After disastrous season, Raptors' future still uncertain

During a 2023-24 season in which just about everything that could go wrong did, the Toronto Raptors finally did what they should’ve done a year earlier and committed to building toward the future. The vision of that future, though, remains fairly hazy, and it’s hard not to wonder where this franchise – now fully divorced from the last vestiges of its golden era – is going.

The outline of a roadmap has been drawn in broad strokes. The Raptors are clearly building around Scottie Barnes, the 22-year-old do-it-all forward whom they just lavished with a five-year max contract that could climb as high as $270 million with incentives. Alongside him, they’ll try to develop Immanuel Quickley – the sweet-shooting combo guard who just landed a five-year, $175-million commitment of his own – into a complementary pillar. RJ Barrett, still just 24, will slot between them on the wing and try to sustain the career-best production he manufactured after arriving with Quickley from New York in the OG Anunoby trade.

That core trio, while promising in many ways, has more than its share of question marks and deficiencies, and its long-term viability hinges on a handful of swing skills: Barnes’ shooting and half-court creation; Quickley’s playmaking, interior scoring, and on-ball defense; and Barrett’s in-between game and help defense. But with the 25-year-old Quickley being the oldest of the three, there’s room for that growth to materialize. Around them, outside of second-year wing Gradey Dick, everything feels up in the air. There are sturdy vets who could stay or go, development projects who could go any which way, and a couple of straight-up lotto tickets.

The front office isn’t behaving like one that’s interested in seriously competing in a beefed-up Eastern Conference in 2024-25. Masai Ujiri, Bobby Webster and Co. punted on the possibility of cap space this summer, instead picking up Bruce Brown’s $23-million team option (for the express purpose of flipping him at some point) and absorbing Davion Mitchell in a Sacramento Kings salary dump that also netted Toronto a pair of nice second-round picks. But while the Raptors don’t project to be particularly good next season, and are now out from their draft-pick commitment to the Spurs from the Jakob Poeltl trade, they’re unlikely to be bad enough to jockey for lottery supremacy with the league’s true tankers ahead of a vaunted 2025 class. Improvement will largely have to come from within.

Overseeing that project is head coach Darko Rajakovic, about whom we still have a lot to learn. While he was far from perfect in his rookie season on the sidelines, he got the rawest of deals as he tried in vain to shape a new team identity amid significant trades and then a raft of injuries.

Rajakovic arrived touting a new brand of offense that would replace the team’s iso-heavy, possession-maximizing ethos with one that emphasized ball and player movement while flowing through various high-post and elbow actions. It was a distinctly modern system, but one the Raptors’ roster – bereft as it was of movement shooting and off-the-bounce creation – wasn’t built to execute. Rajakovic tried to graft his philosophy onto that roster anyway, but no matter how ornate your off-ball actions are, they don’t amount to much if the defense doesn’t have to react to the players involved.

He eventually adapted to cater to the strengths of his best players (namely Pascal Siakam) but the results didn’t improve enough to stave off the tidal wave of change that was coming. Anunoby and Siakam were traded three weeks apart, and more moves happened at the trade deadline the following month. Rajakovic wound up coaching four different versions of the team in the span of about seven weeks. There was the version that started the season, then the one with Quickley and Barrett in place of Anunoby and Precious Achiuwa, then the one with Brown in place of Siakam, and finally the one with Kelly Olynyk and Ochai Agbaji in place of Dennis Schroder and Thad Young.

“The moment we start figuring out certain lineups and certain schemes, we have changes,” Rajakovic told me in the wake of that roster overhaul. “It’s constantly evolving. That’s been the theme from the start of the season. Like, we’re changing the plays that we’re running. The personnel dictates what those plays will look like. Some plays that we haven’t run since the start of the season, we’re putting those plays back in. But for me, the most important thing is I don’t want to overload our (new) guys with too many schemes and be too cute.”

That vortex of change wasn’t much easier on the players.

“When I got traded here I was like, ‘OK, started figuring some things out,'” Barrett explained in his end-of-season presser. “Then boom, Pascal’s gone. So now I’m like, ‘OK, all right, let’s figure it out again.’ And then boom, Dennis and Thad (are gone). So, I think we need this summer to work out together, figure things out, and then just have a good training camp and all be on the same page.”

There’s only so much you can glean about a team or coach amid so much turmoil and turnover, but to Rajakovic’s credit, we still got a pretty clear sense of his offensive philosophy. His defensive philosophy? Not so much. The Raptors were flimsy and disorganized on that side of the ball, ranking 26th in defensive efficiency overall and 29th after the Anunoby trade.

“With players coming in midseason … I felt that it was easier to establish that identity on the offensive end than on the defensive end,” Rajakovic said. “I think on the defensive end it really comes down to – a lot of times it’s size, a lot of times it’s comfort level and knowing what you need to do. But the defensive side really depends on communication … and a high level of trust. I think continuity with the team and with schemes will really help with that.”

Toronto is also hoping Mitchell, who arrives as their best point-of-attack stopper, can help on that front. Further development for Agbaji, strength-building for Dick, and possibly even instant impact from toolsy rookies Ja’Kobe Walter and Jonathan Mogbo would also move the needle. Poeltl is a solid backstop and Barnes was one of the most improved defenders in the league last season. Still, this group has a long way to go.

