TORONTO — The problem was the same mystifying one it had been all season.
From a distance, there was no reason the team should be this way. On paper, not much changed throughout the roster or its rotational capabilities. Its core group and newest additions both went away in the summer and got better. Ostensibly, they were all — front office included — coming back one season deeper into an experimental system of length and range meant to upend and confound traditional thinking across the league.
Even with their slow start this season, the problem — or reality of there being a problem — didn’t come to the foreground until an uncharacteristically bad road trip in December, where the team lost two in a row to the Orlando Magic. From there, the Toronto Raptors would slip into a six game losing streak and the surety of their season began to slide.
Looking back, it’s easy to see the problem was assigning the Raptors carryovers as if they were a given. Small things, like competency and familiarity with schemes, were natural to assume intact. Big problems — lack of size, dependable shooting, bench depth — weren’t addressed in the offseason, or as things got progressively worse. And when they did, well, it’s not all that difficult to put yourself Toronto’s shoes and feel the same measure of confusion they did when looking around at the kitchen, the place they’re meant to cook, being so busted. But by then it hardly mattered, because the house was on fire.
The way Toronto came out in their play-in game against the Chicago Bulls was near identical to their astigmatic season. Early on, there was hope. O.G. Anunoby hit an easy corner three seconds after the tip and Fred VanVleet looked like a decisive, quietly controlled menace, working the floor and timing all his drives on a dime. Ripples of enthusiasm went through the arena. There was recognition, a rubbing of eyes, a ray of light.
To Toronto’s credit, they kept it up. For two solid quarters, the starters worked on an efficient string. The ball movement was pleasant whiplash, like having your neck cracked by a professional. The shooting didn’t look so needlessly effortful; Pascal Siakam careened and contorted up close for layups, VanVleet hit seven of 13 from deep (and still managed to be the Raptors most prolific rebounder and assists leader with 12 and 8, respectively).
The speed wobble started when the bench came in.
Scrambling defense, rebound tip-outs to nobody, robotic ball movement — the regression didn’t matter so much initially with the comfortable padding of 19 points, Toronto’s biggest lead all game. The fact of the regression, that it looked so identical to the 41 other losses the team had this season, and that the Raptors had no answers despite all that experience, is the most telling thing.
This is not to knock the Bulls’ full-hearted fourth quarter performance, or Zach LaVine’s magnificent performance, but for the majority of the matchup, Chicago was not the better team. The Bulls season has been just as long and arduous as the Raptors, and through the first three quarters, it showed. Between two groups so evenly matched — pest defense, spotty shooting — the winner was going to be the team that wanted it, and could dig in, that much more.
The Bulls waited the Raptors out. Chicago’s head coach, Billy Donovan, played the long game, letting Toronto throw their best defensive efforts at DeMar DeRozan (while DeRozan’s daughter, Diar, threw her best defensive efforts at the Raptors); ratcheting Siakam, VanVleet and Anunoby’s minutes up past the 40-minute mark; and turned LaVine and Alex Caruso loose.
Nick Nurse, for his oft-nodded to defensive mind, made some strange decisions on that end when it counted. Putting, and keeping, VanVleet on LaVine all game, when VanVleet’s energy was flagging, just wasn’t enough for the way LaVine exploded in the second half. And yanking Toronto’s only anchor big of Jakob Poeltl in the fourth left the paint wide open for DeRozan to cruise through for layup after uncontested layup. The seeming unfamiliarity with his roster, in this game, at this point of their season, puts more than the possibility of Nurse’s departure this summer into immediate focus. Though Nurse was questioned in his end of season availability about his hope to stay with the franchise, the signal that in-game, psychic absenteeism sends is: does he have the desire to stay?
A trickle-down effect of that question mark was apparent in the trepidation of Scottie Barnes. Whenever he took the floor in place of VanVleet, even as part of an adjusted starting lineup, Barnes looked trepidatious, a bit shook, and lost. Sophomore slump aside (because Barnes has, on the whole, improved this season), that the reigning Rookie of the Year isn’t taking the floor with confidence and direction, even a little bravado, is a coaching failure during a postseason that was, according to the front office, for his own experience.
Barnes isn’t blameless but this part, the game at home with the season on the line, is supposed to be the exciting part. None of that exhilaration was there. It’s not there for the rest of the roster, either. That the Bulls chipped away at the lead and eventually took it with no discernible energy shift or renewed urgency from the Raptors is indicative of chemistry gone flat.
It’s entirely possible that the Raptors baseline was too high going into this season, that the team overachieved last year and this was the inevitable correction. It’s not enough to stay good in this version of the NBA and stay reliably competitive, or even above .500. Franchises have to be great, and figure out how to do it in lasting, individualized ways. The silver lining for Toronto is that from here — whether that’s a head coaching change, roster shake-ups ranging from total upheaval to tremors, new additions over the summer, and the potential of a draft pick — one (or possibly numerous) things will be different next season. The Raptors problems are too obvious, glaring now in lurid neon light, to ignore.