WASHINGTON — Once upon a time, there was a thought in the NBA that teams could win with small lineups, and "positionless" basketball might make the traditional centre obsolete.
Yeah, the math won that one.
Turns out having seven-foot dudes in a sport where the rim is 10 feet off the ground is a good thing. And if the other team has a bunch of quality bigs, you'd better go get some too.
The New York Knicks' best player on their championship team was a six-foot point guard, but they had three playable centres on their roster and two that were crucial to their success. The San Antonio Spurs have seven-foot-four Victor Wembanyama, but went and signed another seven-footer (Luke Kornet) in free agency and drafted another big man this past summer.
The Oklahoma City Thunder? They are the early favourites for the 2027 title in part because they have three quality seven-footers, including impressive seven-foot-three rookie Aday Mara.
The list goes on.
Which is, in part, what made the Raptors' 112-102 win Friday over the much-improved Washington Wizards so interesting here in the early stages of the season.
As part of their makeover from perhaps the league’s most egregious tankers to a team that should be at least competitive, the Wizards now boast three quality big men themselves: 10-time all-star Anthony Davis, promising second-year centre Alex Sarr and former No. 1 pick Deandre Ayton.
The Raptors remain stuck at one in the form of Jakob Poeltl and have their fingers crossed that his balky back can hold up for an entire year after playing just 46 games last season.
The Raptors have solved this riddle before. Part of their relative success against Cleveland in the first round of the playoffs was managing the Cavaliers' all-star duo of Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.
They did it by committee then, leveraging the strength, size and defensive versatility of Scottie Barnes and Collin Murray-Boyles in particular.
It was a formula they used again with great success in what ended up being a hard-fought but encouraging victory over Washington (1-1) that improved the Raptors to 2-0 before they head to Minnesota to match up with the Timberwolves on Sunday.
Davis has been a longtime Raptors killer and manhandled this group a year ago when he was still with the Mavericks. But whatever lessons the Raptors have learned since have carried over, as Davis — who opened the season with 34 points and 12 rebounds on Wednesday — was limited to nine points on 3-of-12 shooting while committing four turnovers. The Wizards were minus-13 in his 32 minutes. Sarr had four points and five rebounds, while Ayton had four points and six rebounds. Between the three of them, they only had two offensive rebounds, both by Ayton.
“They’re a pretty good team, but just (went in) knowing we had to rebound, that was one of our main points of emphasis,” said Barnes, who had 14 rebounds, blocked two shots and had two steals to go along with his game-high 28 points. “We just play hard, that’s all you can do. Play hard, try to be as physical as you can within what the refs allow.”
They all had moments. Poeltl (six points, nine rebounds) has looked healthy and quick on his feet by his standards. The Wizards looked for Davis on a couple of early post-ups, and they went nowhere, with Murray-Boyles holding his ground. Davis also tried unsuccessfully to back Poeltl down, and he locked him up long enough that Kawhi Leonard could sneak in on the weak side and snare one of the Raptors' 12 steals as they forced the Wizards into 20 turnovers. Even some of the Raptors' smaller players bought in as Immanuel Quickley fronted Davis on a switch while Ja’Kobe Walter came over to help from behind. When the Wizards decided to reverse the ball Murray-Boyles anticipated the pass, shot the gap and went the other way for a dunk.
The second-year forward said he feels like the Raptors' lack of size is a state of mind, and they don’t have it.
“We don’t feel small at all,” said Murray-Boyles, who stands six-foot-seven but plays bigger. He finished with eight points and five rebounds to go along with three steals in another stellar defensive night that saw him finish at plus-21 in 18 minutes that were limited by foul trouble. “We use it as an advantage. We move around them; at the other end we stretch them out as much as possible. We don’t see (our size) as a disadvantage at all.”
The Raptors held the Wizards to 38 per cent shooting (including 12-of-38 from three) and used their defensive energy to control the game from the outset. They led by seven after the first quarter and by as much as 17 in the second.
The Wizards got back into it — eventually pulling within a point with 35 seconds left in the third quarter as Trae Young and former Raptors two-way player Justin Champagnie combined on a quick 9-0 run.
