Rebuilding with dignity.
As slogans go, it’s not the sexiest rallying cry as the Toronto Raptors try to find ways to be relevant during their 30th anniversary season, itself a celebration of sizzle over steak while the real thing marinates.
And to be clear, that’s not exactly what Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri said as the team lifted the curtain on the 2024-25 season, which comes on the heels of a 2023-24 season that skidded to a miserable 2-19 finish that didn’t even come with the consolation of a lottery pick — that prize transferring to the San Antonio Spurs after an ill-advised trade for Jakob Poeltl the year previous.
What Ujiri did say when I asked him what adjective he would use for the season to come was this:
“I would use the word rebuilding. That’s the right word,” Ujiri said. “I think we have a clear path now going forward. … I think we set a path (when) we went into the draft last year and got a couple of young players and we want to continue to grow and build this team around Scottie (Barnes), who is 23 years old. … So, yes, in sports, you always want to be competitive, and you play to win. We’re going to play to win. But it is a rebuilding team. I think everybody sees that loud and clear.”
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If you’re a Raptors fan and want to see the franchise even have a chance of repeating anything resembling the seven-year playoff run between 2013-14 and 2019-20, which included the 2019 championship, you should be breathing a deep sigh of relief. Maybe even fist-pumping.
Because the surest way for a team to not reach those past heights is by trying to thread the needle and skip steps.
Since the 2019 championship roster began falling apart in increments, the Raptors had been doing just that for a couple of seasons now in their ill-fated effort to bridge the potential of Barnes with the impatient primes of Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby.
It was a noble effort but it got them nowhere, unless you count a first-round playoff exit, losing in the play-in tournament twice and then not having a lottery pick this past June to make up for one of the worst seasons in franchise history.
But the Raptors seem to have finally seen the light, or maybe that’s just the gleam coming off the Oklahoma City Thunder — the best-run team in the NBA and proof that well-executed short-term pain can yield considerable gain as the small-market Thunder are among the championship favourites this season and likely for years to come.
Even Poeltl, the serviceable Austrian centre who ended up costing the Raptors the No. 8 pick in the 2024 draft in an ill-advised effort to extend the VanVleet, Siakam, Anunoby window, knows what’s up.
He didn’t expect to be on a rebuilding team entering his ninth NBA season, but he’s not naïve: “We’re all aware of the situation. We had a massive change in the team since the middle of last season. So we know that we’re starting somewhere in the beginning,” said Poeltl. “… We’re definitely capable of winning some games (but) I know that’s not the main focus for us … this has to be a long-term project. I think we all know, we’re not going to go attack the championship this year. It makes no sense for us to try to win every single game as much as we can and sacrifice development in terms of that.”
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There’s some irony that one of the ways the Raptors have been drumming up excitement heading into a season that doesn’t promise to offer a lot in terms of on-court thrills has been to honour Vince Carter, the soon-to-be Hall-of-Famer who will be the first player to have his number retired in a ceremony on Nov. 2.
How deserving Carter — who left the Raptors in less-than-ideal circumstances during the 2004-05 season — is of being the first person to have his jersey hanging from the Raptors at Scotiabank Arena is an ongoing debate that we probably wouldn’t be having if Kyle Lowry, poised to begin his 19thseason with the Philadelphia 76ers would ever stop playing.
But since we’re on the topic, what Carter’s time in Toronto should reveal upon reflection is how ultimately fruitless it is to have just one superstar on your roster. In the Raptors’ case, it provided a much-needed sugar high when the franchise was flagging in the chaotic years after expansion, but it wasn’t sustainable. Building around him with veteran role players was a way to be competitive, but it wasn’t a path to a championship, and Carter eventually crumbled under the weight he was required to carry.
Fast forward two-plus decades and the Raptors’ current version of Vince Carter is Barnes, coming off his first all-star selection and entering his fourth season.
As special as Barnes is — and athletic six-foot-eight playmakers who can lead your team in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks are pretty damn rare — he’s not going to lead the Raptors to an NBA Finals all on his own.
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And while Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett — the most consequential pieces the Raptors acquired last season when they finally pivoted from the previous era and traded OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam — are promising players just entering their primes, neither project as a clear No.2 on an elite team.
Nope, the easiest way for the Raptors to be a team that’s important for reasons other than what retro jersey they’re trying to sell is to add another star. It’s for them to avoid the mistakes that saw other roster construction strategies never get over the hump.
Which is why the most important thing Ujiri said Monday might have come at the end of his media availability when I asked him about how he would prioritize the draft in their rebuild. No one said the word ‘tank’ — where teams burn entire seasons to improve their lottery odds — but Ujiri didn’t dodge the question, and in doing so, might have tipped his hand on what the Raptors’ real intentions are this season.
“When teams go through this, you go out and set the tone of how you play and how you want the culture of your team to be set,” he said. “You hope for the best, but we know — we all know — what reality is in this league, and the draft is a way for us to build teams and to acquire players, especially in a market like our market.
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Translated: The Raptors need talent, and they aren’t likely to acquire the kind of talent they need to complement a cornerstone like Barnes via trade or in free agency.
The Raptors need to draft it and develop it, and ideally do it on a timeline that fits with a 23-year superstar (hopefully) in the making.
The depth of the upcoming draft class and the flattened lottery odds — even the team with the seventh-worst record at the end of the season will have a 31.9 per cent chance of picking in the top four — means a team doesn’t have to be a horrible, toxic mess to be bad enough to get a key building block to pair with Barnes.
“I don’t want (the players) to talk about rebuilding — that’s me. They should be talking about winning and they should be talking about playing and competing,” said Ujiri. “That’s where you want their mindset to be.
“They do their jobs. We do our jobs, right?”
But if the job is to return the Raptors to relevance and to make sure that perhaps the most exciting homegrown player the Raptors have had since Carter doesn’t burn through his early prime years on teams with no chance of real success, then Ujiri has to oversee a process where the current edition of the Raptors are steered comfortably into the upper reaches of the draft lottery.
It won’t be easy — the Eastern Conference in particular is bottom-heavy with teams determined to execute the same strategy and with leaky rosters particularly well suited to the task — but it’s a grim bit of business that can’t be avoided if the plan is to win again in Toronto.
Taking steps backwards to make big moves forward doesn’t have to be an excruciating process where everyone involved has to cover their eyes, but it can’t be done in half measures either.
Masai Ujiri showed his cards on Monday. The Raptors’ future depends on him playing them.
