The Second Coming of The Bench Mob

The following is a guest piece from Camden MacMillan.

In basketball, to win at the highest level you need the top talent, you need players that can do things no one else can, players that seem to rise above the sport itself. But that’s not enough, even the very best players can’t single-handedly win games. There’s so much focus on stars and starting lineups in basketball that often the impact a bench can have is overlooked. Toronto has high end talent in the starting lineup, but if the Raptors want to compete this season, their bench has to be up to the task. The best teams have benches that don’t just stay afloat, but can tear the game wide open with their play. Look at the top ten teams in bench net rating last year, every single one of them was a playoff team, and it’s no surprise that the best bench net rating belonged to the 2025 champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder. 

In the 2017-18 season, the best bench net rating belonged to the Toronto Raptors. It was a bench that was thrown into the fire after a summer of roster reconstruction. They were not supposed to be good; it was a group of unproven players that had little NBA experience. It was the season after the Toronto Raptors were swept by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the second straight year that Toronto had been bounced out of the playoffs by LeBron James.

Following the loss, the Raptors looked to make changes to the roster to better equip themselves to defeat James. They selected OG Anunoby with the 23rd overall pick in the draft, but lost P.J. Tucker and Patrick Patterson in free agency and traded Cory Joseph and DeMarre Carroll in deals to shed salary. Moves that allowed them to sign C.J. Miles, as well as ink new deals for Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka.

The Raptors lost a lot of minutes that offseason, and so a team that had just finished 3rd in the Eastern Conference was projected to fall in the standings. It’s hard to imagine a team that had lost over 100 combined rotation minutes per game would be able to replace the productivity with a combination of rookie, sophomore, and third-year players. 

In the early goings of the 2017-18 season, Toronto was figuring things out, they named Norman Powell as the fifth starter, alongside Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, Serge Ibaka, and Jonas Valanciunas. In the first twelve games of the year, the Raptors went 7-5 (.583 win percentage) with Powell in the starting lineup.

On November 13th, Powell suffered a hip injury, missing the next four games while the rookie OG Anunoby took his spot in the starting lineup. Even after Powell was healthy, Anunoby would go on to start in every game he played in, Powell was moved to the bench, and the Bench Mob was born. The rotation saw a dramatic shift in minutes, as Fred VanVleet became a mainstay in the lineup and would go on to finish third in Sixth Man of the Year voting. Powell’s minutes were nearly cut in half, and Pascal Siakam went from playing only twelve minutes in the first three games combined to being a staple in the lineup.

The Powell injury may have been a blessing in disguise, after he was moved to the bench, Toronto went 52-18 (.743 win %). The bench had the best offensive rating in the NBA that season, they were able to outscore their opponents through a combination of fastbreaks, second chance points, and a relentless attack of the rim. They weren’t doing anything that popped off the screen, but that was their superpower. They were consistent, and they were simply better than subs from other teams. When you watch games from that season, you don’t see a drop off when the bench is in. Offense continues to flow and despite the defense suffering, they still made timely steals to get transition buckets and massive blocks to keep momentum in their favour.

Now, the bench of the 2025 Toronto Raptors has drawn comparisons to that team for their scrappy playstyle and mixture of young unproven players. But are those the only similarities? What lessons can the modern iteration learn from the past? The Raptors want to win, so can the second coming of the bench mob rise to the occasion?

Darko Rajakovic has set out an identity for his version of the bench mob. He wants them to go out and play hard aggressive defense. Everything for this Raptors team starts on that end of the court, including their offense. Like the original Bench Mob, they will have to use timely double teams and full court pressure to force turnovers, getting out on the break and scoring easy points in transition. Last year, they ranked highly among benches in points off turnovers, fast break points, second chance points and points in the paint, all categories where the 2017 bench also excelled.

Unlike the original Bench Mob, who finished 28th in defensive rating (but first in offence by a mile), this team has to be better overall defenders. The 2025 bench has not proven to have the offensive capabilities to overcome a below average defense. They haven’t been efficient enough to be giving up easy points in hopes that they can get it back on the other end. Instead, they’ll have to use their defense to create extra possessions, a cheat code for propping up a poor offense. 

