The Toronto Raptors: The Off-Balance, 2024/2025 Season Preview.
The Toronto Raptors: The Off-Balance, 2024/2025 Season Preview.
Rebuild, retool, refocus.
After spending the back half of the 2010s battling for supremacy atop the NBA’s Eastern Conference, only to continually run into the unmovable object that was Second Peak LeBron James in his aptly-named “LeBronto Era”, the Toronto Raptors finally broke through in 2019, with a championship run for the ages.
Moving on from long-time franchise stalwart DeMar DeRozan in pursuit of those title aspirations, while it inspired some great parody, was tough, yes and it didn’t come without risk.
Yet with Kyle Lowry, Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet in support and a driven Kawhi Leonard at the helm, the team definitively silenced their loudest critics.
From “The Shot” to closing out basketball in Oakland with both controversy and style.
Time though, waits for no-one.
Here now, five years later, as they begin what will be their 30th season, just Chris Boucher, who was a spot-up player off the bench, is the only one left from that title-winning team.
And while it may be sobering, it doesn’t help to linger too long on what was, either.
The Raptors realized this last season, trading both OG Anunoby and Siakam well before the deadline. And sure, while they all but bottomed out, finishing twelfth in the East with 57 losses and a .305 winning percentage, it also came with an understanding of sorts. That ever-so-frustrating reality that all teams, eventually, must confront: that the road back to contention will be built with picks, prospects and young guns finding their grove as they continue to develop as professionals.
Easy? No, it never is. And speaking to the media late last month, Raptors President of Basketball Operations, Masai Ujiri, acknowledged as much:
I would use the word 'rebuilding,' that's the right word… In sports, you always want to be competitive and you play to win, but it is a rebuilding team. I think everybody sees that loud and clear.
- Masai Ujiri, speaking on the current state of the Raptors.
So as the Raps gear up for this next chapter, one they’ll begin writing in earnest Wednesday night as their 2024/2025 season opens against Cleveland, it is a rare thing: a rebuild, touched with optimism, an inevitable byproduct of those lowered expectations.
They could surprise or they could land exactly where they’re expected too but either way, they’ll entertain.
At the forefront though, wherever the season leads, it will be forward Scottie Barnes, completing his ascension from top rookie to unquestioned top dog.
Just 23, Barnes already has three seasons under his belt and as he enters his fourth, it will be with a mostly untested core group resting squarely on his shoulders - but he is uniquely attuned to such pressure, having been built for it, the heir apparent to the assembled crowds at Jurassic Park, since the moment he arrived in Toronto from Florida State.
It has been a steady progression.
Barnes, the fourth overall pick in 2021 was the Rookie of the Year his debut season and while he stalled somewhat statistically in 2022/2023, he continued to refine and hone his game.
It paid off in spades last year. Career-best numbers across the board (19.9/8.2/6.1, while shooting 47% from the floor), an All-Star selection and despite missed time in the second half due to a hand injury, a five-year max-extension this past summer.
A sign of trust, expected though it was, that also makes Barnes the highest-paid player in team history.
And although he’s spent most of his NBA career thus far as an off-ball defender, the Raptors did experiment in 2023/2024 with him as their primary stopper, a further testament to his continued evolution, with everything else he brings.
Speed and power. A playmaker with terrific ball-handling skill and shooting ability, who is incredibly strong in transition to boot.
The argument could be made that his overall game is still something of a work-in-progress, needing polish but that is true for most young players and yet, already effective from mid-range, the paint and behind the arc, that continued maturity will come.
More so now, as he wholly leads the Raptors on the floor.
Around Barnes, while the supporting cast may be relatively raw, their collective potential should keep them afloat through the up-and-down grind that is the NBA season: even if, most nights, it won’t always translate into wins.
With four rookies, a smattering of second/third year players and a handful of veterans (among them, Kelly Olynyk, Garrett Temple, Boucher and Jakob Poeltl), from a positive, practical point-of-view, it will be a year of growth, anchored by experience.
Gradey Dick for one, as he enters his second season, will be given ample opportunity to build on the foundation he put down in his rookie year.
He made waves in exhibition play, as Toronto looks to make him more of a consistent offensive contributor: and as spoken too by Samson Folk of Raptors Republic, Dick has done well in transition alongside Barnes, especially with his work from long-range.
Elsewhere, while GTA-area native RJ Barrett won’t play in Wednesday’s opener as he deals with a shoulder injury, there is the expectation that both he and Immanuel Quickley will, in picking up from where they left off, continue their individual success from last season: Barrett specifically, in 32 games with Toronto, averaged just a shade under 22 points and 6.4 boards while shooting 55% from the field.
There is promise there.
Questions will linger, of course.
Notably, the news broke on Tuesday that the team was unable to come to terms with newly-acquired guard Davion Mitchell on an extension, meaning he will become an RFA next summer. Perhaps it will work in his favour however, as, playing for his next contract, he looks to establish himself as a key piece of the team’s rotation.
But in the big picture sense, there are no guarantees with the Raptors this season, beyond just that: an unknown, rich with possibility.
How they capitalize on it, one way or another?
We’ll just have to see.