Everything went the way it was supposed to for the Raptors in the regular season after bringing back the band last offseason. Dwane Casey successfully overhauled Toronto’s system to improve ball movement and shot selection. DeMar DeRozan started shooting more 3s and playmaking, and as a result, had a career-best season. First-round pick OG Anunoby quickly proved himself to be one of the league’s better defenders. And the Raptors’ loaded bench, led by Fred VanVleet, played with fire and desire. With a 59-23 record, the no. 3 offense, and no. 5 defense, the Raptors were the 1-seed in the Eastern Conference for the first time in their 23-year history.
But even after moving VanVleet into the starting lineup and rallying from down 17 points in Game 3, the Raptors are now facing a 3-0 hole in the East semis after LeBron James hit an epic game-winning floater. As LeBron’s impossible shot bounced off the glass and through the net, you can actually pinpoint the second Toronto’s dreams of a series win shattered. Unless the Raptors get it together and make a historic comeback, it’ll be their third consecutive season getting slayed by the King. It’s not Toronto’s fault that LeBron, the best player of this generation and possibly the greatest ever, is the brick wall the Raptors keep running into every May. They aren’t alone in that struggle this decade; LeBron has ripped the hearts out of the Pacers, Bulls, and Hawks. The Raptors are just the latest East team to be stuck in playoff purgatory.
The past five seasons have been an unforgettable ride for Raptors fans, but the franchise did everything possible to set itself up to beat LeBron this season and it still didn’t work. If the goal is to not just hang division banners, but to win trophies, then further changes must be made.
From COY Candidate to the Hot Seat
Casey, who’s been with Toronto since June 2011, is the fourth-longest-tenured head coach in the NBA, after Gregg Popovich, Erik Spoelstra, and Rick Carlisle. But after years of fans calling for Raptors president Masai Ujiri to fire Casey, the guillotine could actually drop this time, despite the fact Casey is a Coach of the Year candidate. Casey’s in-game adjustments, playcalling, and lineup choices have been lacking in the postseason. It was unforgivable that he kept C.J. Miles on Kevin Love for so long in Game 2. In Game 3, the Raptors continuously sent early double-teams at James and Love, which only worked to allow wide-open shooters for the Cavaliers. And while Casey deserves credit for renovating the Raptors’ system, moving the offense from the midrange to 3-point land in 2017 is like just now buying an HDTV. What took so long?
Executives around the league anticipate that the Raptors will make a coaching change, though there are no guarantees after Toronto’s success this regular season. In addition to the candidates being interviewed by other teams with openings, the Raptors have three internal candidates—assistants Nick Nurse and Rex Kalamian, and G League coach Jerry Stackhouse—that could be promoted to head coach. Nurse spoke with the Suns and Hornets about their head-coach vacancies, according to multiple reports, and is widely considered by executives to be one of the best assistants in the league. Nurse, not Casey, is credited with leading the charge in changing the offensive system. If Casey is told to take care, Nurse should be the favorite for his position.
Closed Books
Whether Casey were replaced with Nurse or Drake, it wouldn’t change the fact DeRozan still doesn’t shoot 3s well, Serge Ibaka is declining and overpaid, and Anunoby is the only player on the roster who has any chance of defending LeBron.
The Raptors’ issues are under the spotlight against Cleveland: They don’t have enough versatile defenders at wing and forward. Their bigs lack ideal versatility for the modern game. And from a sheer talent standpoint, they arguably haven’t had the best player in a single series since 2014, the year Paul Pierce blocked Kyle Lowry and the Raptors got bounced in seven games in the first round by the Nets.
LeBron could head west this summer, and lord knows Toronto would be happy to wait until the NBA Finals to have to see him again. But to beat a Celtics roster with Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward, or an upgraded Sixers roster that has cap space for a max contract this summer, the Raptors still need to get better. Even with a brand-new coach who turns nothings into somethings, the roster must also be charged up by Ujiri.
