Toronto Raptors keep winning in absurd, ignored end of season

The Roman Senate continued sitting for years after it stopped mattering. Eventually, the Republic became an empire under Augustus. He paid lip service to the Senate, mostly. But later emperors stopped doing even that. Then later emperors stopped living in Rome. Then later emperors never even bothered visiting. (Diocletian hated his one trip to the city.) The capital moved elsewhere. Power moved elsewhere. Rome didn’t matter in the least, even in the Roman Empire. Then the Empire fell, and the Senate remained under barbarian rule. Through it all, the Senate never stopped sitting, arguing about nothing, with no one watching or listening. 

Is that what this Toronto Raptors’ season has become? Who is still watching? 

Toronto is comfortably better than its opponents. The G-League rosters of the Philadelphia 76ers, Brooklyn Nets, Washington Wizards all blend together. Oh yes. The Charlotte Hornets. That’s who the Raptors played. May as well have been the Wizards. 

Charlotte’s best player in this one was DaQuan Jeffries, whose 38 games played this season is a career high. He hit some shots. That’s as much as the Hornets could muster. See, Charlotte has 18 wins on the season, only two more than the Wizards and Utah Jazz. The Hornets are trying their absolute damndest to lose games, to get that first-overall pick, to capture the (Cooper) Flag(g). They may as well with Brandon Miller and LaMelo Ball out with long-term injuries.

The Raptors are not trying their best to lose. They’re trying, but only in half measures. Trying their most middingly. With their team finally healthy on the season, the Raptors are rotating rest, not playing all their best players together, but not sitting them all, either. It was RJ Barrett’s turn to rest against the Hornets. 

The Raptors still have plenty of talent. Comparatively. Vastly more than the Hornets. Scottie Barnes was far more talented than any Hornet, easily able to carve the defence with his passes. His defence, as it has been for months, was incredibly engaged. Immanuel Quickley caught fire from deep early, hitting a catch-and-shoot, then a pull-up from the corner behind a screen, then stopping short while catching behind a handoff and hitting a third triple. All in the first quarter. 

Heck, even Jamal Shead was enough to beat the lowly Hornets. He dimed up some triples and drove for layups in transition. He pestered the Hornets’ ballhandlers on the other end, even forcing an eight-second violation in the final few minutes of the game. Any NBA player, given a modicum of energy, can spark a run against these Hornets. Shead had the most energy in this one.

After the Roman Empire split into the Western and Eastern empires, the Senate tried to elect its own man. In 392 AD, the Senate elected Eugenius, who was really just a front for a much more powerful and important Frankish leader. (The Italians really weren’t important in their own empire by this point in Roman history.) The Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius had none of it, defeating Eugenius in battle and uniting the Empire under his own rule.  

Jakob Poeltl was casually the best player on the court. He finished virtually everything created for him, either hitting his floaters, or pump-faking them into simple layups at the rim. Barnes hit the paint and lobbed or fastballed the orange to Poeltl for easy finishes. Poeltl swatted shots on the other end. He owned the glass. He finished with 24 points on 14 shots, to go along with 12 rebounds.

Poeltl is quietly having the best season of his career. He backstops what is fast becoming an above-average (!) defence in the NBA. He is the engine of Toronto’s preferred offensive system. He is setting career highs almost across the board in box-score stats. He already has more win shares (a flawed stat, yes) in 2024-25 than any Raptor in a single season since Pascal Siakam in 2022-23. If a tree falls in the forest with nobody around to hear, etcetera? If Poeltl plays a career year for a team with no desire to win, what does that mean? How many more such seasons does he have in him? 

Caligula almost certainly didn’t appoint his horse a Consul. But he did make senators run beside his carriage to conduct meetings. 

The Raptors aren’t playing any teams trying to win. They aren’t facing the real power of the league. Those powers are elsewhere, playing other teams, existing in arenas that matter. Outside of March 20 against the Golden State Warriors, an actual competitive game, the Raptors haven’t played a good team since February. It feels like groundhog day, with Toronto playing teams with so much less talent, over and over and over for the last weeks of the season. Neither team trying to win. There are mercifully eight games left in the 2024-25 season, with the Detroit Pistons the best team (and only over .500 team) of the bunch. If you are still watching, I (and Ed Rogers) applaud you.

Toronto is now in the phase of the Senate when it was being ignored. No emperors in the city of Rome to taunt senators. National television games (the few that there are) flexed to other, more interesting contests. Toronto keeps playing teams that don’t matter in games that don’t matter. The non-revolution will not be televised.

To their absolute credit, the Raptors are keeping their heads high. The bench remains jubilant throughout games, straight from the dancing and high fives at tip. After hitting a triple to put Toronto ahead by eight in the third, Quickley jetted around the court in celebration as the Hornets called timeout. Ja’Kobe Walter flexed and pounded his chest after drawing an offensive foul on an inbounds play moments later. Quickley lost his mind in celebration after Darko Rajakovic won a challenge in the fourth quarter, the bench already manning the court. Sure, there are lapses. Toronto lets the bad teams back into the games, most definitely. It’s impossible to try hard, constantly, in situations like this. But the Raptors are doing their best. The players aren’t throwing away the season. 

So what are they playing for? Toronto has become postmodern basketball, defined not by some objective truth or value, but instead by their own choices. This is Camus’ The Stranger: the basketball season. Basketball of absurdism. Choose your own adventure of meaning. Because the games themselves are most certainly inherently meaningless. 

Orlando Robinson drew a closeout behind the 3-point line. He drove past his man, almost aghast at the ease, looking behind him (he was moving very, very slowly, able to take a moment to look backwards during the drive) almost in wonder. 

Toronto played its stars to start the final quarter. They predictably built up a lead that had wanted during the doldrums of the middle quarters. The crowd cheered very loudly because the jumbotron showed an image of a noise-o-meter. Toronto’s bench took over the game for the final few minutes, perhaps a last-gasp heave for a loss, but with a loss far too far out of reach. We are all choosing our own meanings at this point.

There are records being broken elsewhere in the NBA. The Brooklyn Nets scraped the bottom of the barrel against the Los Angeles Clippers tonight, while the Wizards allowed 169 points to the Indiana Pacers last night. The worst teams just keep burying themselves in their own graves, digging in deeper, no bottom in sight.

The Raptors aren’t one of the worst teams. That was clear as they pounded the Jazz — err, the Wizards — err, the Sixers — no, no no, the Hornets, yes, the Hornets. It has been a long few weeks of modest basketball. Maybe they should be one of the worst teams. It would help their draft pick. But they have chosen (or had chosen for them, due to the team actually rostering a fair amount of talent) another path.

It hardly makes for more watchable basketball because the Raptors keep playing G-League teams night in and night out. Blame the schedule makers. The Raptors themselves are doing their best to play interesting hoop. Games will start mattering against soon.

Until then, we few who are watching and the Raptors both need to find our own meaning from these final invisible games.

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