Despite having a rookie head coach and a brand-new franchise player who has barely played in the past 18 months, the Raptors haven’t had to deal with an adjustment period. They have the best record in the NBA (11-1) and are fourth in net rating (plus-8.6). Toronto has been one of the best-run organizations in the league under GM Masai Ujiri, and he stayed in house when hiring new coach Nick Nurse, the assistant who helped oversee their stylistic changes last season. The only thing they were missing was a superstar. The Raptors are already taking on Kawhi Leonard’s identity. They have put together the most complete team in the NBA to support one of the league’s most complete stars.
Kawhi has been dominant (26.0 points, 8.0 rebounds, 3.3 assists, and 1.8 steals per game) even without being completely healthy. He is not playing in back-to-backs, and has already missed four games. He’s still getting his burst back. Instead of using quickness to create separation, he’s carving out space for himself with his broad shoulders and burly frame. And he’s such a good shooter that he needs only an inch to get his shot off. Kawhi is within a few percentage points of a 50-40-90 season: 49.3 percent from the field, 44.1 percent from 3, and 90 percent from the free throw line. He’s a fundamentally sound player without any holes in his game on either end of the floor.
Kawhi never played in this much space in San Antonio, where the team rarely took 3s. Toronto is no. 10 in the NBA in 3-point attempts per game (33.7), but doesn’t have anyone in the top 20 among individual players. Almost everyone on the roster shoots 3s. The Raptors have 11 players who have appeared in at least seven games and are taking at least 3.0 attempts per 36 minutes of playing time. Jonas Valanciunas and Pascal Siakam are the only ones who don’t. All that shooting means Toronto can match up with anyone. Nurse never has to worry about floor spacing, no matter which lineup he uses.
The Kawhi trade was about more than just Kawhi. The Raptors also unloaded two of their only nonshooters (DeMar DeRozan and Jakob Poeltl) for two elite 3-and-D players in Kawhi and Danny Green. The result was a domino effect within the rotation that pushed players into more natural roles. The Raptors went from starting two traditional big men (Valanciunas and Serge Ibaka) and a reluctant outside shooter (DeRozan) to surrounding one big with four shooters at all times. Playing in that much space is like hitting in Coors Field. All five starters are averaging career highs: Kawhi, Ibaka, and Siakam in points, Lowry in assists, and Green in 3-point percentage.
Lowry’s passing has gone to another level. He was the king of the tough shot in an isolation-heavy attack over the past few seasons. The Raptors tried to run a more free-flowing offense, but there was only so much they could do given the limitations of their personnel. Those limitations are gone. Lowry has almost doubled his assist average, from 6.9 to 11.3, while his 2-point field goal percentage has skyrocketed, from 47.4 percent on 4.5 attempts per game to 61.1 percent on 6.0 attempts. Lowry and DeRozan are great friends, but Lowry fits better with Kawhi. There’s no awkward 1A and 1B arrangement. Kawhi is the primary scorer. Lowry is the primary playmaker.
It’s not just the stars who have thrived. Everyone in Toronto looks better in their new roles. Moving to center has transformed Ibaka. He had been playing out of position at power forward even going back to his last few years in Oklahoma City. He could barely stay on the floor in the playoffs last season. Playing him next to another center limited the number of playmakers on offense and forced him to chase smaller players around the perimeter; that’s no longer a concern. Ibaka is having the best offensive season of his career now that he’s a full-time 5, averaging 17.7 points on 59.3 percent shooting. Ibaka and Valanciunas haven’t played a single minute together after partnering up for 1,476 minutes last season. Ibaka’s spacing ability as a 5 can have a multiplier effect with the right players around him. Using Ibaka to create space for Valanciunas post-ups wasn’t a good use of his skill set.
Pascal Siakam, a third-year forward from New Mexico State, has broken out next to Ibaka. At 6-foot-9 and 230 pounds with a 7-foot-3 wingspan, he’s an electric athlete who can get to the rim and finish over the top of anyone, including Rudy Gobert. Siakam is like Ben Simmons in that defenders can’t keep him out of the lane even when they play off him. He’s a good passer in his own right, too. The only hole in his game is outside shooting, which isn’t an issue with so many shooters around him. A team can afford to play only one nonshooter at a time, and Siakam, also an elite defender, is more valuable in the nonshooter role than almost any center. He’s averaging 12.5 points on 61.9 percent shooting, 7.0 rebounds, 2.1 assists, and 1.3 steals a game.
