Where do the Raptors rank in a post-LeBron Eastern Conference?
By Jared Dubin
With the start of the NBA season several months away and many teams still in the process of building out their rosters, there is not much that can be definitively known about what will happen next year. Just about the only things that seem certain are that the Golden State Warriors will once again enter the year as overwhelming favorites to repeat as NBA champions; and that for the first time since 2010, the Eastern Conference will not be represented by a LeBron James-led team in the NBA Finals.
The power vacuum LeBron leaves behind in the East is a large one. In trudging to the Finals eight consecutive times, LeBron’s Heat and Cavaliers teams amassed a ridiculous 24-0 record in Eastern Conference playoff series from 2011 through 2018 — winning 96 of 123 games along the way and yielding a 0.780 winning percentage that is essentially the equivalent of putting together a season and a half’s worth of 64-win basketball, but during the playoffs. (The Cleveland years were even more dominant, with the Cavs winning 48 of their 59 Eastern Conference playoff games during LeBron’s second stint in town.)
It’s fitting that with the King abdicating his Eastern Conference throne, there is no one team that looks like the obvious bet to ascend in his place. Instead, there’s a trio of teams from the only Eastern Conference division in which LeBron himself has never played (the Atlantic) that stand ready to battle it out for conference supremacy. Because of several dynamics at play, the upcoming season seems at least somewhat likely to be the only one in which the Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics, and Philadelphia 76ers duke it out (mostly) alone for the right to represent the East in the Finals.
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How Kawhi Leonard fits with the transformed Toronto Raptors
With that in mind, now is as good a time as any to dig into what each of these three teams has going for them, and what they have working against them in the race to the top of the East. We might as well start with the team LeBron has been summarily dismissing year after year, given that they just reinserted themselves into the news cycle.
What the Raptors have going for them
I’ll put my cards on the table here: this piece was originally supposed to run on Wednesday and this section was supposed to feature a whole lot of talk about continuity and experience. Toronto’s bold move for Kawhi Leonard blew that idea out of the water, but it also provided the Raptors an avenue through which they could catch up to their Atlantic Division brethren on the defensive end of the floor.
Toronto had a wonderful defense last season. Dwane Casey’s charges ranked fifth in the NBA in points allowed per 100 possessions, per NBA.com, as they used a cadre of versatile players all over the floor to stifle opposing offenses. (Their defense just wasn’t quite as good as that of the Celtics and 76ers, who ranked first and third, respectively, in the same category.)
Kyle Lowry held his own at the point of attack, as usual, but backups Fred VanVleet and Delon Wright proved stingy as well. OG Anunoby emerged as a top wing stopper capable of handling even the best opposing scorers on a nightly basis. Serge Ibaka did not have quite the same impact he did at his peak but he formed an excellent frontcourt pairing with Jonas Valanciunas, who showed great strides in defending against pick-and-rolls and did his usual solid job of protecting the rim. Pascal Siakam showed all kinds of versatility and agility, defending bigs and wings with similar ease, and even proving capable of defending point guards as quick as John Wall during the playoffs. Lucas Nogueira provided solid rim protection when he was on the floor. Jakob Poeltl did yeoman’s work on the glass and deftly defended the paint when called upon. DeMar DeRozan mostly just didn’t kill them.
This season’s defense should be even better, as the Raptors are swapping out two of the worst defenders in their rotation (including the single worst defender in DeRozan) for not just a top-notch wing defender capable of handling nearly any matchup at the 1-3 positions (Danny Green), but possibly the best defensive player in the league (Leonard, assuming he’s healthy). Being able to roll out lineups featuring Lowry, Green, Leonard, and Anunoby will give the Raptors a chance to defend literally any kind of lineup opposing teams throw at them. They could use Siakam with that group and switch everything. They could use Ibaka and provide elite help at the rim. They could minimize Valanciunas’ shortcomings with how good everyone else is, and get the corresponding offensive boost. They could even use VanVleet or Wright with that group against certain lineups, like the Warriors’ Death Lineup or whatever new version of the Tuckwagon Lineup the Rockets end up using this season.
They have the single best option in the league for defending big wings in Leonard. They have an emerging stopper who can not only handle the best scorers in his own right, but learn a lot from Kawhi along the way in Anunoby. They have one of the best defensive point guards in the league in Lowry and two capable backups in VanVleet and Wright. And they also have Green, who, even if he’s not quite at the peak he was in San Antonio, is still well above-average defending any perimeter position. Simply: if Leonard is healthy and actually reports to Toronto, the Raptors will have the best group of perimeter defenders in basketball next season. And they’ll have plenty of frontcourt help behind them as well.