The Raptors helped the Wizards' cause with some shaky shooting (7-of-34 from three), a penchant for fouling (the Wizards outscored the Raptors 30-17 from the free-throw line) and some sloppy turnovers in transition, including several by Barnes, who tied his career high with eight turnovers, half of the Raptors' total. He was otherwise brilliant, scoring 11 points in the fourth quarter as the Raptors were able to pull away.
“It was nasty, it was a nasty win,” said RJ Barrett, who added 23 points, nine rebounds and four assists on 9-of-16 shooting, providing some much-needed punch on a night when Leonard (16 points, four turnovers) was still finding his legs and Quickley (5-of-15, 0-of-6 from three) couldn’t find his jump shot. “We couldn’t make any shots but we just hung tough, played defence and figured it out.”
Sort of like how they seem to have figured out how to best defend against some of the NBA’s bigger teams — lessons they’ll have to revisit regularly this season.
“Scott started on him, CMB got some action, just really try to make his catches tough,” said Barrett. “Try to make him as uncomfortable as possible.”
The Raptors seem comfortable making opposing bigs uncomfortable, which could be an essential trait as they try to navigate the upper reaches of a league where big lineups are very much back.
Three-point Grange
How many All-Defensive teams are there again? Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic’s belief in his players and determination to promote them is one of his trademarks at this stage, but his enthusiasm can occasionally runneth over. When he was being asked about Barnes’ defensive versatility, he stopped the question halfway through and made a pronouncement: “I’ll tell you right away: Scottie Barnes is going to be first-team All-Defence in the NBA, Collin Murray-Boyles is going to be third-team All-Defence, and Kawhi Leonard is going to be second-team All-Defence. So we’re going to have three players on the three all-defensive teams this year, so that tells you a lot about their versatility and what these guys can do on the court for us.”
We take his point; the only complication is that only 10 players get recognized on All-Defence teams at the end of the year — five on the first team and five on the second team. There is no third team. But the spirit of his comment stands: Barnes was second-team All-Defence last year and had a great case to be on the first team, while Leonard has twice been Defensive Player of the Year and has been All-Defence seven times, and Murray-Boyles is quickly gaining recognition as an All-NBA-level defender. If the Raptors keep forcing teams into an NBA-leading 25 turnovers a game as they are so far, someone is going to get the credit.
Team Canada I: Playing on the Wizards (at least over the past three years anyway) has been a good way to develop in the shadows, but Kyshawn George is proving to be too good a player to keep under wraps for long. Putting up 14.8 points, 5.1 rebounds and 4.9 assists with efficient shooting splits like he did last season is hard to ignore, even on a 17-win team. George — who was raised in Switzerland but whose father is from Montreal and who is part of the Canadian men’s team pool for the 2028 Olympics — showed his two-chops last season, but with Young and Davis to share the floor with, George is excited to explore the limits of his game.
“It’s an opportunity playing with those guys,” said George, who finished with 11 points (2-of-9 shooting) and three assists with eight turnovers against the Raptors' aggressive defence. “And we’re going to make sure not to waste it. They make everyone’s work easier with their gravity and their level of play. I mean, I got like four easy dunks last game (in the season opening win over the Milwaukee Bucks) just because all I had to do was cut at the right place and the right time to get the ball.”
Team Canada II: There can be a downside for a young player as the roster improves around you. Coming into an NBA team in the midst of an epic tank does have the benefit of providing a pathway to playing time. Will Riley, the six-foot-eight forward out of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., played sporadically in the first half of last season but averaged 28.5 minutes a game in the second half of the year, averaging 14.3 points per game, going off for 31 and 30 points on back-to-back games in April. The Wizards finished 4-37, but for a 19-year-old, the playing time was invaluable. But the stakes are higher this year, and Riley was DNP-CD (Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision) in the opener on Wednesday and played just the final minute of the game after the benches were emptied Friday.
“We’ve got a deep roster, and that’s a strength of our team, but opportunity is going to come for everybody,” said Wizards head coach Brian Keefe. “But he’s a worker. He’s constantly in the gym. He’s very intentional about how he goes after his craft.”
