Toronto Raptors: Building the old fashioned way
This offseason, the landscape of the Eastern Conference changed dramatically. LeBron James left Miami for Cleveland and the Pacers lost Paul George to injury and Lance Stephenson to the Hornets. Phil Jackson joined the Knicks and Kevin Love joined the Eastern Conference. But amid all the chaos, the Toronto Raptors essentially stayed quiet.
Their offseason moves were predicated around keeping the players they already had. Kyle Lowry, Patrick Patterson, and Grevis Vazquez all re-signed with the team on sensible contracts. Rather than swing for the fences on big name free agents, Toronto kept together a good young core that was the engine behind one of the surprise teams in the Eastern Conference last season.
Because of how paltry the conference was as a whole, the Raptors flew under the radar among the masses last season, though a disappointing first round exit from the playoffs didn’t help. Their organic team building strategy is one unlikely to secure them widespread notoriety. Kyle Lowry is great, but not a particularly flashy star. DeMar DeRozan is universally recognized as a solid scorer whose still improving, but he’s never going to have the commercial appeal of somebody like a Carmelo Anthony.
Of course, team-building isn’t about flashiness. If it was, the Knicks would win the championship every year. What Toronto is doing is creating a sustainable positive ecosystem to not only compete, but also develop young players. Jonas Valanciunas has a chance to be very good, as does Terrence Ross. They’re flanked by veterans that will help them get there.
With Toronto, you don’t get the sense that they’re stockpiling assets to then move later on for a superstar player. That doesn’t mean they won’t do that later on, but their end goal doesn’t seem to be to put together a super team. With San Antonio being the blueprint, there is real precedent for valuing continuity and player development over star chasing. Superstar-less teams that instead feature a plethora of good players up and down the roster may not have the same ceiling as a club with two or three dominant stars, but they also are better protected against adversity.
For a smaller market team like Toronto – the city itself isn’t a small market, but the Raptors are hardly a hot destination for free agents – it doesn’t make sense to go star chasing. They haven’t, and now they’re set up nicely to be one of the best two or three teams in the Eastern Conference this season. It’ll be fascinating to watch them go up against the other top teams in the East, most of whom underwent significant changes this offseason.
The Raptors have only really added pieces along the margins of the roster, such as free agents Lou Williams and James Johnson, and rookie Bruno Caboclo. They return a lineup of Lowry, DeRozan, Ross, Amir Johnson, and Valanciunas that played the 6th most minutes of any 5-man unit in the league last season. In 717 minutes, that group outscored opponents by 3.3 points per 100 possessions. They may not have been world beaters, but they were consistently better than the opposition.
Last season, Toronto finished 9th in the league in point differential. And that’s despite getting off to a lousy start before trading Rudy Gay.
That 4.8 NetRTG prorated over an entire season would’ve put them on pace with Indiana. What’s scary about this year’s version of the Raptors is that they’ll be better than last year.
They have all the same personnel, minus the very replaceable Steve Novak, to play all their same quality lineups as last season. Their young players, Valanciunas in particular, should continue to get better, and they added good bench pieces they didn’t have a season ago. James Johnson and Lou Williams are useful heat check guys that will give the Raptors more scoring punch off the bench.
What the Raptors lack in elite talent, they make up for in familiarity and consistency with the roster. While there is no exact measurement for continuity, there is definitely something to be said to having the same key players playing together over an extended period of time.
A prominent example of a team struggling from lack of continuity is the New York Knicks, who never were able to get Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony on the same page. The two weren’t a good fit together in the first place, but the former’s inability to stay on the floor severely hampered the team’s chances of getting them to play in unison over extended periods of time.
Other teams in the East will have at least some adjustment period early in the season. Cleveland has arguably the best top tier talent in the league, but it will take LeBron James, Kevin Love, and Kyrie Irving a while before they’re entirely comfortable playing together. The Bulls have to work in a recovering Derrick Rose, who struggled in a similar situation last season, and new comer Pau Gasol. The Heat have to adjust to life without LeBron, while the Hornets have to adjust to life with Lance Stephenson.
The Raptors don’t face these issues. They’ll have to work in new players at the back end of their rotation, but their core remains in tact. The other top teams in the East may stumble out of blocks as they adjust to their structural overhauls. The Raptors will hit the ground running.