No easy fix for struggling Raptors

TORONTO – There wasn’t much to smile about when the Raptors returned home from The Happiest Place on Earth on Sunday night.

Held back by injuries, illness and inconsistency, Toronto has spent the first couple months of the season hovering around the .500 mark, yet to win or lose more than two games in a row.

A weekend in Orlando and a two-game set against the lowly Magic looked like their chance to finally break out and go on a run. Instead, it resulted in disappointment.

“We got our asses kicked,” said Pascal Siakam, fresh off a pair of embarrassing losses to what was the league’s worst team, which dropped his club’s record to 13-14 in the process.

“It happens, and when it does happen everyone [has] to continue to stay positive knowing that there’s a way out of it,” Siakam said later. “We can’t hit the panic button. I know that a lot of people do hit that panic button real quick but [we’re] not doing that… There’s no finger pointing. We’re all in this together. No matter what’s happening, those guys in here, I love them and I want everyone to succeed, I want us to succeed as a team. I think we’ve all got to do it together. Everyone’s in this together and we’ve gotta get out of it together.”

The Raptors were back in the gym on Tuesday, looking to put another missed opportunity behind them, remain upbeat, and find a way out of their recent funk, but that could prove easier said than done.

Toronto has lost five of its last seven games, with the two wins coming against that same Orlando club at home earlier this month, as well as the Lakers, sans LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Over that uninspiring stretch, the Raptors rank 20^th in offence, 18^th in defence and, notably, are shooting an abysmal 29 per cent from three-point range.

At times, they’ve looked lost; not playing hard enough or well enough to take advantage of their strengths or make up for their inherent weaknesses. Built to play a particular style of basketball, this is a team that’s at its best when using its length and versatility to create extra possessions through effort and energy.

But what happens when guys are recovering from injuries or playing hurt and can’t expel that same level of effort and energy? What happens when your opponents inevitably catch on and take you out of your comfort zone? What does your counterpunch look like? When they’re flying around on defence, generating turnovers, getting out in transition and crashing the offensive glass, they can still be pretty good, but they can’t seem to find other ways to win games.

On Tuesday, head coach Nick Nurse broke the team’s offence into three different components: three-point shooting, offensive rebounding, and turning defence into scoring opportunities. If two of those three things are absent on any given night, it’s awfully tough to win. If all three of them are missing, as they have been at various points this month, it’s virtually impossible.

The most troublesome variable has been their shooting. Since their uncharacteristically hot start to the season, shooting 38 per cent from long range over the first eight games, the Raptors have hit an NBA-low 30 per cent of their three-point attempts.

It’s taken a perfect storm of slumps and various ailments for them to shoot this poorly for that much time. The team’s two-best and highest volume shooters, Fred VanVleet and O.G. Anunoby, have both struggled from beyond the arc. Meanwhile, veteran off-season signee Otto Porter Jr., a 40 per cent career three-point shooter, has only played in eight games due to hamstring and foot injuries. Even still, this was never going to be a great three-point shooting team.

If these Raptors are one dimensional, it’s by design. Over the second half of last season, they proved that they could win playing their game. So, instead of addressing their most glaring needs this past summer, team president Masai Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster doubled down on their unconventional roster build, primarily consisting of 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-9 forwards. They opted against making significant changes to the core group and brought in a pair of complementary players – the 6-foot-8 Porter and the 6-foot-9 Juancho Hernangomez.

Outside of rookie second-rounder Christian Koloko – the lone Raptor to appear in all 27 games this season – they still don’t have a centre. They still don’t have reliable depth behind VanVleet and Gary Trent Jr. in the backcourt. And, most importantly, they still don’t have enough shooting on the floor.

There’s no easy fix. Anunoby – who, shooting aside, is having a fantastic season – will miss at least a week with a hip injury. While Porter won’t require surgery on the dislocated toe that’s sidelined him since mid-November, his return is about a month away. Precious Achiuwa, who made strides as a shooter last season, isn’t expected to get back from his sprained ankle until the new year. The hope is that VanVleet, who’s 12-for-56 from three over the last seven games, is due for some regression and that slumping sophomore Scottie Barnes can rediscover the improved shooting stroke he showed early in the season.

“I've got a lot of confidence in these guys,” Nurse said. “It is a tough moment right here. But I've got a lot of confidence in the staff, etc. We’ve got to get a little bit of our shooting back on the floor. We've lost a couple of good shooters that we're counting on. And we've got to step in and make the plays, man, and I think that'll boost the defence, that'll boost energy for rebounding, However, it's got to start the other way. It's got to start with defence and rebounding, no matter what's happening at the offensive end, we've got to give ourselves a chance, regardless of whether we're going to be making them or not.”

As currently constructed, this team doesn’t have much room for error.

On Thursday, many of the players who signed contracts over the summer will become moveable, unofficially kicking off the start of trade season around the NBA. Generally, though, the market doesn’t open up until we get closer to the February 9 trade deadline.

Given how difficult it’s been to evaluate this Raptors team – they haven’t had their full nine-man rotation available in a single game this season – Ujiri and Webster could use the extra time to see what they’ve got. They’ll be watching closely and, at this point, it’s hard to rule anything out.

It’s tough to envision them doing anything too drastic. For starters, this front office prefers to do their heavy lifting in the off-season. But also, they believe in the core group and this style of play; they’ve made no secret of that. It’s going to take a lot more than a few bad losses for them to change course.

It’s worth noting that the Raptors had the exact same record, 13-14, through 27 games a year ago before going on to win 25 of 36 games to close out the season. While they currently sit in ninth, they’re only three games behind fourth-place Brooklyn, who they’ll host on Friday.

These next few weeks could go a long way in determining what their ceiling is and how they approach the trade deadline. Are they merely an average team or can they be more than that? Fortunately, 12 of their next 16 games come at home, where they’re 10-3. Unfortunately, their next 13 opponents are currently at or above. 500, beginning with one of the league’s early-season surprises, the 14-11 Sacramento Kings, who are in town on Wednesday.

“We’ve just got to take every opponent [seriously],” Siakam said. “Everybody thought we were supposed to win those two games [in Orlando] but it didn’t happen like that. You can’t just wish it’ll happen. You gotta do it.”