Rebuilding Raptors will win if they can focus on losing

TORONTO — You have to go back to the 2011-12 season to find the last time the Toronto Raptors had an opportunity like this staring at them, just waiting for them to grab it.

In fact, this one — as the Raptors get ready to lift the curtain on the 2024-25 season, their 30th, as you might have heard — is even better.

Waiting for them, like a purple-hued mirage, is a luxuriously top-heavy draft class, thick with talent that could (let’s have our imaginations run on a little bit here) provide the perfect bookend to talent for Scottie Barnes: an All-Star-calibre running mate with four years of rookie contract runway. The best value play possible in a league with an increasingly rigid salary cap is young stars on rookie contracts.

You don’t think Cooper Flagg would help put the Raptors on a championship trajectory again? How about Ace Bailey, or V.J. Edgecombe? These are some of the names who will be getting plenty of chatter between now and the draft next summer and there are plenty of others.

Add one of those mythical pieces to a ready-made roster replete with young players on reasonable deals, and it’s not hard to imagine the Raptors actually delivering on team president Masai Ujiri’s oft-repeated mantra: “We will win again in Toronto.”

The only obstacle, of course, is an 82-game regular season, where every win or loss can carry a butterfly effect with far-reaching consequences.

Back in 2011-12, the Raptors were coming off a 22-win season, with expectations so low they were almost underwater. The shiny beacon then was University of Kentucky star Anthony Davis, the clear-cut favourite to go first overall.

With only a 66-game, lockout-shortened regular season standing in the way, then-Raptors president Bryan Colangelo had eyes set on possibly drafting a generational player.

A wrinkle in the plan was incoming head coach Dwane Casey, hired to replace Jay Triano after helping the Dallas Mavericks to the 2011 NBA title as the architect of the defence that slowed down LeBron James and the Miami Heat.

Casey, determined to make good on his second head-coaching chance after a short stint with the Minnesota Timberwolves, coached as if his career depended on it. Which, in some ways, it did.

Back then the draft lottery was a simple system — the worse your record, the better your odds at a higher pick — compared to now, when the odds have been flattened somewhat to offset the incentive for teams to simply race to the bottom. 

The 2011-12 Raptors weren’t very good (they ended up winning 23 games, or a 29-win pace over a normal season) but they weren’t completely horrible either, and if Casey got the memo about positioning his team for the draft, he didn’t read it.

The Charlotte Hornets were historically bad, compiling a 7-59 record, and ended up with a 25 per cent chance at the No. 1 pick. In the end, they picked second and — being Charlotte — selected Michael Kidd-Gilchrist ahead of Bradley Beal, who went third.

But after that, the bottom of the league was wide open. New Orleans, with only the fourth-best odds, jumped to first and ended up taking Davis at No. 1.

Had the Raptors won three fewer games, they would have had the second-best lottery odds; two fewer would have them in the mix for third or fourth (depending on tiebreakers). One less win and they’d be picking fifth or sixth.

Instead, Casey’s Raptors had a 6-5 stretch at the end of March and into April, and tacked on one more meaningless win in their final game of the season over New Jersey, which ended up with one less victory on the season and picked sixth. That loss to New Jersey still resonates among the hardest of the Raptors' hardcore fans: Ben Uzoh, now a Raptors scout, played 46 minutes and recorded a 12-point, 12-assist, 11-rebound triple-double with four steals. In a 60-game NBA career, he scored more points only once, while notching his career highs in the other four categories. Journeyman forward Ed Davis scored 24 points, tying his career high for a career that spanned 12 seasons. The Raptors scored 98 points and won by 31.

After losing a tiebreaker with Golden State, the Raptors ended up picking eighth and took Terrence Ross, who ended up being a decent NBA rotation player, and who eventually helped the Raptors acquire Serge Ibaka in a trade. So, not all bad.

But the Raptors missed out on a chance to jump up to pick Davis or Beal.

And the Nets pick? It ended up being sixth overall and was used by the Portland Trail Blazers to take a crafty, athletic point guard out of Weber State named Damian Lillard. Twelve seasons and seven all-NBA selections later, that late-season push by Casey and the Raptors seems ill-advised.

I bring this up because in a season when so much is going to be made about the franchise’s history (and yes, that says plenty about its present) with commemorative jerseys and Vince Carter having his retired and whatever else is being planned, the essential thing for the Raptors as they head into 2024-25 is that that they take some lessons from their past.

For example: the best way to acquire really, really good players is to draft them.

Kyle Lowry is arguably the franchise’s most transformative player, in that he elevated a team with middling prospects into a perennial contender and, eventually, with the right help, a champion.

And yes, he was acquired by trade in a deal that Colangelo doesn’t get enough credit for.

But outside of that?

The Raptors' roll call of players that would be in the running to be part of a 30th-anniversary all-time roster are almost all mid-to-high lottery picks.

Damon Stoudamire (seventh), Marcus Camby (second), Tracy McGrady (ninth), Vince Carter (fifth), Chris Bosh (fourth), DeMar DeRozan (ninth), Jonas Valanciunas (fifth) and Scottie Barnes (fourth). The most significant single trade in franchise history involved trading a player taken in the lottery (Jakob Poeltl, ninth in 2016) in the deal for Kawhi Leonard.