It won’t be easy to get better. The Raptors have $126 million in guaranteed salaries for the 2018-19 season. They re-signed Lowry, Ibaka, and Norman Powell to big contracts last summer, and signed Miles to keep the contending window open through the 2019-20 season. This is what’s on the books:
Toronto Raptors Team Salary
Hidden beneath, between, and behind all their success this regular season was the reality that this might be as good as it gets for the franchise during this era. Their payroll could balloon even more this summer since VanVleet, arguably the Sixth Man of the Year, will be a popular restricted free agent. Toronto avoided paying the luxury tax this season after using its 2018 first-round pick to dump DeMarre Carroll on the Nets. But now the Raptors are about to soar into the tax, which means they only have the taxpayer midlevel and minimum-player salary exceptions at their disposal to sign new free agents.
They lack financial flexibility, and with their first-rounder in the hands of Brooklyn and their second-rounder with the Suns as a result of the deal for P.J. Tucker at the 2017 trade deadline, they don’t have a pick in this year’s draft. The Raptors still have a competitive team, so their future firsts don’t have too much value, either. They could use their picks or their young players to unload the salary of Ibaka, Miles, or Powell in order to get out of the tax, but that would only make them worse. The Raptors are a good team without many avenues to be great.
Limited Options on the Trade Market
It’s tough to find any potential trades that make sense. Most ideas feel like rearranging chairs. Would a package of Hawks wing Kent Bazemore and big man Mike Muscala for Ibaka and future picks really move the needle? Maybe a touch more versatility at the wing. How about Hornets center Cody Zeller and forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist for Ibaka and a future pick? Kidd-Gilchrist can’t shoot and Zeller is redundant with Jakob Poeltl and Jonas Valanciunas. In other words, they aren’t getting much for Ibaka.
Even if the Raptors plucked the next Milos Teodosic or Daniel Theis from overseas, is that player actually putting them over the top? Their bench was already one of the best in the NBA. They need to find a way to get better high-end talent. These are boring ideas, but it’s tough to come up with anything better that don’t involve DeRozan, Lowry, or Anunoby. Unless a star player is in a transitional state.
The Raptors explored the possibility of trading for DeAndre Jordan before the 2018 trade deadline, and could conceivably make another push if Jordan decides to opt into his $24.1 million player option for the 2018-19 season. At that cap number, the taxpaying Raptors would need to send an outgoing salary of about $19.2 million. Valanciunas ($16.5 million) plus $2.7 million in salary would work. But keep in mind that the Clippers are trying to win games, so they’d need some incentive to make a deal; a contributing youngster like Poeltl or Delon Wright would likely be a necessity.
The Raptors had a top-five defensive rating this season, but it’s a tad misleading considering they’ve collapsed over the past two months. Since March 18 (when the Thunder ended Toronto’s 11-game win streak), the Raptors have a defensive rating of about 107.2, including the playoffs. The dirty secret is that the Raptors struggled all season to defend top offenses; Valanciunas isn’t much of a rim protector despite his size, and DeRozan is a turnstile on the perimeter. Jordan would help bolster the defense, and could offer a different flavor on offense as a rim runner and lob threat.
Jordan is exactly the type of player Toronto should target, but his option for next season complicates matters. Thinking more outside the box, it’s worth noting that the Pelicans reportedly talked with the Raptors about a trade for Valanciunas before the 2017 deadline. But New Orleans instead acquired DeMarcus Cousins. Now that Cousins will be an unrestricted free agent with an uncertain future, maybe the Pels will resist offering him the full max contract. Cousins ruptured his Achilles and there are no guarantees he ever returns to form. He also might not be happy if the Pelicans front office plays games, so maybe a sign-and-trade could become a possibility. If I were the Raptors, I’d at least consider offering Valanciunas plus Miles and a young player to the Pelicans in a sign-and-trade for Boogie. It’d be the ultimate high-risk/high-reward deal for the Raptors.
Cousins could end up being a disaster, but if he returned to form they’d have a third offensive star to take a load off of DeRozan and Lowry. Honestly, I’d avoid Cousins like the plague, especially given his health status. And I bet Ujiri would, too, considering he has always taken a long view.
