Apr 1, 2021
Raptors facing hard truths with season slipping away
On Wednesday, the Kyle Lowry-less Raptors fell to an undermanned, inexperienced Oklahoma City Thunder team. In another time or in a different world that kind of defeat would have felt like an unmitigated disaster. Sadly, though, this was just another loss and the Raptors are faced with difficult questions heading into the final stretch of the season, Josh Lewenberg writes,
TORONTO – Kyle Lowry will miss at least seven-to-ten days with what the Raptors are calling a right foot infection – but before you get any ideas, it’s not a wink, wink, nudge, nudge “foot infection”, it’s an honest-to-goodness foot infection.
The details of his ailment are sparse, which will naturally invite questions given the team’s current situation. What we know is that the infection is in, or at least started in his big toe. It’s lingered for most of the season, even costing the veteran point guard a couple of games back in January, but it’s flared up recently and isn’t responding to treatment.
“It’s not going very well,” said Nick Nurse, who was referring to Lowry’s foot, but may as well have been describing any number of things around his club these days.
On Wednesday, the Lowry-less Raptors fell to an Oklahoma City team missing its best player (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander), its toughest defender (fellow Canadian Luguentz Dort) and its most accomplished vet (Al Horford). The Thunder dressed nine players with an average age of 23.5 and none of them entered the game averaging more than nine points.
In another time or in a different world that kind of defeat would have felt like an unmitigated disaster. Sadly, though, this was just another loss.
Over the past six weeks, Toronto has been bested by the NBA-worst Minnesota Timberwolves, fallen to a Houston Rockets team that had dropped 20 contests in a row, and been beaten three times by the 13-win Detroit Pistons. The only saving grace to hitting rock bottom is you can’t sink any deeper.
The Raptors closed out March with a record of 1-13 – the third-worst month in the history of a franchise that has seen some ugly months. They’ve now lost 15 times in their last 17 games.
Any hope of salvaging the campaign and fighting their way back into the playoff picture, even the play-in picture, is fading fast. At some point in the not-so-distant future they may have to consider an alternate path, if they haven’t already.
That does not mean you should expect to see them tank, at least not in the traditional sense. If you want to know what a traditional tank job looks like, look no further than Wednesday’s opponent.
When Oklahoma City traded Paul George to the Clippers for a haul that included Gilgeous-Alexander and a treasure trove of picks, it thought the rebuild was on. Problem was that last season’s team – with an intriguing mix of youth and experience, led by Chris Paul – had different plans. They overachieved and made the playoffs, so Sam Presti sold off Paul and other parts for more picks, expediting the process.
Unable to find a new home for Horford at the trade deadline – a function of the remaining term on his contract – they recently decided to shut him down for the season, citing their desire to veer younger in the rotation.
The Raptors have not done that with Lowry, at least not yet. Lowry is sitting out because he’s hurt. A counterpoint is that by this stage in the season, he’s usually battling something, or a series of things. More often than not, he plays through those ailments, like he’s played through this for months. Until recently, there’s always been something to play for.
We’ll see Lowry again this season. Although it’s not impossible, it would be a surprise if they were to shut him down completely. With that said, he just turned 35, he’ll be a free agent in a few months, and his priorities may differ from the team’s as this season winds down. Monitoring his workload over the next six weeks makes sense for both parties.
It’s not a tank, not exactly, but you can argue it’s tank-adjacent.
Mathematically, the Raptors are not out of it – they’re still within 2.5 games of 10th place and East’s final play-in spot. Mentally and spiritually, though, that’s a different story.
“I think that there's certainly a level of frustration for all of us,” Nurse said ahead of their latest defeat – the 113-103 loss to OKC. “I would imagine you guys are all feeling it, too. I mean, every time we turn around somebody's missing or a couple guys are missing. It's been kinda one thing after another. And you know, sometimes, what is that saying? There's a straw that breaks the camel's back."
“Our three, what you would think would be our three-best players with me, Pascal and OG are trying to recover from COVID, obviously, and you can feel we’re all hitting the same conditioning wall at the same time,” Fred VanVleet said on Wednesday night, as dejected as he’s looked following any of these losses. “And so there are spurts where we play high-level basketball and spurts where we suck. It's like we’re fighting uphill and it's tough to get it back sometimes. So it's hard to put your finger on what exactly it is because there are a million and one things going wrong out there, but we gotta figure it out somehow.”
The reality is, with 24 to go, they’re closer to Orlando and top-four odds in the NBA draft lottery than they are to Chicago and that last play-in seed. They’ve also got one of the league’s toughest remaining schedules. The stretch they’re in the middle of now – six of seven games against non-playoff teams – was supposed to be their last ditch effort to make something happen. Instead, they’ve dropped the first two contests to Detroit and OKC.
To salvage the season might mean something different today than it did a month or two ago. Now, salvaging the season should mean getting a better look at and finding more opportunities for the team’s younger players.
With Lowry out, rookie Malachi Flynn – Toronto’s 29th pick in last fall’s draft – will get a chance to show what he can do playing behind VanVleet. He’s appeared in eight straight games and logged a career-high 19 minutes against the Thunder.
Recently acquired 22-year-old Gary Trent Jr. went off for a personal-best 31 points in the loss, and should continue to see an expanded role with his new team. OG Anunoby, who’s been one of the lone bright spots during an otherwise dark month, will also inherit a bigger role offensively following the trade of Norman Powell.
Giving those guys the opportunity to play through mistakes, to learn and to grow, should be the organization’s top priority for the duration of the season. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re waving the white flag.
You may recall the Raptors’ 2001-02 campaign. An already disappointing season seemed lost when Vince Carter went down with about a month left, but a young group made up of Alvin Williams, Morris Peterson, Jerome Williams and Keon Clark, and led by veteran Antonio Davis, went on an unexpected run. They won 12 of their final 14 games to squeeze into the playoffs, where they nearly upset Detroit (if only Chris Childs knew the score).
Unlikely as it seems, maybe this team’s luck is about to turn. Maybe those young guys spark something and gain some valuable experience in the process. The Raptors certainly wouldn’t be upset about that. If not, if the season is in fact lost, but the youth movement helps solidify their future while also securing a few more lottery balls before it's all said and done, that might not be so bad, either.