The Raptors came into the past season with some expectations to be one of the Eastern Conference’s biggest surprises. After all, with their new head coach Dwane Casey, the Raptors improved from being the worst defense in the league in back to back seasons to a Top 15 team on defensive rate in the previous season. This was a huge accomplishment, while their biggest flaw (lack of speed on the backcourt) was corrected with the signing of the underrated PG Kyle Lowry and the draft of Terrence Ross. It seems like GM Bryan Colangelo was so obsessed in improving the team’s perimeter defense that he had no problems in completely overpaying the forward Landry Fields.
On the other hand, Andrea Bargnani was always a major question mark in terms of his availability let alone his performance levels, but the Raptors was going to receive the young Lithuanian Jonas Valanciunas, who would be their post up player for the future, so they had some legit expectations for the past season.
What was the reality? A 4-19 start! The Raptors lost games via all possible scenarios, including three road losses in a row by 32, 19 and 18 points at Utah, at LA against the Clippers and at Portland; three losses in a row by 1, 1 and 5 points after overtime at Charlotte, Detroit and San Antonio. It didn’t matter in what way, the Raptors just kept on losing.
Toronto eventually improved a bit until Bryan Colangelo made a big bet trade in January by trading for Rudy Gay, in order to try to make a playoff push. The short term outcome of this trade couldn’t have been better, as the Raptors won seven of their following ten games, three of them by 4 or less points (100-98 at Indiana, 92-88 at NY against the Knicks and 100-98 once again against the Knicks). The franchise had finally their “closer” for the present and the future!
The problem was that the Raptors won just four of their following 18 games and their season was over, even though they won their last seven games of the season to end it with a more respectful 34-48 final record.
A lot of things went terrible for the Raptors at the end of the day…
Kyle Lowry didn’t have the breakthrough season that people were expecting after a good season at Houston. He started the season a bit out of shape and he was outplayed by Jose Calderon at the PG battle in such a way that Calderon became the team’s starting PG. Lowry clashed with head coach Dwane Casey, something worrying giving his previous track record of clashes with head coaches (he had already clashed with Kevin McHale in Houston and also with Lionel Hollins in Memphis).
Andrea Bargnani was an absolute cancer for the team in every possible way and I’m not even going to talk more about this, as it was the same old story that happens with Bargnani every season.
Landry Fields earns +6M$ per season, but played just 20 minutes per game and averaged 4.7 points/game. Enough said! Even though Coach Casey has never trusted on his rookies a lot, Jonas Valanciunas showed some flashes that he can indeed become a key piece for the future of this franchise, while Terrence Ross has never been used a lot by Casey.
Offseason Report:
The Raptors’ biggest move on this off-season was to get rid of Andrea Bargnani! Not only Bryan Colangelo was able to find a team that would want the Italian player, as the Knicks also give the Raptors some expiring contracts, their 2016 first-round pick and their 2014’s and 2017’s second-round picks! Wow!
But besides that, Bryan Colangelo was unable to do a lot more on this off-season, as the organization is full of overpaid players, but the only culprit of that is Colangelo himself, as he was the one who decided to give huge contracts to players like Landry Fields.
So, Colangelo spent the off-season in doing some minor deals to give the Raptors more depth: D.J. Augustin, Austin Daye, Steve Novak, Tyler Hansbrough and Aaron Gray. None of these players will the team’s highlight on the new season for sure.
By the way, Bryan Colangelo stepped down as Toronto’s president and he was replaced by Masai Ujiri, the former vice president in charge of basketball operations in Denver and the winner of last year’s NBA Executive of the Year Award.
Season Preview:
The Raptors’ major “question” for this upcoming season is to see if Rudy Gay and DeMar DeRozan can coexist in the same team. It seems like every season we have this kind of question regarding at least one team, with last season’s question being around Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings in Milwaukee.
I watched several games of the Raptors after the Gay trade and their offense looked awful with little flow, with just a bunch of ISO plays by both Gay and DeRozan. Predictably, the two players will get around 30-35 shots per game and if they keep shooting below the 45% FG mark, then this isn’t a good thing for the team. Besides that, we are dealing with two players that don’t set up their teammates, as 2.8 and 2.5 assists per game shows that. So, if they are just going to be scorers for the team, then it’s good that they are efficient on that at least, something that didn’t happen last season.
Rudy Gay still needs to prove that he is a “top player”. There is a negativity factor around him, as he couldn’t take Memphis into the next level and so, this new season will be a key one for Gay if he wants to establish himself as a top player.
Regarding DeRozan, something similar can be said about him. His court vision is limited, he is a subpar rebounder for his position, he can’t shoot treys (yet to reach the 30% 3pts mark in a single season), and so he offers too little to the team besides attempting bad shots after bad shots. To make things worse, after attempting 4.4 shots at the rim per game in 2010/11, his numbers regressed into 3.9 in 2011/12 and 3.7 last season, a terrible sign.
The team’s biggest hope will be in the Lithuanian Jonas Valanciunas, who should be more ready to play in the NBA this season. Last season was a tough experience for him, with a new country, new language, new league and an inconsistent franchise that wasn’t a great host to him. Dwane Casey unleashed him a bit more during the second half of the season and Valanciunas performed well, as in 27 minutes per game, he shot 58.8% FG for 11.1 points and 6.9 rebounds per game. The key question for him this season won’t be regarding his ability, but how he will get the proper touches in the ball while playing with the selfish Rudy Gay and DeMar DeRozan.
But the key regarding Toronto being a competitive team or not this season will be on Kyle Lowry. He averaged around 6.5 assists per game over the last three seasons, but that won’t be enough for a team that terribly lacks playmaking skills. Dwane Casey has to find a way for Lowry to get double digit assists per game or the Raptors’ offense will have no flow once again. Lowry is yet to reach the 43% FG mark on a season, so he has to focus more in other areas, where he is indeed a good player.
To complete the team’s lineup, Amir Johnson will be the projected starting Power Forward and he has been a solid role player in Toronto. He doesn’t need a lot of touches to score his points, as he is a good finisher in pick and rolls, while he is also a solid offensive rebounder as well. The problem is that he can’t defend without fouling (3.7 fouls per game in 28.7 minutes of action is too much!), so he desperately needs to correct this issue or Toronto will struggle on this position this season, as asking Tyler Hansbrough to have more than 20 minutes of solid production in both ends of the floor will be too much for him to handle.
The starting lineup of the Raptors has some quality on a conference that is getting more and more competitive as the seasons go by. The problem is that the Raptors won’t have a B plan, as their bench doesn’t have a lot of quality. The new GM Masai Ujiri won’t have an easy task to build a successful team due to heavy inheritance that he is receiving from former Toronto’s president Bryan Colangelo.