“Somebody, please help! My 12-32 basketball team is winning too good!”
That is, more or less, the mood of the more tank-forward corners of the Raptors fan base after the Raptors picked up their fourth win in five games on Thursday. And look, to some extent, I get it. Losses are valuable currency at the bottom of the league’s standings, where some masterful tanking is sure to go on down the stretch as the league’s saddest teams angle for the best odds of drafting Cooper Flagg in June — an almighty 14% chance, at best! How could you not sell your basketball soul for odds like that if your season is down the tubes anyway?
In the grand scheme, as much as I hate the realities of a system that incentivizes purposefully sucking, I think it’s pretty clear losing more than they win this year is going to end up a long-term blessing for the Raptors. While their in-house talent is surely better than the 20-win projection they’ve been flirting with for months, as this month of utterly competent play has show, the Raptors need a talent infusion, and this summer’s draft is as good a place as any to find it, even if high picks are never a surefire guarantor of a fortune reversal.
It’s because the lottery and the draft are so far from sure things that I just can’t get worked up about the team stringing together a couple weeks of winning play. It’s been lean in these parts all year. Before last night, the Raptors had one piddly road win to their name. They’ve been bad on offense, worse on defense, and even with 33% of their win total coming since last Monday, they’re the third-worst team in the NBA. Finally seeing some of this team’s work translate into wins after months of it not, frankly, kicks ass.
That’s especially true because of how these wins are coming, and because it seems clear this spell will be fleeting. Scottie Barnes is playing his best basketball right now, afforded a platform to ply his dynamic two-way trade by a supporting cast that’s hummin’. It’s been the type of investment-affirming run that, regardless of how the rest of the season goes, has to leave you feeling good about Barnes as a franchise pillar for the next half decade.
Had Barnes’ only stretch of walking the walk come over just 10 games post-face injury in the second month of the season, the mood around the soon-to-be maxed out man might not be so rosy. This month, during which he’s got the Raptors’ defending at a top-10 clip when he plays only to see the D drop off by 17.6 points per 100 when he sits, is valuable proof of concept, even if Barnes still needs help.
And if it’s a high draft pick you’re hoping can be that help, fear not. The Raptors are almost surely not gonna stay winning at this rate for very long. Part of their recent secret sauce has been competent veteran play from the likes of Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher and Kelly Olynyk. Even Davion Mitchell, the fourth of the Raptors’ likely trade chips, has chipped in some super helpful minutes during his latest stint filling in for the injured Immanuel Quickley.
In two weeks time, all or most of the vet crew is likely to be playing elsewhere. At which point, the Raptors will be right back to an already tried and true losing formula: playing rookies a whole bunch. Ja’Kobe Walter, Jonathan Mogbo, Jamal Shead, Jamison Battle and hell, even Ulrich Chomche, are all due for heavy post-deadline run if the Raptors do what’s expected of them. Rookies lose minutes. It’s one of the NBA’s great universal truths. Even with a fluffy last 20 games on the schedule, they’re going to lose their fare share of games or more. Tank fiends, rejoice.
So yeah, enjoy this almost definitely brief window of the basketball team doing what basketball teams ostensibly exist to do: winning basketball games. Toronto’s playing fun, interesting ball guided by their best and most important player, and that’s pretty cool. The time for stealth or even blatant standings sliding will come, and swiftly, once exuberant youth replaces steady handed adults in the rotation. In the mean time, savour the precious few wins while you can.
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Today on the podcast, I went solo to talk about the Raptors’ win over the Hawks. Enjoy the show, and have a great weekend!
