Toronto forward Brandon Ingram, who was acquired back in February, has yet to play a game with the Raptors because of a serious ankle injury.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
Having won the city’s only big-time championship in decades, the Toronto Raptors rested. Like God.
The bible doesn’t tell us exactly how long that original rest lasted, but I’m guessing it wasn’t six years. Yet here we are, entering the basketball team’s seventh season post-NBA title, and the Raptors are still taking it easy.
On Monday, the team laid out its vision for the campaign ahead. The mission statement came from head coach Darko Rajakovic – “My focus is on winning and on developing at the same time.”
This is a bit like saying your focus is on driving and sleeping at the same time. One gets in the way of the other, sometimes fatally.
GM Bobby Webster preaches patience ahead of Toronto Raptors season
The big difference between last year’s 30-52 roster and this year’s is forward Brandon Ingram. The former second overall pick was injured when the Raptors traded for him last February – an ankle problem. He hasn’t played since.
Ingram says he’s better, though one couldn’t help but notice on Monday that he took the two steps up to the podium like he was walking a vertical balance beam. Maybe he’s just especially careful where he steps now.
Everyone else on the team knows the drill in this city. You don’t need to promise anything. You just have to sound confident. Some are better at that than others.
R.J. Barrett was raised here, so he knows that Toronto will believe anything if you look it straight in the eyes while you say it.
Having grown up in Toronto, Raptors forward R.J. Barrett knows how to placate the media.Cole Burston/Getty Images
“Expectations?” Barrett said. “We’re here to win.”
/Lingering stare.
Meanwhile, Jakob Poeltl is a bit more of a I-chopped-down-the-cherry-tree type. He cannot tell a lie.
“We gotta have one of those young-team-breakout years, where we might surprise some teams,” the Austrian said.
Translation: don’t worry too much if you haven’t started saving up for playoff tickets.
Ingram is the X factor here. He was raised in the basketball factories of North Carolina. He was the main man at Duke. He was the next big thing in L.A. It hasn’t worked out like he’d hoped, but the air of ‘any day now’ still attaches itself to him.
For Ingram, coming to Toronto must feel like a hockey player ending up in Columbus. Every city pays the same, but not every city stirs the blood.
Like so many athletes born to stardom, Ingram is aggressively laconic. His tone is so relaxed that even though he’s sitting up, he sounds like he’s lying down.
The only big reaction he had at the mic was when someone suggested that he, Scottie Barnes and Barrett would “work together as a threesome,” Ingram fell into a fit of giggles.
He had the same patter about winning and improving and learning, like getting paid eight figures in the NBA is a sort of finishing school for the unusually tall. But there was a small moment of unscripted wisdom.
Bobby Webster was given the title of Toronto Raptors general manager in 2017, but it is only now, following the summer departure of president Masai Ujiri, that he really has the job.Cole Burston/Getty Images
Ingram has spent six months doing nothing but observing – the team, his teammates, the organization, the way it’s coached, the style of play. What has impressed him?
“The most impressive thing for me is seeing every seat in the arena filled up … doesn’t matter if we’re winning or losing,” Ingram said.
That, right there, is the Toronto problem. It takes a newcomer to spot it. As much as executives and coaches talk about the pressure to win, there isn’t any until there is some. And there is no pressure – zero – on the basketball team. Certainly not when compared to the other thoroughbreds in the Rogers’ sports stable.
Halo’d by 2019, the Raptors have figured out that they don’t have to try too hard, as long as they keep repeating that they are trying really hard.
Their corporate bosses got sick enough of the team’s direction – lose to win – that they fired the sainted creator of that championship team, Masai Ujiri, over the summer. Then they promoted his protégé, Bobby Webster, to general manager. To be clear, Webster has had the title for years, but now he has the job.
Toronto Raptors general manager Bobby Webster to take over basketball operations
If you want things to change, you change them. If you think things are okay the way they are – not great, but alright – you pretend to change them. The Raptors chose the second way.
Why risk setting an expectation right now, when no one expects anything? That will come later. Might as well save your PR bullets until then.
It’s hard to blame the club for feeling no urgency. Like Ingram said, the room is full most nights. The TV numbers are about the same as they’ve always been, and the guys on the roster seem happy. The tide in the NBA is always rising. Even the teams that aren’t trying that hard are the beneficiaries.
The WNBA Tempo start playing in eight months, which means a little less attention just as the team is missing the playoffs again. You’ve heard of a perfect storm? The Raptors are in the middle of the perfect lull.
The Toronto Tempo, a WNBA expansion team, will being play next year.HO/The Canadian Press
This isn’t Milwaukee or Philadelphia – other formerly ascendant Eastern Conference teams – where the main guys are always making noise about how the team has to get better right now.
In Toronto, everybody’s happy with the way things are. Many of the starters have recently negotiated massive new deals. All they have to do for them is show up to work and say they feel good. Once things go bad, say they feel bad. Then say they’ll be better next time.
It’s not hard to be better than a 30-win season, but it is incredibly difficult to become a genuine contender in the NBA. The huge space between the two is where the Raptors will be this season. And next season. And maybe the next season.
Eventually, it will once again become fashionable to rip on the Raptors. That’s how they got good in the first place. Ownership was so frustrated that they green-lit Ujiri’s vision to start over from scratch. Fear of the fans and media prompted them to eject a beloved player like DeMar DeRozan and okay the hiring of a live wire like Kawhi Leonard.
It all worked out. And as so often happens in such cases, everyone learned the wrong lesson. No more risks. No more wild swings. Just season after season of the same old thing, until risk becomes unavoidable again. But don’t worry – that’s a problem for another year.