Raptors remain a team for the playoffs … but those players are on other teams

TORONTO — If you’ve been feeling nostalgic for the Toronto Raptors of old, when April, May and June were a roller-coaster of high expectations, dashed hopes and unexpected triumphs, the first round of the NBA playoffs has been a trip down memory lane, delivering a warm fuzzy feeling from days gone by.

Or maybe they’ve made you sad, lamenting what was and what seems so distant now.

Either way, nostalgia is a powerful drug. Entire consumer and entertainment categories — political movements, too — have been built mining the feelings we all have about things that are far enough in the rearview that it’s easy to brush off the complicating glitches.

But it is remarkable that five years after the Raptors won the NBA title, four years after setting a franchise record winning percentage and two years since their last playoff appearance, several former players are playing key roles on teams planning on deep playoff runs. This, even as the current edition of the Raptors is coming off a 25-win season and hoping the rebuild is short-lived and returns the team to the lofty heights it occupied in the Eastern Conference for much of the past decade sooner rather than later.

But the former Raptors — a total of six sprinkled among four teams — are in the thick of it.

In reverse order of departure, you have Pascal Siakam playing some of his best basketball as the Indiana Pacers find themselves up 3-1 on the injury-riddled third-seed Milwaukee Bucks. O.G. Anunoby and Precious Achiuwa will have a chance to lift the Knicks to the second round with a win against the 76ers on Tuesday night in Game 5 as their series shifts back to New York. If they do, it will be a disappointing end for Nick Nurse, who coached all of the Raptors still in the playoffs during his five-year run with Toronto and who has been starting former Raptors guard Kyle Lowry in the playoffs for Philadelphia, after Lowry joined his old coach after being traded by the Miami Heat and then waived by Charlotte. Out west, there is Norm Powell and Kawhi Leonard in a tough fight with Dallas, trying to help the Los Angeles Clippers fulfill the championship mission that Leonard signed up for when he left the Raptors as a free agent in the summer of 2019. The series is tied 2-2, with Game 5 set for Wednesday.

The ex-Raptors were all over the place in the final moments of the Knicks’ tense win over the Sixers in Philadelphia on Sunday. Anunoby did a standout job guarding Sixers giant Joel Embiid down the stretch — this, after spending long stretches chasing around Philly’s lightning quick guard, Tyrese Maxey. The pair of assignments proving once again that Anunoby’s defensive versatility may be unmatched league-wide.

But when the Sixers were down four with 27 seconds left, there was Lowry showing that his bag of tricks remains full to the brim, even at age 38, as he drew a foul away from the ball by setting a screen for Embiid on Anunoby, and then dutifully flopped, drawing the foul, and getting the Sixers a free point at the free throw line. (It was actually just the second most-Lowry play of the game, as in the first quarter he somehow drew a shooting foul by tripping over the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson, who was lying on the floor at the time.) But on the next play, it was a Achiuwa — who played the entire fourth quarter for the Knicks — blocking Embiid’s lay-up attempt to help secure the win. Still, while the Sixers might be down 3-1 and facing elimination when the series heads back to New York, Lowry is plus-24 in the four games, second on Philadelphia only to Embiid. Meanwhile, the Knicks improved to 23-4 with Anunoby in the lineup, and Achiuwa — considered a bit of an afterthought in the Dec. 30 trade, given the Knicks’ frontcourt depth — has continued to prove himself to be a useful rotation option for head coach Tom Thibodeau.

As the Pacers player with the most playoff experience, Siakam has stepped into his role as veteran leader with style. He became the first NBA player since Wilt Chamberlain in 1967 to open the playoffs with consecutive games with at least 35 points and 10 rebounds, putting up a 36/13/2 line on 15-of-25 shooting in a Pacers loss in Game 1 and 37/11/6 in a win in Game 2. The Bucks contained Siakam a little better in Game 3, limiting him to 17 points and nine rebounds on 7-of-17 shooting, but he still made several crucial plays down the stretch for the Pacers, including an assist on the game-winning three in the overtime victory. He was content to play a supporting role in the Pacers’ win Sunday night — though he did flirt with a triple double, notching 13 points, nine rebounds and seven assists.

Powell has been one of the most efficient bench scorers in the NBA since being traded by the Raptors. He was rightfully upset he didn’t win or wasn’t even named a finalist for the league’s Sixth Man of the Year award after posting a True Shooting percentage (which factors in the value of two-point shots, three-point shots and free throws) of 62.6 this season. Leonard was his dominant self during the regular season and seemed poised to lead the Clippers on a long-awaited title run before knee problems surfaced again. On Sunday, he was ruled out indefinitely after struggling (by his standards) in Games 2 and 3 against Dallas. The Clippers won without him to even the series 2-2. Powell hit three triples and is now shooting 59 per cent from deep for the series.

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Now, there wasn’t a world where the ex-Raptors would all remain current Raptors. Free agents leave, and when it comes to trades, we can quibble on the returns and the timing, but there are always more forces pulling teams apart in the NBA than keeping them together.

Leonard left for Los Angeles as soon as he could; there was no mechanism with which the Raptors could compel him to stay. Lowry didn’t want return to Toronto after the Raptors spent the 2020-21 season in Tampa (Achiuwa was the return from the sign-and-trade that sent Lowry to Miami). Powell being traded straight up for Gary Trent Jr. at the deadline in 2021 is a sore point, given that four years later Powell remains the better player and is under contract with the Clippers for two more years on a deal that averaged a very reasonable $18 million a year, while Trent Jr. — who was earning similar money on a shorter deal — could leave the Raptors in free agency for nothing.

Anunoby? Had he wanted to stay in Toronto via free agency this summer, he surely would have signalled that. Instead, it’s widely expected that the elite 3-and-D wing will be signed by the Knicks this summer for top dollar, a deal league sources believe was effectively agreed to as a condition of the Knicks acquiring him. His agent is, after all, the son of Knicks president Leon Rose.

Siakam? First off, it does seems like three first-round picks — 19th this year and the Pacers’ top-four protected pick in 2026, as well as what turned out to be the 29th pick this season, which was subsequently sent in the trade with Utah to acquire, effectively, Ochai Agbaji — along with Bruce Brown, Jordan Nwora and Kira Lewis is a fairly light return for someone who can affect a playoff series the way Siakam has for the Pacers. But that’s water under the bridge. The Raptors didn’t want to offer the contract in either term or value that Siakam wanted, so they parted ways. The Pacers could sign Siakam for as much as $249.3 million over five years this summer. Time will tell if paying the two-time all-NBA selection $56.7 million in his age-34 season will be good business or not.

But what the exercise does do is illustrate the standard the new-look Raptors will have to reach to match all the feel-goods from seasons past.

Out there in the NBA universe are former Raptors with 449 games of playoff experience and counting.

Among the Raptors’ projected core heading into next season — Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, Gradey Dick, Jakob Poeltl and Kelly Olynyk — there is just 105 games of post-season experience, with 70 of those games attributed to veterans Poeltl and Olynyk.

How long it will take for the Raptors to be in the post-season themselves, rather than having former Raptors carry the torch for glory days past, is the looming question for this off-season and quite possibly for several off-seasons to come.

Maybe they find fortune in the draft. Maybe it’s with a clever transaction this summer. More realistically, it’s through the steady improvement of their existing core and the addition of key pieces at the right times.

But if the current Raptors or their fans want a taste of what playoff basketball is like, all they have to do is watch. 

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