The Toronto Raptors are a basketball disaster

The Toronto Raptors can’t get out of their own way. 

The team is now 1-4, with four increasingly pathetic losses after a picture-perfect season opener against the Atlanta Hawks. This time, against the Houston Rockets, Toronto caught fire from deep, saw a miraculous shooting performance from their roster, and still managed to collapse against a Rockets squad that wasn’t quite picturesque itself. Things aren’t working. 

I actually do think it might be time to ring the alarm right now in Toronto. There are issues all over the court, on both ends, up and down the roster. And there is no urgency in the play. It’s not time to trade everyone or fire anyone. But the Raptors need to change their approach either in their mentality, their system, both, or even in other ways I can’t conceive. 

The hope, the most optimistic hope possible, is that the Raptors simply are outclassed by size. And there could be something to that. The Milwaukee Bucks (Giannis Antetokounmpo, Myles Turner), Dallas Mavericks (Anthony Davis, Dereck Lively II), San Antonio Spurs (Victor Wembanyama), and Houston Rockets (all) are simply enormous teams. Perhaps the four largest in the league? Or, at least, four of the five — the Cleveland Cavaliers are coming up next. (Hold on to your butts.)

Toronto’s scattered defensive chaos is perhaps most undermined by size, as it uncovers the offensive glass with defensive bigs running wild all over the place and not in the paint to secure boards. (Houston had more offensive rebounds in the first quarter than Toronto had defensive ones. Watching your team get outrebounded so brutally has to be one of the worst experiences a player or coach or front office member can suffer. There’s no grace, no artistry, no beauty. Just pain, slumped shoulders, and a parade to the free-throw line.) 

And Toronto’s style of offence is entirely predicated on paint passing, paint touches, paint attempts, paint everything. Yet no one on the team is capable of scoring with ease when attacking enormous paint protectors. Barnes might be the best option there, but he is challenged at getting to the rim when faced by digs — another threat from uniquely long and tall teams. 

So, maybe Toronto is just on a slide facing teams that constitute their kryptonite. Maybe.

Still, that wouldn’t explain the absolute passionless-yet-frantic nature of their rotations. The aimlessness of their doubles. The confusion of their defensive strategy. 

At one point against the Rockets the Raptors didn’t know the play they were supposed to be running. Collin Murray-Boyles, hero of game 4, was supposed to ghost a ball screen into a Chicago action with Brandon Ingram jetting out of the corner. He didn’t recognize the action for Ingram and went late after Jamal Shead’s furious gesticulations. (Toronto scored anyway because Ingram is art.) 

And Toronto was still in it. Leading for much of the third quarter, absurd shooting was able to cover up the holes. The team shot 12-of-20 in the first half as Scottie Barnes (made four), Murray-Boyles (made two), and others far outshot their expected efficiency. That’s not to mention Ingram’s midrange shooting, which was as aesthetic as it was effective. His footwork, extension, body control: artistry. He’s a miraculous talent. All this to say, good shooting can solve problems. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any. 

Gradey Dick still isn’t touching the ball. (I don’t know if he’s even allowed at this point.) Immanuel Quickley is just pressing, man. No idea where the flow is, and his own place within it, at times. In the second, he charged into a crowd in transition, throwing up a prayer layup that got blocked with ease, leading to uncontested points the other way for Houston. Two free points for the other team is game-losing stuff. Consider: A 27-percent 3-point shooter, taking four attempts a game, will score 1.08 points in that game. A 40-percent 3-point shooter, taking four attempts a game, will score 1.6 points a game. That’s a gap of half a point, between a miserable shooter and one of the league’s better ones. And Quickley’s transition choice cost Toronto 2 full points. 

The game was close at half. Despite Houston continuing to have more offensive rebounds than Toronto had defensive ones. (Just to be clear, that means that on any individual missed shot from Houston, the Rockets had a better than even chance to grab it afterwards. Tough to close out a defensive possession like that!) And the team came out of half playing as if it was up 20. 

Murray-Boyles bobbled a dump-off pass from Barnes, leading to an and-1 the other way for Houston. RJ Barrett drove without a plan, throwing a two-handed, over-the-head pass through traffic that predictably got picked off and went the other way. Free throws. 

And Darko Rajakovic himself is ringing the alarm bell. Not out loud, not to media. But his rotations were an indicator of the man searching. He yanked Murray-Boyles only two minutes into the half in exchange for Jonathan Mogbo, who didn’t see the floor in the first. Rajakovic has been cycling through rotations to start the season.

But to me, that’s a bad thing, not a good one. Either team has already decided it doesn’t trust its work from the offseason, the rotation plans, the schemes about who would work together, or who should play where and when and against whom. Or those plans weren’t made in the first place. 

I am on record as a believer in Rajakovic’s coaching. But this has not been a good start to the season for anyone, himself included. 

A 1-4 record isn’t the end of the world. Toronto is facing a hellacious schedule, and it’s not like this team was supposed to compete with the league’s best. But it’s the way these losses are coming. The defence needs solving. At this point, my guess is as good as yours about from where that solution is going to come. 

Perhaps from the youth. Ja’Kobe Walter entered the game in the third and forced an eight-second violation with his ball pressure. A run! No, no, Alperen Sengun scored a few in transition to keep Toronto double-digit points behind. An Ingram 3 finally brought the crowd to its feet, with defensive pressure, a modicum of moment; but an off-ball foul put the Rockets on the line, with four minutes remaining in the third quarter. Deflation.

The fourth quarter changed nothing. Toronto tried some zone, which was shredded by paint touches and cuts. Double-teams against post-ups from Sengun led to dunks for his teammates. A Quickley drive led to an early pickup, a back spin, a pass to the Rockets, and an uncontested dunk in transition. Dick started touching the ball, leading to missed shots. Sengun sat, and Steven Adams devoured the offensive glass. There was a fake comeback. Quickley hit a drifting triple to cut it to single digits. Amen Thompson immediately responded by isolated on him, waving away screens, and crossing him to the other side of the paint en route to a hanging layup. Quickley’s defence in general allowed drives straight past him whenever the ballhandler so wanted.

Toronto needs change. It has talent, perhaps not as much as the best teams, but enough to be competitive. But the system isn’t working in ways that empower said talent. There are mistakes being made up and down the roster, including on the bench. Something needs to improve, or the team will find its way to the bottom of the standings quickly in a year that finally sees the franchise trying to win. When you’re trying to lose, it’s easy to stay together. What about now?

Now it’s time for Rajakovic and company to face it’s most difficult test since taking over the team: Can the team stay together facing real adversity? And can the team find answers to the problems that are plaguing it?