The Raptors have never had — and very likely won’t ever have given the collapse of the free-agent market under the current collective-bargaining agreement — a trajectory-changing free-agent signing. Ujiri has always been publicly bullish on Toronto as a desirable NBA destination, but acknowledged when the team opened training camp that waiting to be saved in free agency is not a viable team-building strategy.

“When teams go through (rebuilding), you go out and set the tone of how you play and how you want the culture of your team to be set,” he said. “You hope for the best, but we know, we all know, what reality is in this league, and the draft is a way for us to build teams and to acquire players, especially in a market like our market.”

So, yeah, let’s hope that the Raptors do a lot of interesting things this season, but don’t lose sight of the fact that they were a 25-win team a year ago and they need to add talent. The draft is the best way to do it.

The other lesson that bears repeating — shouting, actually — is that no single player is good enough to win big on their own.

The Vince Carter experience in Toronto was many things, but perhaps the most relevant takeaway 20 years after he was traded for some under-inflated basketballs and a laptop with a cracked screen is that he was asked to do too much. 

When McGrady left in free agency in the summer of 1999, the choice was made (defensible at the time) to surround Carter with veteran help. It worked for a while but, in the end, absent a second star, the Raptors' time in Carter’s sun was short-lived.

For his part, Carter thrived in New Jersey, playing alongside Hall of Fame point guard Jason Kidd, making three more All-Star teams and securing his own spot in the Hall. 

The people in charge of running the Raptors know all of this. It’s the same group that famously engineered the ‘Tampa Tank’, which included a 2-12 slide to the finish that helped position themselves to draft Barnes. It’s why Ujiri didn’t hesitate when asked what adjective would best describe the upcoming season.

“I would use the word rebuilding. That's the right word to do,” he said. “I think we have a clear path now going forward … it's rebuilding: young team, growing team. I think we set a path that we went into the draft last year and got a couple of young players, and we want to continue to grow and build this team around Scottie, who is 23 years old.”

But here’s the challenge facing the Raptors on their mission as they get set to host the Cleveland Cavaliers on opening night Wednesday.

Can they help Barnes grow and develop without compromising their best chances to add the kind of potential star that could play alongside him in his prime?

In other words, can they play both meaningful basketball and lose enough that they end up in prime position at draft time next June?

The math is pretty simple on this. Even now that the draft-lottery odds have been altered to disincentivize teams from sprinting to the worst record possible, losing more games is still a path to a better draft pick.

If the Raptors finish with the league’s worst record, they have a 100 per cent chance of picking in the top five in a draft widely considered five deep in All-Star level prospects. If they have the third-worst record, they have a 77 per cent chance of picking in the top five. If they have the fifth-worst record, they have just a 44.3 per cent chance, and on and on.

There are plenty of exceptions, and examples of elite players being taken outside the top five or the top 10 or even deeper in the draft. The Raptors won the 2019 NBA title without a single player taken in the draft lottery on their roster, an NBA record that may never be broken. But, crucially, they were lottery picks or players taken in the lottery that were used to acquire the likes of Kyle Lowry, Leonard and Marc Gasol.

So, amid all the optimism that naturally accompanies the opening of the regular season and the excitement about classic jerseys and recognizing Carter and the possibilities for Barnes taking another step and RJ Barrett picking up where he left off last season and Gradey Dick blossoming in his second season and Immanuel Quickley being a full-time starting NBA point guard, the main thing should be the main thing: keeping an eye on what it will take to stay in the mix for a chance at a top lottery pick and a player who can complement the aforementioned group for years to come.

Can they do it, is the question. Will they remain committed? Understandably, players want to prove they aren’t the team that was kicked around last season.

“I think fans and people around the league will recognize us for how hard we play,” said Quickley, before making his one pre-season start last week.

And the Raptors, for all their flaws — a shortage of reliable three-point shooting, questionable perimeter defence, a roster with perhaps seven proven rotation pieces — aren’t hopeless. Estimates for their pre-season win totals range from 28 to 35. Some outlets have the Raptors pegged for the final play-in spot in the Eastern Conference, which automatically would knock them out of the top five in the draft odds, and realistically would see the Raptors picking in the back half of the 14-team lottery.

Barnes, coming off an All-Star season, will be motivated to build on that and even earn all-NBA honours, which would bump the value of his off-season extension from $225 million to $270 million. The best way to do that is to ball out on a team that exceeds expectations. Dick has shown signs he’s built on his encouraging finish to last season, while Poeltl looks steady as ever.

Working against those goals is a murderous open to their schedule. The Raptors play 12 of their first 20 games on the road. More significantly, 22 of their first 25 opponents won at least 46 games last season. The only team in that group that has noticeably regressed is the Los Angeles Clippers, and the Raptors play them on the road.

The schedule remains full of potholes almost continuously through the All-Star break in February.

At which point the Raptors' real test might come as their schedule turns and the final 20 starts feature 15 against teams that were outside the play-in picture last season, many of which (we see you Washington, Portland, Brooklyn) have already signalled they will be looking to finish their season with the best draft odds possible.

Which is where the echoes of the 2011-12 season may ring out most loudly. A strong finish might be a feel-good ointment after a season of bumps and bruises, but don’t be fooled again.

For the Raptors to return to past peaks, the motto for this season should be time-worn: no pain, no gain.