re things I think our coaching staff are going to look at.” And utilize. “I’ll be transparent. There were some scenarios where, if we’re trying to create space and do some other things in some of the other scenarios we had, that maybe we make a move. But with this team now, we’re very comfortable,” the president said.
Caboclo, while far less an impact player, is nonetheless an intriguing bit.
Think of him as you will — and it would be perhaps better if the incessant critics had spent some time actually watching him in practice or in D-League games — but he is a 21-year-old kid going into his fourth year as a pro after arriving in North America as a teen, unable to speak English with no knowledge of the scope of the game he was being asked to master. Ujiri has set it up so that they almost have to play him.
And that’s where the other part of the president’s summer plan — player development — comes into play. Ujiri has given the core three years — the contracts of Lowry, DeRozan, Miles and Ibaka are basically the same — and grooming the next wave is part of the master plan.
“We might as well,” Ujiri said. “We can’t keep talking about it and talking about it. They have to play. So I think collectively we’re going to try to do that and I think the style of play is going to matter.”
What he’s done is what he should have; nothing more, nothing less.
The Raptors were a good team and are most likely still a good team, but nothing is for certain until the games start for real. The president has tweaked the parts he felt needed to be tweaked, set up the roster for continued success while keeping an eye on the longer term, and provided Dwane Casey and the coaching staff with pieces he thinks should work.
Sounds like a productive early summer. An interesting season awaits.