I hope this was the Raptors rock bottom

I’m not exactly certain what I’ve been watching lately. The Raptors have been so thoroughly beaten in so many ways that it’s hard to discern what strengths this team has. The weaknesses? There’s been too many to count.

This Raptors offense was designed with a more future friendly style of play in mind, and given how the roster has been built, they know they have to work around significant limitations when it comes to live dribble creation. You can’t spam pick n’ roll (outside of RJ Barrett, who has missed some games lately), you can’t reliably ask players to isolate or get paint touches on their own. You have to work the ball with the pass, and keep working it, and move off the ball, and find seams to score. Lately, that reliance on the pass has led to an ungodly amount of turnovers, and not nearly enough scoring. Not to mention the flat out lack of attention to detail or care that the players have shown.

Scottie Barnes is perhaps dealing with a bothered ankle, but he’s been playing and this is his 6th game back and it’s been nearly 3 weeks since he sprained it. I don’t know what that situation is, but it’s hard to believe a Raptors medical staff that has been very protective of players historically — and has watched Immanuel Quickley & Barnes in particular sit a lot of games — would run Barnes out there in some sort of way that endangered him or featured a version of himself that would basically only shoot jumpers. It’s always murky, but at some point you just have to see Barnes as a grown man who has agency and is out on the court. I’m not worried about Barnes’ ceiling as a player or who he’ll become, but quite plainly: he’s been very bad leading the offense lately, as he’s struggled to get paint touches, create for others, and has relied on his jumper to a degree that we haven’t seen yet in his career.

It’ll all be fine down the road, but the Raptors current struggles are connected to their All-Star having a very tough stretch on the offensive side of the floor. It’s not dramatic or anything, it’s just a bad run of play – which players have. Will the Raptors play better offense than this in the future? Yes, certainly, and Barnes will be part of that. This was really ugly, though. You can’t even really hang your hat on a fun, look-into-the-future performance in this game as Ja’Kobe Walter shot 1-10, Jamal Shead was 2-10, and even the dependable-this-season Ochai Agbaji went 1-7 with no triples made. Jamison Battle led the team in triples with 3 of them, but Davion Mitchell of all people was second with 2.

Defensively, after setting the franchise record for points allowed in a game, over a stretch of time, and just getting hammered night in and night out, it seemed like the Raptors were getting the hang of things by limiting the Celtics. However, watching that game it was clear as day that the Raptors interesting spurt of defense was completely attached to the Celtics missing triples. Despite all the missed threes early on and only scoring 23 points in the opening frame, the Celtics still had an elite game in the halfcourt, still scored 125 points, and still beat the Raptors by 54 points. Embarrassing.

The Celtics didn’t even need a big game from Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown (who both played less than 30 minutes). The Raptors were trampled by bench players and starters alike.

These Raptors, as much as they’ve lost this year, have been a team that competes while in a talent deficit. They’ve been a team that conjures up offense with passing and movement despite the fact that they have very few good dribblers on the team. They have been a team that grinds for every inch of the floor, earns extra possessions, and hangs around. They haven’t been that team in awhile. I’m not sure what it takes for them to return to that form (or some sort of form close to it). Maybe none of this matters and bad, ugly games don’t cause harm down the road, they only net juicy draft picks – I haven’t seen the data for this stuff yet.

I do hope, sincerely, for myself and everyone else who watches these games, that it doesn’t look worse than it just did. Or, than it has. Historically bad defense and offense. Historically bad beatings. Nowhere to go but up – let’s hope.

Have a blessed day.

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