The 2023-24 Raptors were a sad husk of a team that lost a lot of games, and didn’t offer much of a pitch to stick it out for two and half hours three to four times a week, even on the nights where they won.
My how far we’ve come in just a few short months.
Despite a prolific night of flow-sapping by Tony Brothers and crew, this spritely bunch that doesn’t know any better made Friday’s 3-hour marathon with Philly that featured 99 total free throws into can’t-miss TV.
Even in a scheduled loss to the Wolves on the back-to-back the next night, we saw punch and resilience and the kinds of evolving young guy performances that’ll make this season well worth the time investment should they hold up. And all that happened with some key figures still on the shelf. For a team still putting its shoes on with the starting gun having already been fired, it’s been a wildly encouraging start.
Here’s what we learned about the Raptors over the first weekend of the new season.
The kids might be more than alright
It’s early, and we’ve still yet to see the highest drafted guy in the bunch, and one of them still isn’t of legal Ontario drinking age, but the 2024 rookie crew has all the makings of a vintage Ujiri-Webster class.
Expected rookie point guard turnover issues aside, Jamal Shead is a full-on gamer who may already be ensconcing himself into a much healthier version of this team’s rotation. Mogbo barely seems aware of what he’s capable of yet, but the athleticism and feel pop off the screen every time he hits the floor. I’m having a hard time thinking of a first week Raptors rookie performance that stoked the imagination quite like his electric 12-point, 9-board, 5-assist, 2-steal, 3-block, +21 line against the Sixers.
Battle has the look and feel of a rock-steady, triple-bombing reserve. Raptors bench guys just don’t hit shots like the end-of-clock possession-saver he drilled over Kyle Lowry in the fourth on Friday. What a story his rise has been.
By some measures, this season is already looking like a success. Finding one or two rotation players without a lottery pick in 2024 would have been an achievement. What if they’ve found four or more?
Ochai Agbaji is a new man
In the first half of the Raptors’ loss to the Wolves, Ochai Agbaji took a quick pass from Jakob Poeltl atop the arc leading into an elbow screen that launched Agbaji towards the rim for a soaring lefty finish. It’s a clip that could have easily been plucked from RJ Barrett’s tape from the last 10 months.
It seems Darko Rajakovic’s magical development pixie dust is at work again, this time transforming Agbaji from a three-point dependent wing who can’t hit threes into an absolute titan of rim scoring. Agbaji’s taken just 27% of his shots from deep to start the year; with Utah, more than half of his looks came from downtown. With this profile, his threes — like the trio he nailed on Saturday — are the gravy and not the meat of his game.
The fat’s been trimmed, the finishing’s been honed (69.2% on his twos, all taken from inside 10 feet), and Agbaji looks like a rotation-level NBA player just days before the deadline for the Raptors to pick up his 4th-year option.
Turnover trouble
Youthful exuberance is, for the most part, a feature and not a bug of this team. Where their greenness is killing them right now, though, is in the turnover department. Toronto leads by several percentage points as the league’s most turnover-prone squad; 21.7% of all Raptors possessions have resulted in a giveaway. That’s bad.
If they can curb it just a bit, and some other early season indicators hold up, there’s a possession battle monster of a team lying in wait. No team has been better on the glass through the first week than the Raptors. They rank 2nd in offensive rebounding rate (40.1%), 6th on the defensive glass and number one in total rebounding by a mile (56.9 REB%, 2nd place is at 54.3).
Immanuel Quickley and his José Calderón-like assist-to-turnover ratio should return soon, and RJ Barrett’s another sure hand. This group playing this offense will never be a ball security giant, but a little steadiness could go a long way toward channeling this team’s chaotic energy into something more dependable.
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Today on the podcast Vivek Jacob joined me to talk about the Raptors’ 1-1 weekend, our biggest takeaways, and The Good, The Bad & The Hmmm from this weekend in Raptors ball. Enjoy the show, and enjoy watching Jonathan Mogbo cement himself as a Jokic stopper tonight.