Thinking Bigger
Last offseason, Ujiri said that Toronto can’t build like the Cavaliers do around LeBron with short-sighted, win-now moves. DeRozan and Lowry simply aren’t transcendent stars like LeBron. “They have one player on that team that makes that maybe a little easier for them,” Ujiri said. “I don’t think about the Toronto Raptors just for today, I think about them five years from now and I have to keep that in perspective.”
Even when DeRozan and Lowry are gone, the Raptors will still exist, and with Anunoby, Poeltl, and VanVleet, the franchise has some pieces for the next era. If Ujiri wants to think more about building for a reload in 2020, he could always consider trading DeRozan or Lowry for a package that shuffles pieces now but keeps an eye toward the future.
Last October, Lowry revealed to the San Antonio Express-News that he had interest in signing with the Spurs, but the interest wasn’t mutual. “It was real for me, but it wasn’t real for them,” Lowry said. That’s also true for other franchises across the league. Most teams don’t need point guards, nevermind one like Lowry, who’s 32 years old and set to make more than $30 million in each of the next two seasons.
Nonetheless, if I were Ujiri, I’d still seek a deal with a team that’s also in need of a shake-up. The Timberwolves stand out since Jimmy Butler can become an unrestricted free agent in 2019 and Butler has expressed displeasure with Minnesota’s youth for not understanding the “urgency” of their situation. The Wolves need to keep Butler happy, and he’s friends with Lowry from their time playing together on Team USA at the Olympics. There are also rumblings that Butler recruited Lowry to the Wolves last offseason.
The obvious trade target would be Andrew Wiggins, who has failed to live up to expectations in Minnesota but has still shown flashes. Maybe things would click for him back home in Canada. If the Wolves already have buyer’s remorse, then maybe there’s a mega-deal to be done centering around Wiggins and Jeff Teague going to Toronto for Lowry, Miles, and Pascal Siakam. The Wolves would get rid of Wiggins’s deal and give themselves immense cap flexibility when Butler is a free agent in 2019; perhaps they’d become a destination. The Raptors could view Wiggins as a building block for the next era while serving as a versatile contributor who can help now. But a backcourt with Teague and DeRozan would be laughably bad defensively, so perhaps a deal that ships Teague to a third team would make more sense.
Other scattered ideas could involve the Pacers, who may want to capitalize on the Victor Oladipo era and have a load of cap space to absorb a massive salary like Lowry; center Myles Turner would be an intriguing building block for Toronto’s future. The Suns are also worth calling. But if they didn’t deal Josh Jackson last summer for Kyrie Irving, they probably wouldn’t deal him for anyone on Toronto’s roster. It’s more realistic to shop Valanciunas, who will be only 26 next season, to the Suns for young assets (like Dragan Bender) and for the cap relief to come from a deal.
Blow It Up < Bring It Back
In March 2017, while Toronto was the feel-good story of the 2016-17 season, I wrote that the Raptors should consider blowing it up. The idea, which was expounded upon on The Ringer NBA Show, was to re-sign key players (they did), overhaul the system (they did), take a swing with their first-round pick (they did) and hope he blossomed (he did), and then go into the season and see what happens. If the Raptors failed to meet expectations, they could pull the plug; and if they shined, they could keep building from there.
The latter ended up happening. Casey might end up getting fired, and the roster obviously needs changes. But Toronto’s best bet now is to maintain status quo, ride out this core, and pounce only on options that make sense.
If a lottery team like the Magic, Bulls, or Kings comes calling and offers its lottery pick and a young player for DeRozan, I’d be interested; blowing it up should still be on the table for any team on the playoff treadmill. But I don’t think that deal is an option, and settling for anything less wouldn’t be worth it considering they’re still a Finals contender in the East for the next two seasons.
There isn’t much worse than feeling stagnant, and Raptors fans have had to endure that feeling for the past five seasons. But there are few realistic options to move the franchise forward. Ujiri masterfully constructed a young core featuring Anunoby, VanVleet, and Poeltl. Those players developing ahead of schedule could be the best way to make the most out of this roster in the next two seasons. It won’t be easy for Toronto to get over the hump, but pressing reset on this core doesn’t necessarily create a brighter future. That’s precisely the fear, though. There are no clear solutions. The Raptors are stuck in playoff limbo.