The shape of the trades the front office made last season felt like an admission it had previously over-indexed on size, athleticism, and defensive acumen at the expense of shooting and playmaking. Now it feels like the Raptors have the opposite problem.

On the plus side, the front office has provided its coach with a roster that’s better equipped to execute his offensive vision. Even in the Raptors’ dismal second half last season, there were moments when that vision came into focus, when glimmers of sunlight peeked through the storm clouds. Barrett’s slashing ability was an important ingredient, as was Olynyk’s high-post passing. But most vital was the injection of movement shooting that came with Quickley, as well as Dick’s increased comfort at the NBA level.

The split actions the Raptors ran early in the season often fizzled out as defenses switched or sagged back, but involving multiple savvy off-ball movers and 3-point threats in those actions allowed for much more flow and continuity.

“I think the trades we had in the season helped Darko’s offensive system work a little more,” Poeltl said. “It’s not that those other players didn’t buy in, but the fresh start with the new guys was just better (for) that system. You could see when we had our guys on the court, it felt and looked good.”

“It’s hard to scout, hard to guard,” Olynyk said of the offense. “And if you master it with continuity and chemistry … it’s a work of art.”

“I just think I’m a good fit here,” Barrett said of how he was able to raise his effective field-goal percentage from 48% as a Knick to 60% as a Raptor. “The way I play, the way I’ve always played – it works very well with Darko’s system. … Playing free, making reads, the whole team sharing the ball, that’s kind of my game.”

Now, that’s all really nice, but even Rajakovic acknowledges that principles and schemes can only take the team so far. At the end of the day, talent wins, and the extent to which the Raptors can nurture their talent – especially in Barnes, Quickley, and Barrett – will determine the success of this retooling project.

“When I watch the NBA playoffs, I know what I see every single year,” Rajakovic said. “All of those teams in the first round, they run, I don’t know, 20-30 plays. Then that gets cut down to 15, cut down to 10, then you watch the NBA Finals and it looks like they’re not running plays, they’re just running very simple actions. Why? Because their players are so good in those situations that it’s so hard to guard. And my goal is to develop our guys, not just over the summer but the full next season and in the future, to become really hard to handle in one-on-one situations.”

Barnes is by far their best hope of becoming that level of player, thanks to his combination of size, vision, ball skill, and touch. He already made a major leap in 2023-24, earning an All-Star berth as an injury replacement in his third season. The Raptors are banking on him making more.

Quickley, despite his great speed, hasn’t yet flashed the handle or the devastating first step to be a one-on-one weapon in the half court. He can struggle to get all the way to the rim, either falling back on his floater or killing his dribble at the free-throw line because he didn’t trust himself in traffic. On top of an inexplicable dip in the effectiveness of said floater, that rim aversion led to him shooting just 43% from 2-point range with the Raptors.

He did clearly make a point of keeping his dribble alive longer and getting all the way to the basket as the season went on, upping his rim volume from 13% before the All-Star break to 21% after. Sustaining that is essential in his quest to grow into the well-rounded lead guard the Raptors need him to be.

“He needs to be able to keep that floater; there are situations and reads where the floater is the best available shot,” Rajakovic said. “But you cannot just rely on that shot, and that’s definitely something we talked about. The next layer for him in his player development is the ability to get all the way to the rim, being able to play through a lot of contact, and being able to finish.”

Even if he never becomes a switch-busting iso killer, he can be a great fit next to Barnes. His versatile shooting ability gives Toronto a different level of pick-and-roll threat while putting more dynamic off-ball and dribble-handoff actions on the menu to complement Barnes as an elbow operator. Though Barrett was arguably the more productive Knicks import in the back half of the season, Quickley’s theoretical skill-set synergy with the franchise player makes him the Raptors’ most important secondary building block. The contract they just gave him reinforces that.

There’s also a reason that synergy remains theoretical. In their 600 minutes on the court together, Quickley and Barnes struggled to get on the same page and showed minimal progress in developing their timing and feel for each other. They often got their wires crossed or got in each other’s way in transition. In the half court, their two-man actions were too often aimless. Often, neither of them seemed to know what they were trying to accomplish. Barnes doesn’t always stick his screens, but that would matter less if Quickley consistently attacked with purpose and speed. Instead, a lot of the time, they both just kind of stood around:

Progress might’ve come with more time, but Barnes suffered a hand fracture that ended his season in early March. (The symbolism of Barnes getting hurt because Quickley accidentally kicked him while going up for a rebound felt almost too on the nose.)

“I think it’s going to take time for those two guys,” Rajakovic told me. “Scottie setting screens is really good at finding a good angle, rolling to the rim, and playmaking. But Quickley needs to figure out how to find him, where to find him, is that pass coming over the defense or is it a bounce pass? And then vice versa, when Quickley is setting screens for Scottie, he’s going to pop, or he’s going to short roll – obviously, he has a very good floater, so he can finish from there. But it takes time to develop that kind of chemistry.”

The Raptors need that chemistry to hit. They probably also need outlier development from one or two of their other young guys if they want to harmonize both ends of the floor and curtail the game of roster-building whac-a-mole they’ve been playing for the last couple of years.

The coming season may not bring a ton of wins, but it should finally offer the Raptors a modicum of stability. Time to find out what they really have.

Joe Wolfond covers the NBA for theScore.