Now, to the idea of tanking. Watanabe is a perfect example of why the concept needs reframing. I touched on this a bit Friday after Watanabe, Paul Watson Jr. and Freddie Gillespie posted career-best nights in treble. The short of it is players do not “tank.”
Whomever the Raptors put on the floor will be trying to win. There’s no way around that. Watanabe played for a contact conversion and is now getting an early start on his case for inclusion on the 2021-22 roster. Watson has a non-guaranteed 2021-22 year on his deal, as well, and is trying to make a case to stay in the rotation if the team gets healthy. Gillespie earned a second 10-day deal and is trying to show he’s a piece worth developing longer-term. The Raptors have won three consecutive games with three, two and then one player with a guaranteed contract for next year. Rookie Malachi Flynn was the only one of the 10 players Toronto played in Sunday’s victory who has a dollar guaranteed beyond the end of this season.
Sure, there’s some nuance there. Gary Trent Jr., at 22 and ahead of restricted free agency, doesn’t have to worry about his NBA status. He’s also trying to nudge his next contract higher, though, showing flashes of two-way upside beyond what he could in Portland. Chris Boucher has a place in the league and a team-friendly non-guaranteed deal for next year, but what if it’s not picked up for cap space reasons, or what about his next deal? DeAndre’ Bembry, Watson and Watanabe all have small non-guaranteed deals which provide good value if they’re kept around but are also easy to waive for flexibility, meaning they’d all be looking for their next jobs. Khem Birch is probably sticking around, he just doesn’t have a contract beyond this year.
The list goes on with Stanley Johnson (UFA), Rodney Hood (non-guaranteed) and even Aron Baynes (non-guaranteed), who isn’t playing but might still jump at the chance to continue making the case he’s still a reasonably useful depth piece, as he was showing before the Birch addition. The only regular right now with a certain future is Flynn, who spent the first half of the year barely playing and is trying to show he’s ready for real, positive NBA rotation minutes. (Spoiler: He is.) None of those players care about the team’s odds of landing a better draft pick who could conceivably take their spot next year.
“Listen, I’ve said this, you guys have been asking me this for weeks now, and I’ve said I’m trying to get this team to play hard, play the right way. I think it was pretty evident last game with whoever,” Nick Nurse said Friday. “It’s pretty much a night-before, day-of-the-game, sometimes an hour before the game I know who’s available. … So it’s who’s there, we’re gonna get ’em to play hard and play the right way and guard and next-action basketball and all that stuff. That’s it.”
It begs the question of what more the Raptors can do if the intention is to lose, or win less aggressively. However you want to phrase it — the Raptors would never use the word “tank” themselves — there’s no avoiding the incentives at play for the Raptors. On the one hand, they are currently in a play-in position, effectively in a three-way tie for one spot that would require a pair of wins to get into the eighth seed through the play-in tournament. That would result in a playoff series, and while the Raptors project as a very irritating opponent as far as one-eight matchups go, it’s hard to see this team beating Philadelphia or Brooklyn four times in seven games.
The cost of making that attempt is becoming a playoff team, even via the play-in, takes a team out of the draft lottery. As I explained last week, the lottery odds have been flattened so that there’s not as much need to fight all the way to the bottom, but that has the effect of shifting the leverage points elsewhere in the lottery.
As of Monday morning, the Raptors had an expected pick of 9.2 in the draft. Had they lost Sunday, that would jump all the way to 6.2. (That’s a little unfair since we’re working with half-games; Ties in the end-of-season standings see the odds split between tied teams. Still, it’s a big swing.)
This Week: 17
Last Week: 2024-34, +0.7 net rating
Weekly slate: Loss to Hawks, Win over Spurs, Win over Magic, Win over ThunderPrevious first-quarter grade/ranking: D+ | Ranked 18th
Previous first-half grade/ranking: B | Ranked 15th
Three-quarter grade: C-
Every time I think the Toronto Raptors have turned the corner and gone back to their winning ways, something happens to knock them down again. I continue to harp on this, but it’s wild they have to go through a season like this in a city that isn’t theirs. It’s similar to the Hornets going to Oklahoma City, but a lot more extreme because of the situation. If the Raptors are healthy and available the rest of the season, they’ll make the playoffs. I think…
Goal for final stretch: Make and win the play-in tournament. The raptors have been through a chaotic season, but they should be better than what we’ve seen this season. One good, healthy stretch and they’ll be fine for making the postseason.
Why are they ranked here? Raptors had a 3-1 week, and they’ve won six of their last 10 games. It’s not going to remind everybody of the 2019 team, but they’re headed in the right direction.
NBA Power Rankings – Why the season’s final month starts with a new No. 1 team
This Week: 21
Last Week: 23The Zombie Raptors won’t go away. Even after all of the disasters that have befallen the team over the past several weeks, Toronto still finds itself back in the final play-in spot in the East after winning three straight games last week. The schedule doesn’t get any easier for them moving forward, but if the Raptors want to finish 10th, they should have more than enough to hold off Chicago and Washington. — Bontemps
This Week: 22
Last Week: 22Try as they might, the Raptors weren’t able to out-tank the Magic and Thunder this week, winning both games without Kyle Lowry, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby. They also beat the Spurs earlier in the week after losing to the Hawks, and they were fined by the NBA for not adhering to the rules of rest and injury reporting — quite an eventful sequence of events! Toronto got contributions up and down the roster from players like Paul Watson and Yuta Watanabe, while Malachi Flynn has held down point guard duties with Lowry on the shelf, averaging 14.8 points and 5.8 assists this week on 41 percent 3-point shooting.