What separates the Raptors from most great 3-point-shooting teams is that their perimeter threats play defense, too. They are built like last season’s Cavs, who surrounded LeBron James with shooters, except they have the no. 9 defense in the NBA, instead of no. 29. There’s no weak link to attack. Lowry, Green, Kawhi, Siakam, and Ibaka are all plus defenders for their positions. It doesn’t change when they go to their second unit. They have waves of long and athletic players coming off their bench, and they can all shoot 3s, too.
Toronto is one of the deepest teams in the NBA. OG Anunoby started last season as a rookie, and Fred VanVleet could start for a lot of teams at point guard. Anunoby is the ultimate role player at this stage in his career: He’s a good shooter who moves the ball and has the size (6-foot-8 and 232 pounds with a 7-foot-2 wingspan) and athleticism to match up with almost any player. Delon Wright, Norman Powell (who is out for six weeks with a shoulder injury), and C.J. Miles could all handle bigger roles. No injury will derail them in the regular season. They have capable players who can step in at every position. They are the answer to the basketball version of the question, “If the black box on an airplane is indestructible, why not build the whole plane out of that material?”
Toronto has drafted and developed really well over the past few years. Siakam, Anunoby, and Wright were all taken in the 20s. Powell was a second-round pick. VanVleet was an undrafted free agent. The Raptors have built one of the most promising young teams in the NBA without going through a rebuilding process. They have more talent in their organization than they can even use. Alfonzo McKinnie played in 14 games for Toronto last season coming straight from the G League. He is now occasionally closing games for Golden State as a key rotation piece.
There’s a compounding effect to being on a roster with so many 3-and-D players. Everyone in Toronto looks like the best version of themselves because they are in lineups with four shooters and four defenders around them. They are the only team in the NBA that can play like that for all 48 minutes of a game. The Raptors can stretch out the defense and find the weakest defender on the opposing team, and they don’t offer any corresponding weak spots to the other team.
Their Achilles’ heel is at center, where Ibaka and Valanciunas can struggle to defend the perimeter against elite small-ball teams. That could be an issue against Boston (Al Horford) and Milwaukee (Giannis Antetokounmpo) in the Eastern Conference playoffs. One possible solution, which Nurse has yet to use, is a three-man frontcourt of Kawhi, Siakam, and Anunoby, a lineup that could be almost impossible to score on. Nurse will have to do a better job of making in-series adjustments than Dwane Casey, the issue that cost the reigning Coach of the Year his job. The margin for error for a team as deep as Toronto is huge in the regular season. It goes away in the playoffs, when everyone shrinks their rotation.
But an MVP candidate like Kawhi changes their outlook in the postseason. They finally have a player who can take over a series against an elite team. Kawhi is significantly better than anyone in Boston, and he’s more polished than either Ben Simmons or Joel Embiid. Giannis Antetokounmpo is the star in the East who matches up the best with Kawhi, but his team isn’t as deep or well rounded. While there’s no way to know what Kawhi, one of the most reclusive stars in the league, will decide to do in free agency this summer, the Raptors are making a compelling case for him to stay. They could be great for a long time.
Toronto has a roster full of young 3-and-D players who should only get better. Wright is 26. Siakam and VanVleet are 24. Anunoby is 21. They are all in a great situation to keep growing. Their jobs are easier than they would be on any other team. Nurse’s approach to building lineups is like rocket fuel for any player. A team that spaces the floor and defends as well as the Raptors can make its own stars. Siakam looks like a star because he’s getting the minutes of a starter. The same could happen for Anunoby and VanVleet in time. Ujiri has found a formula that works. It’s hard to imagine him adding anyone to this roster who isn’t a 3-and-D player.
Kawhi wound up in an even better situation than he was in San Antonio. The Spurs are an incredibly well-respected organization, but they are no longer on the cutting edge of where the league is going. Toronto is the only team that doesn’t need more 3-and-D players because that archetype already makes up more than 80 percent of its rotation. In that sense, the Raptors have built a model for what teams in the 2020s could look like. There are a lot of great young squads in the East, but they all have to catch up to Toronto.