If Leonard plays the way we know he can, it is very easy to imagine the Raptors having the best defense in the league next season. If he plays at something less than 100 percent like last year, but for the whole year rather than just nine games, they should still easily rank in the top five. Even if he doesn’t report to camp at all, it’s entirely possible that this year’s Raptors team takes a step forward defensively simply by substituting Green for DeRozan and giving more minutes to Anunoby and Siakam in place of Poeltl. All of the upside here depends on Leonard returning to form, but as mentioned, Toronto should be incredibly tough to score on even if he never plays a game in the North.
Because they turned a big wing who nevertheless struggled defending big wings (DeRozan) into the best big wing defender in the league (Leonard) and a small wing who can guard several positions (Green), the Raptors should also count versatility as a major strength next season. They should be able to much more easily slide from small to big, using any combination of Leonard, Green, Anunoby, VanVleet, Wright, C.J. Miles, and Normal Powell on the wings. They can use any of their three primary big men (Valanciunas, Ibaka, Siakam) together in any combination, or play any of them solo with Leonard and Anunoby manning the two forward slots. They can play one, two, or even three point guards at once. They can mix and match any of those configurations together and just figure out what works. They are going to have so many options — and the luxury of not really needing to hide anybody from a particular defensive matchup when they’re on the floor. (Except maybe Miles, but even he has his merits on that end when he’s locked in.)
Toronto’s offense ranked third in the league in points per 100 possessions last season, and now replaces a high-volume, medium-efficiency No. 1 scoring option with one of the most efficient scorers in the league when he’s at his peak. Leonard is better than DeRozan at every important part of offense, and that should shine through if he actually suits up. He can work in isolation or out of the post. He will likely prove just as dangerous a small-small pick-and-roll partner with Lowry, if not even more so. He will boost efficiency by hitting at a higher clip from 3. And Green will help on that front as well.
Adding two plus shooters in place of a minus shooting wing and a springy big man will also allow Lowry, Valanciunas, and the rest of Toronto’s playmakers to play in more space. That, in turn, should also result in more efficient scoring. As long as the Warriors exist and James Harden and Chris Paul are running Mike D’Antoni’s offense, third might be the ceiling for the Raptors’ regular-season offensive efficiency ranking; but their offense should be even more playoff-proof this season than it was a year ago, when they finally staved off the massive annual drop-off they’d been having for the past few seasons.
Assuming Kawhi is healthy and shows up.
What the Raptors have working against them
Injuries.
The only people on the planet who know what’s going on with Kawhi’s quad right now are basically him and Uncle Dennis. The Raptors are making a big bet on their training staff to not just get Leonard healthy and ready to play, but ensure that his day-to-day maintenance and recovery are taken care of as well. Kawhi has incentive to make sure he shows he’s healthy this season (and possibly to gut through injury) because he wants to get paid next summer, but if he can’t go, then he can’t go. The Raps are going to need him at full strength to be at their best, and we simply do not know if that’s even possible at this point. They could be getting a diminishing asset who is more like a top-20 or 30 player rather than one of the handful of most impactful players in the league. That wouldn’t necessarily lower Toronto’s floor all that much, but it would definitely cap their ceiling.
Of course, Leonard is not the only player with injury concerns. Lowry is seemingly dealing with some kind of bumps and bruises in an annual basis at this point. And he’s a 6-foot point guard on the wrong side of 30 — the type of player that doesn’t tend to age well. VanVleet had issues of his own at the tail end of last season and during the playoffs, and shoulder injuries can be tricky and recurring.
The Raptors’ big man rotation is somewhat thin, which could leave Valanciunas, Ibaka, and Siakam more vulnerable to injury than one might think they’d be on the surface. Luckily, there’s plenty of veteran’s minimum big man help still available on the open market, and the Raps should be able to find someone who can soak up a few minutes a night and fill in on occasion when one of the primary bigs can’t go. Nogueira is still available, for example, as are players like Noah Vonleh, Quincy Acy, and David West, all of whom would make varying degrees of sense for the Raps.
Next: Is the Kawhi Leonard trade a slam dunk for the Toronto Raptors?
Beyond the construction of the roster, Toronto will have to deal with immense pressure next season not just to win, but to convince Kawhi to stick around over the long term. It’s not exactly been made a secret that he has no interest in staying there at this point. Masai Ujiri, Aubrey Graham, and company are just going to have to give it their best hard-sell over the next 345 days or so. The best thing they can do is come out and dominate the East and make a trip to the Finals, but they’ll also have to sell Kawhi on the city and the culture and everything else about the organization. And they’ll have to do it all while integrating a fairly new coaching staff, with longtime assistant Nick Nurse as the new man in charge.
This isn’t necessarily the team Nurse thought he was signing up to coach, and it’s not a stretch to pitch him as analogous to David Blatt in Cleveland in this scenario. All of a sudden he has a very important player who he has to cater to while also figuring out how to install his system, connect to everyone else, and make sure the team actually wins. It’s not going to be easy, but it is for damn sure important.