Power Rankings, Week 18: Sixers surge to No. 1 spot as season enters final month | NBA.com
This Week: 22
Last Week: 24Record: 24-34
Pace: 99.8 (13) OffRtg: 112.2 (13) DefRtg: 111.5 (12) NetRtg: +0.7 (14)It’s not clear that the Raptors are happy that this is the case, but they enter Week 18 in 10th place, holding a percentage-points edge over the Bulls and Wizards for the final Play-In spot in the East. They’ve won three straight games, even though Kyle Lowry has missed all three … and while Fred VanVleet, Gary Trent Jr., OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam have each played in exactly one of the three. They beat the Spurs with only Anunoby and Siakam, the Magic with only VanVleet, and the Thunder with only Trent.
Paul Watson, who has looked like a pretty disruptive defender at times, scored 30 points on Friday. Rookie Malachi Flynn has 46 assists and just 10 turnovers over his last seven games. And Khem Birch might be the steady and sturdy center the Raptors have been missing all season. They’ve outscored their opponents by 10.4 points per 100 possessions in 80 total minutes with Birch and Chris Boucher (“La connexion montréalaise”) on the floor together.
If the intent is to compete for the Play-In berth, last week’s DNPs (no matter how they were explained) will have the Raptors’ best players extra fresh when they face Brooklyn on Wednesday after a two-day break. Ten of their final 14 games are against teams that are currently over .500, and the Raps have lost 10 of their last 11 games against that group (though, in true Raptors fashion, all 10 losses have been by single digits).
NBA Tier List: 76ers on top after signature wins over Nets, Clippers – Sportsnet
Three-way tie for No. 10 in the East
Even though it’s appeared that one of these three teams — the Toronto Raptors — have been trying to lose games in hopes of landing a better draft pick, the reality is they are currently tied for 10th place in the East and could very well find themselves in the play-in tournament.
Both the Raptors and Washington Wizards are on win streaks at the moment, with Toronto having won three in a row and Washington four straight, but of the three clubs, the Chicago Bulls still have the greatest advantage, holding the tiebreaker over both.
The next best bet would then probably be the Raptors, who hold the tiebreaker over the Wizards.
Nurse does now, however, have some time and some bodies. The schedule has been brutal — nine games in 13 nights ending with Sunday’s win over Oklahoma City — but it eases a bit now. The Raptors only play against Brooklyn on Wednesday, before another two days without games.
And the roster seems settled, new big men Khem Birch and Freddie Gillespie are getting worked in; there seems to be some continuity that’s been missing all season.
Not surprisingly, even with a lineup that changes almost nightly in games, the Raptors have looked far better over the last two weeks.
They’ve won three games in a row and six of their last 10 and that may not be a championship-calibre clip, in this season it’s not too shabby at all.
A lot of it is because Nurse’s message never changes and his ability to coax big games out of unlikely sources is genuinely good. He has a style that he wants to play, finds matchups each night that seem to benefit the Raptors and all of a sudden Gary Trent’s getting 40 points in a game, Paul Watson and Yuta Watanabe are having career nights and six guys are in double figures in another game.
They put in a plan, tweak it to suit the needs of any particular night and away they go.
“We go out there and we play hard, and we play defence,” the coach said. “We share the ball and we execute to get the shots that we want.
“Sometimes a lot of them go in, sometimes they don’t but as long as you continue to work that way, let the chips fall where they may. It would probably be a good attitude to have.”
It’s likely that the season is too far off the rails and that a 1-13 March is simply too big a hole to climb out of. Nurse understands that, he knows reality when it stares him in the face. But he also knows that it’s cheating himself, his players or the game to change what he’s done all along.
Converting Watanabe’s contract the right move for now and for the Raptors future | The Star
What I do know is that Nick Nurse often raves about Watanabe’s work ethic, his basketball smarts and, as we’ve seen over the last few games, he’s got a few more offensive chops than you might have thought.
He really is an intriguing player, still raw and young at just 26 years old. Lots of room to grow and improve and extend his game but he’s got the willingness to do it and that’s first giant step that needs to be taken.
And while there’s still tons of time left in this season, I think you can see the makings of an interesting backup group already forming.
Malachi Flynn, Watanabe, Chris Boucher and Khem Birch certainly seems solid, although they could use some more shooting in that group, I think. Toss, perhaps, Paul Watson and Freddie Gillespie into the mix and it’s kind of like next year’s bench group is take care of.
There’s some recency bias with a couple of those guys but if they are settled into backup roles next season, there’s no reason to think they won’t all be able to contribute at some point in a long, real season.
It’s wise, I think, that one thing Bobby and Masai are doing is getting a few of the minor details out of the way now so that when the summer hits, the secondary stuff is resolved.
Then they can deal with Kyle Lowry and finding a centre somehow – trade in to cap space, trade someone else, sign someone outright – and also determining if Gary Trent Jr. is a skilled enough defender and decision maker to be a starter on a good team or should he be the guy who gets all the shots coming off the bench.
But that’s for then, Watanabe is for now and as a guy and a story and a player, it’s logical and good that he’s going to be sticking around.
