After falling to 1-6 on the season last night at the hands of the Phoenix Suns, many fans are wondering if the phenomenal run the Toronto Raptors have experienced over the better part of the last decade is beginning to come to an end.
Let’s just slow down a bit here! The season is a mere seven games young, the team plays their `home` games in Tampa, and they lost two key pieces this offseason in Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol that certainly doesn’t help the cause. Yes, there is cause for concern with a lot of factors working against the club, but let’s give Nick Nurse the benefit of the doubt while the team tries to find its identity.
I noticed a lot of good things in last night’s contest with The Suns, despite the end result. Lowry, VanVleet and Siakam all seemed to be clicking for the first time, which we have been accustomed to seeing the past few seasons. Pascal finally looked like the all-NBA player we were hoping he would become until his struggles in the bubble and early in this campaign. In terms of Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet, you know what you are going to get game in and game out, they remain one of the toughest guard duos in the league no question. It is the supporting cast that is ultimately going to have to step up for this squad for them to remain a force in the Eastern Conference. Norm Powell is becoming a guy the Raptors can trust to put the ball in the hoop regularly, while O.G. Anunoby continues, albeit slower than we would hope, make progress on a nightly basis, not to mention the Toronto Raptors arguably have one of the best coaches in the league in Nick Nurse.
It still remains to be seen what the true identity of this team is going to be this season moving forward and its evident Nurse is attempting everything in his power to deploy a lineup he can feel comfortable and confident with on the floor. The amount of different combinations we have seen at any given time throughout the first seven games is a little alarming but at the same time, Nurse knows it isn’t going to be as easy to put a reliable five out there after losing the likes of Kwahi Leonard, Danny Green, Serge Ibaka, and Marc Gasol over the past two seasons. As we saw last year after losing Leonard and Green to the eventual NBA champion Lakers, the team took a slightly different approach but still remained a force on the defensive end while working cohesively like no team I have ever watched before, which helped them remain dominant in the East last season despite the two key departures.
Fast forward to this season and we are seeing that tenacious defensive identity that has carried the Raptors slowly diminishing with the departures of Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol. You can only lose so many key pieces to the puzzle while still remaining a complete unit and the Toronto Raptors are finding that out the hard way with the early struggles this year. The overall defence hasn’t been terrible but the replacements Masai Ujiri brought in to replace the big men, Aron Baynes and Alex Len, have not been overly impressive on either side of the ball. The Raptors are in the bottom third of the league in rebounds, both offensive and defensive, and are allowing opponents to get to the free throw line at an alarming rate. On top of the lack of board presence, the team ranks near the bottom in defending against the 3-pointer which was glaringly evident in last night’s game as they allowed the Phoenix Suns to knock down 21 threes. Safe to say you aren’t going to win many basketball games with that combination, even in the current 3-point friendly league.
Starting the season 1-6, the second-worst record in the NBA, there clearly is some more juggling of lineups and rotations for Nurse and the Raptors but to their credit the players are holding themselves accountable.
“Right now we have nothing, you know, there's nothing to us, right? We're just like that team that teams are looking at us like ‘alright let's go eat.’” said Lowry postgame Wednesday night. “We
have to use that to fuel us.”
“We are who we are,” said VanVleet. We gotta go play with who we got. We’re good enough, we got enough on the team to do it, but we gotta do it.”
The question does remain, are they in fact good enough with the current roster to compete with the likes of Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Miami, and Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference? One thing is for sure, for now at least, look for Nick Nurse to use more of Anunoby and Chris Boucher to give his team the much-needed boost it needs on the glass until Len and Baynes get more accustomed to the system, albeit sacrificing size down low.
If in fact the woes do continue for Toronto, the onus will turn to Ujiri and Webster to come up with a what’s next scenario for this franchise with Lowry’s contract due up at seasons end and their hope to land Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo gone. Again, just like with Nick Nurse and his coaching ability, we have to give Ujiri and Webster the benefit of the doubt given their track record to want to win.
This team is better than its record shows and Wednesdays performance was evident of that, but it definitely needs tweaking.
This season is certainly going to be a strange one with Toronto playing its “home” games in Florida due to the pandemic, where every game seems to be a road game, but with that being said, the Raptors have the best road record in the NBA over the last five seasons so lets just chalk it up to a blip on the radar and see what this team can do over the final four months of the season.