The Toronto Raptors will surprise you this season
One year after the Chicago Bulls won 57 games and the NBA Championship in 1992-93, Michael Jordan retired. Nobody knew that he would return. Jordan had averaged 32.6 points in the regular season and 35.1 in the playoffs, and those numbers only hint at his monstrous impact. Losing the most dominant player in the league could have crippled another team, but the Bulls were undaunted. They continued their winning ways. Scottie Pippen led the Bulls with 22.0 points per game in 93-94, but a variety of returning champions such as Horace Grant and BJ Armstrong were integral to the team’s success. Against all odds, in 1993-94, the Bulls won 55 games and only lost in the Eastern Conference Finals in seven games to the New York Knicks. Players maintain the Bulls would have gone to the Finals were it not for an infamous call from Hue Hollins.
The Toronto Raptors face many of the same questions going into 2019-20 as pestered the Bulls before 93-94. Kawhi Leonard may not be Michael Jordan (or… maybe he is? It’s a common argument), but plenty of commentators on both sides of the border believe he alone carried the Raptors to their first ever championship. Seriously, it bears stating explicitly: Kawhi Leonard had plenty of help in the Raptors’ championship win. The team was stocked with all-stars, past and future, another former defensive player of the year, multiple past champions, and, in all probability, at least one other Hall of Famer besides Leonard himself. Leonard was Toronto’s best player last year, but the team was far from helpless without him.
Let’s start with the obvious. Toronto went 17-5 in 22 games without Leonard in the lineup in last year’s regular season. Although that winning percentage (77.2 percent) was better than Toronto’s (68.3) when Leonard was in the lineup, it doesn’t mean that the Raptors were better without him. It does, however, mean that the Raptors were able to win without Leonard, at least in the regular season. They were able to win because they had a variety of dominant players outside of Leonard himself.
Kyle Lowry was Toronto’s second-best player last year, and he was far better than most people believe. His 2019 RAPTOR, a new 538 metric that tries to evaluate players’ season success with a single number, was +5.6, an incredible number just below LeBron James’ 2018 output and above Kyrie Irving’s 2019. Lowry took charges, passed better than he ever has, and scored Toronto’s first 11 points of the closeout game in the Finals. Lowry will continue to be fantastic, because brilliance and effort don’t age. As long as Lowry is on the floor, Toronto will have at bare minimum a good offense.
Pascal Siakam was a borderline All-Star, and he was dramatically better after his perceived (in his own eyes) All-Star slight. He was dominant in almost every facet on the offensive end: in isolation, in the half-court, in transition, even spotting up from the corners. And he wasn’t only effective when alongside Toronto’s two All-Stars. Courtesy of the excellent resources at nbashotcharts.com, here are two shot charts from Siakam last year. The first is his shot distribution with Lowry and Leonard on the floor, and the second is his shot distribution with Lowry and Leonard off the floor.
Both shot charts, aside from quantity, are similar in both frequency and accuracy; the only real difference pointing to Siakam’s higher points per shot alongside Lowry and Leonard was that his 3-point percentage was higher. That could be attributable to a small sample size, but either way, Siakam was a dominant scorer last year even without Lowry and Leonard off of whom he could feed. Siakam will not struggle this year without a tier-one scorer beside him. He can create for himself despite stagnant teammates, isolating against fantastic defenders.
If anyone is going to be Toronto’s 93-94 Pippen, it will be Siakam. He can dominate on both ends of the floor, and with a new jumper that is apparently faster and more reliable on the move, Siakam will be difficult to stop. Yes, it’s been preseason, so caveats apply, but Siakam has put up massive numbers while not appearing to try very hard. In fact, this means nothing, but it’s fun: look at the similarities between the per-game numbers of Pippen in 93-94 and Siakam’s 19-20 preseason.
Imagine Siakam’s per-36s! (Don’t; I’m joking; these don’t matter; they’re still fun.)
The top two of Lowry and Siakam will have plenty of help. Only a few months after closing out the Golden State Warriors and winning the only Finals MVP vote not cast for Kawhi Leonard, Fred VanVleet seems to have improved around the edges as a point guard. He already had the shooting. Now VanVleet has added depth to his court vision, as well as comfort timing his passes on the off beats. He and Serge Ibaka have maybe developed deeper chemistry than they displayed all last year, when their two-man game was good in the regular season but not enough of a threat in the playoffs. Already in the preseason VanVleet used an early-beat pass to Ibaka in the pick-and-roll and a late-beat pass to Ibaka in transition. Both would have ranked among VanVleet’s best passes to Ibaka all last season.
Marc Gasol is still an elite defender and passer at the center position, and he is one of the only players strong and disciplined enough to stop the Eastern Conference’s best in the paint, including Joel Embiid or Giannis Antetokounmpo. Serge Ibaka will still offer his usual triumvirate of defense, energy, and scoring; he has looked fantastic in the preseason. Norman Powell’s jumper can be conditionally declared to be improved. Young players like OG Anunoby, Powell, or others could pop, although my money is on Chris Boucher as Toronto’s secret most improved candidate. With Boucher and VanVleet likely to both come off the bench, Toronto will have plenty of scoring options across the rotation.
Toronto is deep, with plenty of talent on its bench. Terence Davis, Malcolm Miller, and others seem ready for legitimate NBA roles. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson is a proven defender, and that’s a commonality across all of Toronto’s rookies, drafted or otherwise, and second draft candidates. In fact, every player in the Raptors’ projected rotation is a plus defender. With Siakam able to guard opponents’ stars, almost regardless of position, he can wreak havoc on playoff offenses by switching onto the ball and forcing off-balance shots or turnovers. With ball-chasers like VanVleet, fluid wings like Powell, long wings in Anunoby, shot-blockers like Ibaka, guards who can switch onto bigs, and bigs who can switch onto guards, the Raptors have a weapon for every occasion on the defensive end. Toronto still has team switchability, depth, and intelligence with which it can build an elite defense.
Toronto will have a less consistent offense than defense, so the team could compensate for that by running at every opportunity. And so far in the preseason, that has been the case; the Raptors have the second-highest frequency of transition plays in the NBA, and per Cleaning the Glass they run off of almost three-quarters of steals and almost four-tenths of live rebounds.
A pitfall for the Raptors, at least in terms of regular season wins, could be load management. Lowry, Gasol, and Ibaka could all see plenty of games on the pine without injuries, and the team could fail to keep pace with teams of a similar talent level, such as the Boston Celtics. Toronto would fall to the fourth or fifth seed if Lowry misses 20+ games; the offense will likely fall off a cliff whenever Lowry isn’t around to ensure Toronto finds a good scoring chance on every possession. But no matter where Toronto falls for the playoffs standings, no team will want to play them. The Raptors are a proven playoff team with hulking, physical defenders. If they bring their vets healthy into the playoffs — which is the point of load management, after all — then the Raptors can hang with anyone. They’ll have a talent edge against most teams in the East, and defense can minimize the talent gap against teams like Milwaukee or Philadelphia.
The Raptors lost Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green. However, the team that remains is proud, talented, and hungry to prove doubters wrong. The Raptors are a team forgotten, ignored as a playoff contender. The last Finals MVP who didn’t return to the same outfit the following year was Michael Jordan, although his retirements were different from Leonard’s free agency decision. There are plenty of comparisons between the Jordan-era Bulls and the contemporary Raptors, both before and after Leonard left. The Raptors have to be hoping that the similarities don’t stop with a superstar leaving. If Toronto does win 50+ games and make it to the Eastern Conference Finals, don’t be surprised; they’ll only be following a road already taken.
The Toronto Raptors will surprise you this season originated on Raptors Republic.