Barnes shines, Nwora and Dick show encouraging signs for shorthanded Raptors

At shootaround on the morning of Feb. 7, 2019, Jonas Valanciunas declared that he would be returning that night from a dislocated thumb that had sidelined him for 25 games. Hours later, Valanciunas was packing his bags, as the Raptors had traded him to the Memphis Grizzlies as part of the Marc Gasol trade.

It was a whirlwind day in a whirlwind week in a whirlwind season. In the days that followed, the Raptors' post-deadline roster was in such flux that sparsely-known CBA rules came into effect and Steve Sladkowski of the Toronto punk band PUP was able to claim — with legitimacy — that he had secured a Gasol Raptors jersey in New York that weekend before the Spanish centre himself did.

On the night of Feb. 7 in Atlanta, though, the roster was just … empty.

Valanciunas, C.J. Miles, Delon Wright, Greg Monroe and Malachi Richardson had all been traded away, Gasol wasn’t there yet, Chris Boucher, then a two-way player, was with Raptors 905, and Kawhi Leonard was sitting out with a sore knee. The Raptors blew the Hawks out regardless, because they were very good and very deep, and even 26 combined minutes for Patrick McCaw and Jordan Loyd – playing 13 percent of his career NBA minutes that night – couldn’t slow a soon-to-be champion.

On Sunday, the Raptors were once again playing thin in Atlanta near the trade deadline. It was… different than 2019.

This time, the Raptors’ lack of players was not due to trade or luxury-tax shirking roster-trimming. Three starters in Immanuel Quickley (quad contusion), RJ Barrett (knee swelling) and Jakob Poeltl (ankle sprain) were all sidelined due to injury, with two players on assignment with Raptors 905 (Javon Freeman-Liberty and Kira Lewis Jr.) and a sixth technically with the 905 and also inured (Markquis Nowell). The Raptors nominally had 12 players, but Otto Porter Jr. and Garrett Temple are firmly in emergency (or garbage-time) only roles, while Jalen McDaniels is so far out of the rotation that he may as well be Josh McDaniels.

But Sunday’s 126-125 loss to the Hawks still had a lot of charm from the Raptors’ side. It wasn’t nearly the same as in 2019, when a chaotic day and thin roster was a necessary (and amusing) checkpoint at a very fun time in the franchise. It wasn’t like similar nights in the Tampa Tank season, either, though, where Khem Birch played small forward and you had to squint at Malachi Flynn and Paul Watson Jr. to think any of it would matter at all down the line.

In this case, the Raptors got strong performances from a number of young players who could be part of their future. If nothing else, they are players who are showing they know the opportunity that sits at their feet right now, ranging anywhere from the chance to become the unquestioned face of a franchise to the chance to extend an NBA career past a two-way contract or salary-matching trade throw-in.

It starts, as all things do right now, with Scottie Barnes, who was a monster defensively. That included Barnes succeeding on a pet play of his, faking as if he was going to draw a charge against Jalen Johnson before pulling out of it and defending. Johnson was perplexed, and the Hawks got nothing out of a key possession. Barnes’ versatility and physicality were on full display at both ends, as he dished eight assists in a variety of fashions and scored 24 points on just 14 field-goal attempts. Late, Barnes welcomed contact, as he does, finishing through Johnson when the Hawks scrambled to avoid switching a smaller defender on to him. The Raptors continue to lose these games, but the reps as a two-way ace are invaluable.

An unlikely bench trio also emerged in support.

Jontay Porter was back to reliability in the backup centre role, stroking three threes, dishing three assists, and generally being the heady player that’s made him look like a long-term reserve piece until the last few games. It feels safe to say his story will continue the rest of the year, and probably beyond.

Gradey Dick, meanwhile, seems to be learning by the week and had what was probably his best game of the season. He scored 15 off the bench, made a number of nice passes, particularly in transition. The Hawks attacked him enough defensively for Darko Rajakovic to have to call for more aggressive double-teams than he might otherwise prefer, but you’ll have to live with that for now. Dick also once again got to close out a close game, save for some offence-defence subs.

The biggest surprise was Jordan Nwora, who scored a season-high 24 points and added nine rebounds and six assists. He is still finding his footing in the offensive system, which can lead to occasional miscues and the odd missed read. Nwora doesn’t get quite the same grace of youth as the others, given that he’s 25 and in year four of playing rotation minutes in the league. Still, the book on Nwora has been that he’s a big shooter who hasn’t been able to establish a second NBA skill; on Sunday, he showed a bit more.

The three of those players together contributed to a huge bench advantage for Toronto. Atlanta had to start Bogdan Bogdanovic due to a late scratch for Dejounte Murray, and the Hawks bench put up a goose egg outside of Onyeka Okongwu. (They were also 2-of-19 on threes outside of Bogdanovic.) Toronto won the bench scoring battle 56-10, something that’s been quite rare this year, and more notably they won the bench minutes as a team significantly. That kept this game close down to the wire and certainly saved the entertainment value.

Ironically for this type of team at this time of year, it was the veterans who hurt the Raptors most in the loss. Bruce Brown had a bizarrely rough outing and still played 37 minutes. For a smart player, he continues to have a lot of hiccups finding his footing, along with some slippery fingers. It’ll come, unless he’s gone before it can. Dennis Schroder, meanwhile, closed out a decent game with a familiar pattern of doing too much in crunch time, leading him to foul out on a key charging call. Chris Boucher was hard to notice outside of turning the ball over on the break. And Thad Young, who can do no wrong in these books, can’t be your third-best player every night anymore, it turns out (gasp).

The game was also bookended by glowing tributes to Poeltl in the form of awful paint protection. Atlanta passed their season average for dunks in a game about 10 minutes into the first quarter, and their 24 points in the paint in the opening frame just kept swelling to 76 by the end. The Hawks got to the rim at a 99^th-percentile rate and shot 73.3 percent when they got there, untenable numbers even for a Raptors team without a true starting big.

Predictably, Saddiq Bey ended the game with a putback dunk after Brown and Barnes had done a nice job forcing Young into a tough floater. (An aside: the Raptors were only ahead because of a bizarre Young turnover seconds prior, where he seemed to expect an intentional foul to be coming and just threw the ball away to Dick.) Bey is one of the NBA’s best offensive rebounders, overall and per inch, and he now has 13 offensive boards in three games against the Raptors. Atlanta had 20 overall in the game, which you’re rarely going to survive.

To call the game a mixed bag for Toronto misses the larger picture right now. Whether you care about the play-in or not, or whether your preference is to convey the pick they owe the Spurs in 2024 or 2025, it’s important not to ignore another 36 games of player development ahead. The outcomes themselves are less material than the individual growth, and through that lens, you’re probably more encouraged with Dick, Nwora, Porter and Barnes here than you are upset they lost a one-point game to a similarly bad and banged-up team.

This figures to be a long trip. There are five more games on the road, culminating the day before the trade deadline (Feb. 8). There will be nights that look like this, nights that look more like the fateful 2019 night in Atlanta, and, unfortunately, nights that look like late in the Tampa season. Whether you prefer the play-in or the losses, positive nights for young players should be front of mind the rest of the way. I’d call Sunday a good start to this new-ish dynamic.

Basically, the more nights ahead where Dick gets a kiss on the forehead from Barnes because they’re playing well together, the better.