When comparing the Bench Mobs of 2017 and 2025, one of the key differences between them is the way each coach manages his respective rotations. Dwane Casey allowed his bench unit to play extended minutes without any starters on the court, often over six minutes at a time. Whereas, like most coaches Rajakovic staggers his lineups, ensuring there is a minimum of one starter on the court at virtually all times.

Casey’s trust in the 2017 Bench Mob allowed them to form an identity independent of the starters. Individually, they supported the starters at times, but the Raptors second most played five man lineup that year was composed of VanVleet, Wright, Miles, Siakam, and Poeltl, a lineup that played a little over 337 minutes together and outscored opponents by 17 points per 100 possessions. Overall, the Raptors’ bench that year had the second highest minutes per game, playing 44 percent of the teams minutes, which in and of itself was a huge benefit as it allowed the starters more time to rest.

This year’s Bench Mob likely won’t be given much opportunity to prove to Rajakovic that they can win their minutes without a starter, but it has little to do with them. Rajakovic’s starting lineup has many overlapping skillsets, and staggering their minutes with bench players allows better spacing and defense for all lineups throughout the game. Last season, you have to look at the Raptors 20th most played lineup to find one without any starters. Overall the bench only played 38 percent of the team’s minutes.

So far this year in preseason, we’ve seen a similar trend, Toronto’s final game against Brooklyn was the closest glimpse we’ve had into this year’s rotation. In the first quarter of that game, Rajakovic first brought in Gradey Dick and Ochai Agbaji off the bench for RJ Barrett and Scottie Barnes, a move to surround Ingram with shooting. Next, he brought in Sandro Mamukelashvili for Jakob Poeltl, amplifying the spacing by adding a long-range threat from the center spot. Just a few short moments after, Jamal Shead would check in for Immanuel Quickley, giving the Raptors a strong point of attack defender and a guard who could set things up for the team. To end the quarter, Barrett and Barnes checked back in, taking Ingram and Agbaji off the court. This left Toronto with a lineup that had shooting at the five with Mamukelashvili, a strong defender at the one with Shead, and an excellent shooter at the two with Dick to open the floor for Barrett and Barnes.

This rotation continued throughout the game, staggering the bench and keeping at least one starter on the court at all times. In the game, there was only one minute and seven seconds where an all-bench lineup was used. Things could change as the season progresses, someone could make an unexpected leap, or injuries could change the pecking order of the team as we saw with Powell’s injury in 2017. Developing chemistry and building a strong rotation takes time; the 2017 Bench Mob didn’t find what worked until nearly a month into the season, so be patient if things don’t click right away.

Above all else, the primary reason people are comparing these groups is that they both have something to prove. VanVleet was an undrafted guard who bet on himself, and Shead is a late second-round pick with similar confidence. Wright was coming off a season where he only played 27 games due to a shoulder injury, which could be similar to Walter, heading into his sophomore season after also missing time with a shoulder injury. Miles was looking to prove himself after leaving Indiana, which has narrative ties to Agbaji, trying to earn his second contract after a failed stint in Utah. Siakam was a first-rounder with a defensive reputation, similar to Murray-Boyles. Powell lost his starting spot after his early-season hip injury, which bears similarities to Dick. Poeltl was trying to establish himself as an NBA center after receiving numerous DNPs his rookie season, which bears some ties to Mamukelashvili, who is on his third team in as many years, searching for an established role.

The 2025 Bench Mob will look different than in 2017, but still has an opportunity to swing the outcome of the season. Reaching the levels of success that the 2017 Bench Mob eventually reached is a pipe dream. The odds of any group of bench players reaching career earnings of over 750 million dollars is miniscule. But that’s the end goal of the journey of a bench group, only reached after those players graduate to starting roles, starring roles, other teams.

This journey begins, as it did for those who came before, as a group of overlooked players trying to prove something to the world while coming off the bench for the Toronto Raptors. 

The post The Second Coming of The Bench Mob first appeared on Raptors Republic.