What's at stake for Raptors as games get tougher to lose

It has finally arrived: the part of the Toronto Raptors schedule where even losing would be difficult. 

Fittingly it tipped off in Washington where the Raptors were hosted by the Wizards, who have been determined to hold the pole position on drafting first overall all season, while on Wednesday they head to Brooklyn for the first of two critical games they have remaining against Nets that will go a long way to determining each team’s lottery odds. 

Things unfolded as expected as the Raptors outlasted the Wizards 112-104 to break a four-game losing streak and improve their record to 25-47. The Wizards lost for the fifth straight time to fall to 15-56. 

Each team did their 'best.' The Wizards have flashed some glimpse of respectability when they have veterans Khris Middleton and Marcus Smart in the lineup — seven of their 15 wins have come since the trade deadline when they acquired the duo in trades designed to add some draft equity. But Middleton didn’t see the floor in the fourth quarter, Smart played just 94 seconds and Jordan Poole, who led all scorers with 23 points, didn’t see the floor in the fourth quarter either. 

Meanwhile the Raptors pulled starters Jakob Poeltl (23 points, 11 rebounds on 10-of-13 shooting), Scottie Barnes (13 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists on 5-of-16 shooting) and Immanuel Quickley (21 points, seven assists on 5-of-16 shooting) with just over four minutes gone in the fourth quarter and the Raptors leading by two. 

And when Raptors pushed their lead to nine while relying on their youngsters, Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic pulled Jamal Shead (14 points, three assists) with four minutes left and let his team finish the game without a point guard. 

It made no difference. 

From the moment the NBA schedule came out back in August, the final stretch of the season gave all the appearances of a gauntlet — in a matter of speaking — for the Raptors as they headed into what was planned to be a rebuilding season. 

Things have played out largely as expected. The schedule looked remarkably difficult through the first third of the season, and certainly unfolded as such, with the Raptors playing 23 of their first 26 games against teams that had won at least 46 games the season before. 

As the losses mounted, the silver lining came into full view: At the Raptors' low ebb, they were 8-31 and would have had the third-best odds at the draft lottery with a 14 per cent chance at picking first, a 52 per cent chance at picking in the top four and a guarantee of picking no worse than seventh. 

But everything that goes down must come up, at least when it comes to the relative balance of the NBA schedule. 

With so many games against so many quality teams stacked up early, math said that the Raptors schedule would balance out in the latter portion. It has in a big way, with the Raptors playing by far the league’s easiest schedule since the all-star break, a glitch made even more pronounced when teams like the Philadelphia 76ers, Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs joined the tanking ranks after significant injuries to star players ruined any hopes of a post-season run.

And while the quality of the Raptors opponents hasn’t been the only reason they’ve played .500 basketball since Jan. 13, it’s been a factor. With the win Monday the Raptors are 8-2 against teams projected to finish outside of the play-in tournament.

The catch to all of this, of course, is that the schedule keeps getting easier from here. Including the Wizards, the aggregate winning percentage of the Raptors remaining 11 opponents was .369, which is a 30-win pace. 

The Raptors have: 

Two more against Charlotte (.254); two more against Brooklyn (.319) and one more left with Philadelphia (.319), San Antonio (.443), Portland (.444), Chicago (.437), Dallas (.486), with their toughest test being Detroit (.556). 

The good news, from the point of view of the lottery odds, is that Toronto has a healthy cushion between where they stand in seventh and falling back to eighth or ninth. Before the ball went up Monday the Raptors were six games behind Miami (10th) and seven behind Chicago (ninth). Even if they ran the table, the Raptors would be in little danger of moving past seventh in the lottery odds.

It’s in the other direction where things get interesting, as the Raptors are a game-and-a-half up on Brooklyn (sixth) and two games up on Philadelphia (fifth), each of whom lost Monday.

It will be interesting to see who the Raptors have available against the Nets Wednesday, which is a ‘must-lose’ game by draft lottery standings. Fortunately, from the Raptors' point of view, the draft lottery doesn’t use a tiebreaker system for teams with identical records. Instead, they take the total number of combinations assigned to each team and divide them by the number of teams with the same record. In that context, finishing with the same record as Philadelphia, for example, would benefit Toronto even though the Raptors hold the edge in the season series would mean Toronto finishes ‘higher’ in the standings.

With Poeltl and Quickley playing against Washington it wouldn’t be all that surprising if the Raptors rest their staring centre and point guard on Wednesday on Brooklyn. 

What is at stake? 

If the Raptors finish with the fifth-best lottery odds they would have a:

• 9.8 per cent chance at picking first
• 39.8 per cent chance at picking in the top four
• 60.1 per cent chance of picking 5-9 and can’t pick lower than ninth.

If the Raptors finish with the sixth-best lottery odds they would have a:

• 9.7 per cent chance of picking first
• 39.6 per cent chance of picking 1-4
• 60.3 per cent chance at picking 6-10, but would not be able to move up to fifth

If they finish with the seventh-best odds the Raptors the pick profile given them a:

• 7.5 per cent chance at picking first
• 31.9 per cent chance at picking 1-4
• 68 per cent chance of picking 7-11 and would not be able to move up to pick fifth or sixth.

So the real risk for the Raptors between now and Apr. 13 isn’t so much how high they might pick, but how likely they are to slide. 

Grange for Three: 

Shead, rookie point god: Another game, another excellent outing from the Raptors first-year point guard taken 45th overall in the draft. It’s not an entirely fair comparison given that Shead played four years of college and is three years older, but it’s hard to watch him matchup up with Bub Carrington, the point guard the Wizards took 14th overall, and not see Shead as the better player, at least now. Coming into last night Carrington averaged just 5.3 points, 2.7 rebounds and three assists against Toronto while shooting just 25 per cent from the floor. Shead was averaging 9.7 points, 3.7 rebounds, 4.7 assists on 46.2 per cent shooting. The trend held as Shead had the better night again, even though Carrington had his best game against Toronto so far, finishing with 15 points, six assists and three turnovers over 5-of-16 shooting. Shead was plus-seven in his 4:33 of fourth quarter time, helping the Raptors pull away. Carrington was minus-four in his 10:26.

Battling: Jamison Battle has been struggling — by his standards — from deep recently. In his last six games which have included four starts, Battle was 16-of-51, or 31.3 per cent. And he didn’t get rolling early in another start against the Wizards — he was 0-of-4 from the floor and 0-of-2 from three heading into the fourth quarter — but he was good when the Raptors needed him. He was 4-of-5 from the floor in the fourth and hit three triples on four attempts, including a pair of threes midway through the period that put the Raptors up 10. Battle is now shooting 40.2 per cent from three on nearly 10 attempts per 36 minutes. Finding an elite three-point shooter from the ranks of the undrafted isn’t impossible — think Duncan Robinson, Sam Hauser or Max Strus — but the Raptors haven’t managed it yet. Battle is showing signs of being just that. 

End of Castleton era: Colin Castleton has quite possibly played more minutes for Toronto than any 10-day signing in franchise history. He had 19 minutes again Monday and was averaging 27 minutes a game in his nine games prior to last night spread over two 10-day deals, averaging 7.1 points, 7.6 rebounds and 1.9 assists while shooting 52.2 per cent from the floor. The Raptors can’t sign Castleton to another 10-day deal (players can only sign two before either being waived or signed for the rest of the year) and are expected to take a look at another player on 10-day in the coming days.