Toronto had a disastrous start of the past season that prevented them from having any chance of getting into the playoffs. In early January, they had a 8-31 record with a stretch of a single win and 15 losses between December and January. All their best players missed games during that disastrous run and that was the main reason for such bad play.
However, Toronto managed to have a decent second half of the season even with the team doing some obvious tanking in order to lose as many games as possible. The hilarity of all of this is that Toronto still won a lot of games and ended the season with a 13-14 run mostly due to being the #2 defense in the league during that span of games.
The Raptors decided to do some strategic rests to some players and with that, they lost a great chance to develop the chemistry between their young players. They did that to attempt to lose games, games that they eventually won anyway. Thanks to this, their three best offensive players Barnes, Barrett and Quickley logged only 285 minutes together during the whole season with a -11.56 net rating (106.15 offense vs 117.72 defense). Toronto was terrible as a team when these three players shared the court and they could have used the opportunity to develop some chemistry between them as they were healthy.
Their tanking only gave them the #9 overall pick in the draft and they selected Collin Murray-Boyles, who fits in the kind of player they tend to select lately: an athletic, dynamic player who can play multiple positions.
The main question for Toronto this season is to know whether the elite defense the team showed during the second half of last season is actually legit or if it was just a fluke. The Raptors are loaded with athletic players who can turn them into a “poor” version of what the Thunder defense has become. As a note, they were #3 in the league in opp. TO/rate during that span of games at the end of the season. The problem is that those athletic players who are good on defense lack proper shooting ability and so, the Raptors were a terrible team on offense last season. They were only #29 in 3pts vol% and #22 in 3pts%.
Toronto is putting a lot of hope in that Brandon Ingram can help the team’s offense, as he joined the team midseason but is yet to play for the team due to injury. The team’s backcourt will be formed by the ex-Knicks duo of Quickley and Barrett. I have some doubts on whether they can co-exist as the sample from last season wasn’t good with a terrible -12.99 net rating.
Scottie Barnes continues being the team’s best player and after four seasons, we can say that his game is molded after Giannis Antetokounmpo as his lack of perimeter shooting demands that his teammates spread the floor for him to be able to operate. This has been a problem during his tenure in Toronto (the team was ranked #21, #28, #27 and #22 in 3pts vol% in the last four seasons) and this might continue to be an issue this season too.
Nevertheless, the Raptors now have more offensive talent (especially with Ingram playing) and if their defense is indeed good, they should be in the fight for a playoff spot.