Five minutes in, the long-awaited reunion of the fully healthy Raptors was a rip-roaring good time. Scottie Barnes was throwing down windmills and guarding the crap out of Giannis Antetokounmpo, RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley were trading off turns running slick pick-and-rolls with Jakob Poeltl, and all felt normal in the world.
And then the rest of the basketball game unfolded, the team’s starting lineup got carved, as did everyone else, and the same rancid aroma that’s festered around the team for the last month wafted through Scotiabank Arena once again.
For the more spiral-prone corners of this Definitely Chill and Non-Reactionary fan base, this was a confirmation that the struggles of the last month weren’t about injuries or illness, but rather a deep and untreatable rot at the core of the Raptors’ rebuild.
That’s dumb, of course.
As eyerolly as you may have been listening to Darko Rajaković's post-game assessment of the team’s play, where he noted the team’s need for some time in the incubator now that all hands are available, he’s not totally wrong. Basketball, you might have heard, is a team sport. Familiarity, comfort, trust — these are all essential things that take time to forge; time the best players on this team simply haven’t been granted.
“I want to learn what the group can bring, how they’re going to start jelling with each other,” said the coach before Monday’s game. “And it’s not going to be one night. It’s not going to be one game. You’ll need time for those guys to start clicking. But definitely very excited to see all of the guys.”
One game, be it a blowout loss, narrow decision or kick-ass win, was never going to tell us what kind of juice this team has. That’s what these next couple months are for. Some of these guys’ future prospects will be measured in years.
All that said, too much more of what we saw as the healthy Raptors got absolutely punked by the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night in the weeks and months to come, and the alarmists will have some grounds for their doom-saying.
This team needs better ideas on defense. I’m by no means someone who thinks a coaching shake-up is the fix for the Raptors’ ills; it’s a talent and youth issue more than anything else right now. But something just ain’t working on the defensive end, and if things don’t stabilize some time soon, it could snowball into the type of glaring problem that ingrains itself in the team’s culture, and even costs people jobs in the summertime.
You can’t really control for shooting variance. Teams are just gonna shoot the lights out sometimes. You also can’t do much but live through and accept the mistakes of youth. Rookies and second year guys are gonna screw the pooch in coverage sometimes, it’s just the way she goes.
Gameplanning, though? There’s a little more agency to that. Same as there is when it comes to basic things like “not defending like Matt Thomas” for dudes who while maybe not super gifted defensively, are not Matt Thomas, who is needlessly catching strays right now.
I get, Giannis is a monster. He’s a magnet for help, even if you’re off ball guarding a good shooter. It’s what makes him one of the best players alive. But if you’re going to send two or three his way, there needs to be a little creativity to it. Helping off the strong-side corner, or hopelessly digging in to help when a good shooter is one rudimentary pass away aren’t going to cut it with even the most ho-hum play makers, let alone an MVP in set-up mode.
Selling out to double or triple Antetokounmpo when you’ve got no one suitable to try and slow him straight up makes some sense, especially if you’re dialed in on your recovery rotations, which the Raptors were very much not on Monday.
Thing is, Scottie Barnes, whose individual defensive leap has gone a little under the radar as the team has hemorrhaged big point totals, was about as stout against Giannis on Monday as any Raptor this side of Marc Gasol has been in the last decade. And yet, the double and (fail to) recover M.O. was deployed more or less the whole night through, powering Giannis’ 11-point, 12-rebound, 13-assist triple-double.
You make the game that simple for a dude that good, you’re toast.
As much as Rajaković has instilled some well-adhered to offensive principles into the team, he’s yet to really outline a sound plan for how Toronto is gonna get stops. That’s not to say he can’t get there. Coaches, like players, can evolve, and the revolving door of available guys along with a defense-bare roster haven’t exactly helped him lock in on a set design for the defense. But this is a team that yields the 28th-most corner threes and 24th-most rim shots as a percentage of the total looks taken against them in the league, and sports the 24th-ranked opponent shot quality per Cleaning the Glass. This isn’t like on offense where the Raps get high quality looks and just can’t convert; they give up the wrong kinds of shots, and they’re bad at contesting them.
I’m way less alarmed by the offense. Yeah, it’s looked pretty janky over the last two, but the skillsets on hand between the BBQ boys, Poeltl and Dick are too complementary for things to not look more cohesive, and probably soon. Right now, it seems like everyone’s operating in their own silos — an IQ or Barrett pick-and-roll here, a Scottie mid-range turnaround there. Once the team’s best actions start flowing into one another as they did when the core was healthy last year, the Darko Ball Machine should rise again.
And exactly none of it will matter if the defense can’t get itself on the rails. They don’t need to be great, or even good if the offense can churn out points like it can and should. But it certainly can’t be the doormat its been of late and hope to avoid the pitchfork-wielding mob for much longer.
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Today on the podcast Vivek Jacob joined me to talk about the loss to the Bucks, first impressions of the healthy starting five, the defense and much more! Enjoy the show!
