WORTH THE RISK
Not enough to repeat as champions? A trade would solve that
Watching the Toronto Raptors these days is to witness an exercise in survival. They tried to score just enough points to get out of town before the posse arrived against Portland on Tuesday and failed. Then they scratched out one of the most meaningful meaningless wins you will ever see in Charlotte on Wednesday.
It is a testament, given almost every night by the injury-thinned defending champs. Nick Nurse is mixing and matching and occasionally admonishing. (Welcome to the barrel, Terence Davis, who responded like an apprentice champion Wednesday night.) There are lineups that can’t shoot well enough, and can’t score well enough, and sometimes look like a G League team, because quite recently they were.
And, yes, Kyle Lowry is playing too many minutes, just like Fred VanVleet was playing too many minutes before his hamstring popped, as did Marc
Gasol’s after Gasol played all summer after his 100-game season. But at least it wasn’t a groin, like Pascal Siakam, who was also being asked to shoulder a lot. Norm Powell’s shoulder injury, meanwhile, wasn’t as bad. But he was playing the best sustained basketball of his career when he got hurt.
And of course Lowry got hurt before the current plague, and Serge Ibaka, too. And the Raptors have been admirable, even inspirational, despite it all. They are still, after all,
the defending champs.
But this is survival time, which means Rondae HollisJefferson and Chris Boucher and Oshae Brissett and Patrick McCaw and Davis and whoever else plays up to the coach’s standards get a chance to contribute.
And while they are scraping and surviving, that makes it both easy and difficult to say what they are.
Before the season, the question was what the Raptors would do with Lowry, whose excellence could swing a contender, and who is actually more tradable with the one extra year they added to his contract. There was a question over the expiring contracts of Gasol and Ibaka. In the immediate aftermath of Kawhi Leonard’s departure last summer, there was the idea that any or all of the three could be traded for future assets. Of all the things Raptors president Masai Ujiri is, he is never scared.
But that’s not the plan, and shouldn’t be. If and when this team gets healthy again, and gets a real chance to compete in the six-way dogfight in the East, it’s pretty clear what should happen. In the bigger picture, the Raptors are still seen as second-tier contender. And the Raptors should go for it.
No, they don’t have Kawhi anymore. No, they don’t have a clear-cut, top-10 superstar, even if Siakam has a chance to get there. No, you don’t win titles without those players very often, in NBA history.
But this isn’t an ordinary year. The idea of going for it has been batted around, because there is no Golden State anymore. In the East you can talk yourself into believing that Philadelphia doesn’t have enough shooting, or enough cohesion, and still has a nonshooting star in Ben Simmons. You can say Boston has too many young players who aren’t playoff-tested enough. You can say Miami is like Toronto, but less.
Yes, Milwaukee is a regularseason monster. Giannis is even better than he was when the Raptors were forced to unleash Kawhi on him to save their season. The Bucks protect the rim like nobody else, and they could have beaten Toronto last year.
But Giannis’s jump shot isn’t sturdy, not yet. And they still don’t have a true second star.
And if you could imagine getting through a round, then two, then somehow pulling out an upset, and in the Finals … well, the Clippers have Kawhi and George and defend like demons, but they’re short on size. And the Lakers have LeBron and Davis, but their third-best player is … uh … well, whoever their third-best player is, he’s not someone you worry about.
Now, all this is theoretical, but what’s real is that there’s no four-Hall of Famer team lording over the NBA. Seasons like this are rare. And the Raptors front office knows it.
Now, they’re operating in a straitjacket. The Raptors won’t take on any salary that stretches past the summer of 2021, because the summer of 2021 is when every team in the league hopes for Giannis, and some teams have a little more reason to hope than others.
Toronto can defend at an elite level. But to go up a notch they either need OG Anunoby to take the leap he seems reticent to take, or more likely, they need another big-time shot creator to slot in among Siakam, Lowry and VanVleet.
There aren’t many candidates. DeMar DeRozan was traded because he didn’t defend and wasn’t efficient enough, and neither has changed. Washington may not want to move super-shooter Davis Bertans.
The Spurs’ LaMarcus Aldridge can score and rebound and block shots, and his salary almost matches Ibaka’s, and the contract expires in 2021, but he spends too much time in the midrange, and can’t defend at the level Toronto requires. Maybe Nurse could find a way to make him fit; he’s the best and most plausible big scorer out there. But the drawbacks might not work.
Whatever it is, this is a championship team without quite enough to win a championship. Maybe they can’t go for it, maybe there isn’t a path there. But they should try. This team is worth it.