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It’s too soon to say what the Toronto Raptors ceiling is this season. It’s probably safe to say it’s not all that high. They’ve had some nice performances – their dismantling of Dallas on the road last week comes to mind, and they’ve had some competitive outings against some of the Eastern Conference’s best teams, though they only have an early-season win against Milwaukee to show for those efforts.
Otherwise, their record reflects the mixed bag typical of a .500 team. They’ve squandered away some wins they probably should have had – losses to Portland and Chicago qualify – but managed to win games they probably shouldn’t have, such as when they came back from down 19 points in the fourth quarter against San Antonio and down 23 in the third quarter against Washington.
So how good the Raptors might be? The jury is still out, but there’s been little so far to prove the case that they’re a sleeper team that can challenge for homecourt in the East or anything like that.
But through 13 games there’s good reason to feel confident that the Raptors floor is somewhere above atrocious. Like with this roster and this coaching staff, it’s unlikely the Raptors will be terrible by the end of the season, unless circumstances intervene, and they have to do it as a matter of unofficial policy.
For reference, we give you their 142-113 win Sunday evening over the visiting Detroit Pistons. Detroit is in its fifth full season of a scorched earth rebuild with no sign that they will be on the right side of it any time soon. The Raptors, for all their own challenges in terms of positional depth and the ability to space the floor with shooters, looked like the Kevin Durant-era Golden State Warriors, at least for one day.
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If there is one touchstone for Toronto it’s that eventually all their passing and moving and cutting will translate into actual, you know, scoring.
The Raptors are 29th in half-court offence for the season but fourth in potential assists, which kind of makes the point: if they could shoot better they’d be a better team.
The win over Detroit answered the hypothetical question: What would the Raptors look like if they actually scored at the end of all that unselfish play?
The result was not only a blowout, but a little bit of history as Toronto’s 44 assists was a real record, improving on the 40 assists the Raptors had in a game against the Charlotte Hornets in November of 2019. They surpassed their season-best mark of 36 before the fourth quarter started.
In all, it was a much-needed win as it evened the Raptors homestand at 2-2 and improved their record to 6-7 as they play their next two games on the road in Orlando and Indiana. Perhaps most importantly it was the kind of win where almost everyone involved can take something affirming from the whole undertaking.
The Raptors had four starters finish with at least 16 points and two players score in double figures off their bench in Gary Trent Jr. (18) and Precious Achiuwa (12). As well, the Raptors had all five starters with at least three assists and eight different players with at least two helpers. The ball was flying around the perimeter, inside and out, and up the floors and through tight spaces on the interior. Austrian centre Jakob Poeltl had four assists, one off his season high, as he found his teammates under the rim after catching the ball in pick-and-roll sets. He would have had more but the Pistons fouled a lot – the Raptors took 29 free throws in the first three quarters – and likely robbed him of a couple of helpers.
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For once, both Pascal Siakam and Scottie Barnes played well in the same game. Siakam finished with 23 points, seven rebounds and six assists while Barnes was an all-court dynamo, especially in the first half, and finished with 17 points, nine rebounds and nine assists. Dennis Schroder had 17 points and seven assists.
The Raptors were at full strength with OG Anunoby back at work after missing three games with stitches in the index finger of his shooting hand and – excusing the opposition – gave an indication as to why they believe they can be a handful when they are playing at the level they need to play at on both ends.
They don’t have a huge margin for error, but when they play a tidy, complete game, they can be a problem – their talent guarantees that.
“But we’ve got to understand that every possession matters,” said Darko Rajakovic. “We’ve got to understand how much talent, how good a team we are when we do certain things. So for us, it’s a very simple recipe. When we play great defence, when we get our stops and steals and deflections, that opens up opportunities for us and to be better [on the] offensive end. Just continue to trust each other and play the right way. When we do that, when you just focus on winning, we’re a really good team.”
They looked the part on Sunday. The Raptors made six of their first seven shots with four assists to jump out to a quick lead. Perhaps the pivotal moment of the game came in the early moments of the second quarter when Barnes scored or assisted on 15 of the Raptors’ first 16 points as they pushed a 12-point lead after the first quarter to 18 in the space of five minutes. The Raptors’ lead expanded to 26 before halftime and the Pistons never threatened after that.
Toronto shot 53.9 per cent from the floor and 14-of-36 from the three-point line while holding Detroit to 47 per cent shooting while forcing 17 turnovers. They were 9-of-26 from three and led by Cade Cunningham, who finished with 18 points and five assists.
You’d feel for Pistons head coach Monty Williams – a close friend of Rajakovic’s from stops in Oklahoma City and Phoenix – if he didn’t become the highest-paid coach in the NBA in return for figuring out how to mould Detroit’s collection of talented by ill-fitting pieces into something resembling a cohesive, competitive NBA team.
One issue the Pistons have? Like the Raptors, they don’t shoot the ball very well, ranking 26th in three-pointers made and 18th in three-point percentage, but their problems run deeper. They also turn it over a lot (17.5 per game, which ranks 30th) and foul a lot on defence. They shoot themselves in the foot over and over again, which is how a team that features six players taken in the top seven of the draft since 2018 left Toronto with a 2-12 record and an 11-game losing streak.
But Detroit is stuck for the moment. Short of bailing on some of their young talent, they have little choice but to wait it out to see if Cade Cunningham becomes the All-NBA talent his status as the No.1 pick in a loaded 2020 draft (the same one where Raptors wing Scottie Barnes went fourth) suggests he will be, or if he can mesh with another gifted lead guard, Jaden Ivey, and the promising two-way wing with the suspect jumper, Ausar Thompson.
All they can do is keep trying to do the right thing and hope that eventually, it all works out.
“It’s about sustainability of the program,” Williams said. “I think there’s shortcuts that you can take to put yourself in a better position to win. And don’t take it the wrong way, we try to win every game [but] we’re also developing young players in positions they’ve never been in before. So I’m mindful of that. I think any time you’re in a position to win a game, which we’ve been in a number of times, that’s on me, not the young guys who have never been in those positions, I’ve been there before. I take full responsibility for every loss we’ve had. At the same time, our process is important. We have to understand what we have as we move forward. And that’s a balancing act to try to win games and develop what our guys are up to. And that’s what I signed up for.”
The Raptors could say a lot of the same things some nights, but then they have nights like Sunday where all the passes connect, the shots convert and everything looks so easy.
How good the Raptors can ultimately be is an ongoing question, but it seems safe to say – at the very least – they’re not bad.
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