Raptors wrap up first half with more questions than answers about direction

It should all get easier from here, but the choices don’t.

The Toronto Raptors have reached the halfway point of their season and, well, how couldn’t it be better than what the first 41 games delivered?

From the highs of training camp when lots of smart NBA watchers — and the Raptors themselves — believed a strong finish last season would carry over and position Toronto to be a factor in the improved Eastern Conference, to the lows of their skid through December and early January, it’s been a strange trip, with highs as few and far between as you would expect from a team yet to win three games in a row.

As the perfect punctuation point, the Raptors announced Tuesday that Otto Porter Jr. had season-ending surgery on his dislocated second toe on his left foot.

Porter Jr. was one of the reasons for optimism heading into the season. That his year amounts to missing the exhibition season and the first seven games of the regular season, an eight-game stint in which the Raptors went 4-4 while Porter Jr. averaged 5 points a game on 50 per cent shooting in 18.3 minutes while working back to full speed, before missing the next two months with his toe problem, is fitting.

He showed some flashes of the IQ and shooting that Toronto was hoping to add when they signed him to a two-year deal worth $12.3 million with the 29-year-old coming of a strong season with the Golden State Warriors, but really, who knows.

“It’s disappointing. He’s disappointed. We thought we were getting somebody who really fit what we needed: some length, some great shooting, some veteran experience, some solid defence, good rebounding,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “There are a lot of things.”

Like the Raptors season as a whole to this point, the idea of Porter Jr. was a lot more compelling than the realty.

They officially crossed the halfway with their 132-120 win over the visiting Charlotte Hornets on Tuesday. It was close most of the way and was a one-point game until midway through the fourth quarter when Toronto ripped off a 14-0 run that featured two threes from O.G. Anunoby and two more from Fred VanVleet, sandwiched around a score by Pascal Siakam that put the Raptors up 15 with three minutes to play.

It was Toronto’s second straight win and improved their record to 18-23 with 41 games down and 41 left to play. The Hornets fell to 11-31.

Toronto was led by Pascal Siakam – their first-half MVP – who finished with 28 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, while Gary Trent Jr. and O.G. Anunoby added 24 and 22 points each. Terry Rozier had 33 for the visitors while LaMelo Ball had 24 points and 14 assists.

The Raptors perfectly executed the formula they have been sticking to all season: they won the offensive rebounds battle (18-6); the turnover category (11-10) and took more shots than their opponents (91-86). But the swing stat was their season-high 20 made threes (on 44 attempts), an element that has been missing for the league’s worst three-point shooting team.

Also true to form? The league’s worst offence (and second-worst three-point shooting team) shot 54.7 per cent against the Raptors and was 15-of-35 from deep.

Toronto will start their second half hosting Charlotte on Thursday at Scotiabank Arena in the second half of their two-game mini-series.

It’s the kind of schedule break the Raptors have been desperate for. In addition to being last in offence, the Hornets came 26th in defence and tied for second-to-last in wins. They weren't intending to be a draft lottery team after winning 43 games last season, but injuries to LaMelo Ball and Gordon Hayward, plus legal problems for Miles Bridges, have the Hornets in prime position to be earn a top draft pick, though with their woeful draft history who knows what they’ll do with it.

So, if Toronto takes care of business – keeping in mind they have yet to sweep a two-game series this season – they should start the second half of the season with at least the hint of some momentum.

But what to make of it all?

The Raptors first half was so disappointing and frustrating that what should be a soft spot in a difficult schedule may not be an opportunity but a trap.

Two wins against the lottery-bound Hornets could make it that much more difficult for the Raptors to get in on the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes, as team across the bottom quarter of the league jockey to be in position to draft the 7-foot-4 French phenom.

With contract crunches coming in some shape or form for everyone at the top of the Raptors rotation, the over-arching decision for those in charge will be how much to invest in a team whose upside is so hard to see from here right now.

Is it time to buy, sell, stand pat?

After all, Toronto is as close to finishing with a bottom-four record – and the lottery odds that come with it – as they are of moving up the standings and finishing sixth, earning the final playoff spot that comes with it.

But winning fosters hope. “What's behind this is behind us, we got to look to the future and hopefully our best basketball is in front of us,” said VanVleet, who led the Raptors with eight assists. “Put something together and nobody will remember what the first half of the season looked like.”

Certainly, the Raptors aren’t as bad as their first-half results would show. Injuries have been an issue – Toronto has used 18 different starting lineups and have only recently enjoyed a run of full health for their top six or seven players.

Add to that the Raptors have had the most difficult first-half schedule in terms of their opponent quality – on aggregate the teams they played had a .530 winning percentage, the highest in the league.

Could the Raptors go on a run in the second half of the season like they did a year ago, when they went 26-15 in their final 41 games?

It’s not inconceivable. Helping their cause will be a reversal in the schedule strength from the first half when the winning percentage of their opponents is .483 – the ‘easiest’ league-wide, according to data compiled by John Schumann of NBA.com 

Pulling it off depends more on the Raptors than their opponents. They need to stay healthy, obviously, and it will likely require Nurse leaning heavily on his starters if they do. Four of the Raptors five starters would have finished in the top-10 in minutes per game last season had O.G. Anunoby played enough games to qualify. Siakam and VanVleet tied for the league lead and Gary Trent Jr. brought up the rear in 14^th, place.

This season Siakam, VanVleet and Anunoby rank 1-3 in minutes played per game, with Trent Jr. and Barnes rising.

The Raptors bench has been mostly a non-factor this season, with the Raptors ranking 26^th in bench scoring (after being 30^th last season) and their bench standing 29^th in both effective field goal percentage and opponents’ effective field goal percentage – though those marks are consistent with the team as whole.

There’s a chicken-and-egg element to Nurse and his bench play: if he trusted them more maybe they would play better. If they performed better, he’d trust them more.

Tuesday was a great example of how it could work: None of the starters played more than 36 minutes (Siakam) and five players off the bench played at least 11 minutes as Precious Achiuwa and Chris Boucher led the way with 13 points and 12 points respectively.

“I think it's all about trust and rhythm,” said Achiuwa, who is working his way back into peak condition after missing 24 games with an ankle injury and looked sharp with three triples. “Once the bench finds its rhythm … then a lot of guys basically don't have to overdo stuff, don't have to put a lot of pressure on their bodies, or minutes, to log that many minutes, you know you have guys who are going to do the same thing as any of the starters when they come out of the game.”

But with the runway to make a run dwindling, chances are that Nurse will go with the tried and true.

“I think we are who we are,” Nurse said. “I think the biggest thing I’m concerned with is can we sit here and look at where we are and fix any issues, fix the problems, improve areas that need improvement, maximize our strength, all those things?

“It’s gonna take some better individual play from a lot of guys. A lot of the focus is on the main guys and all that stuff. But a lot of guys need to not only get back to where they were, they’re supposed to be getting better … there are a lot of things that need to come together individually and there are a lot of things that need to come together as a team. To be honest with you.”

And if it does, can you trust it? What would a strong finish against a soft schedule made possible by leaning heavily on an over-taxed group of starters mean anyway?

The Raptors did that a year ago, stood pat in the off-season believing they had found something. Look where they are now.

Maybe it’s time to try something different.