The Toronto Raptors‘ road to the playoffs for the first time since 2022 has been long and winding, and — technically at least — was still in doubt until Sunday night when the Raptors hosted the Brooklyn Nets for the final game of the 82-game regular season.
We say technically because the Nets have been among the leaders of the NBA’s most determined collection of tankers in league history. For them, winning had long ago ceased to be a motivation. They had nine regulars listed out on their injury report. If you listened closely, you could hear “1-2-3 Cancun” when they broke from timeouts.
The Raptors’ task was therefore simple: win, improve their record to 46-36 and lock down sixth place. With some luck — the Miami Heat beating the Atlanta Hawks and the Orlando Magic losing to the Boston Celtics — and the Raptors could end up fifth.
As it turned out, who doesn’t like Cleveland in the spring?
The Raptors dominated the Nets for the 136-101 win and then had to hang around the televisions in their locker room to watch the Celtics — who sat all their starters — outlast the Magic, nudging the Raptors into fifth.
They will play the fourth-seeded Cavaliers (52-30) instead of the third-seeded Knicks.
On paper, maybe a good thing, since the Raptors went 3-0 against the Cavs this season, and 0-5 against the Knicks.
But any regular-season results are probably only mildly relevant since Cleveland and Toronto haven’t met since Nov. 24th. Cleveland comes into the post-season relatively healthy and has since added James Harden, making them the justified heavy favourites.
As an added concern, Raptors point guard Immanuel Quickley left the game at halftime with hamstring tightness in his right leg. He went for testing afterwards. On the bright side, the Raptors won’t play until Saturday at the earliest.
So on Sunday night, those were concerns for another time. The Raptors set a lofty goal and reached it, which is something to be recognized and saluted.
They were a 25-win team two years ago, starting a rebuild without the benefit of their first-round draft pick and had finally divorced itself from the remnants of their championship era. Last season, they won 30 games in what was a relatively unsuccessful tanking mission in that they finished with the NBA’s seventh-worst record and moved back to the ninth pick on lottery night. Team president Masai Ujiri was fired. It was a new era.
There was optimism that the Raptors could be competitive this season with better health and the addition of Brandon Ingram, but no guarantees.
“Obviously, we never set a goal of get this seed or that seed,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “We were just focusing on our work, focusing on the things that were in our control. The hand played out well for us this year. We won 46 games, 16 more than last season. We saw a lot of growth from this roster. The best part of it is that we’re gonna have an opportunity to play in the playoffs. As much as all of those games meant to put us in the playoffs, it’s going to be an amazing experience for our team to go in the playoffs. We’re just gonna take it one game at a time. Our mentality is not gonna change. We’re gonna try to win one game, this next game, and see where we end up.”
It’s been a breakthrough year for Scottie Barnes, who finished the season with career bests in games played (80), minutes played, points, rebounds, assists, blocked shots and steals, and was the hub on what ended up being the NBA’s fifth-best defence heading into play Sunday — something no one saw coming, except maybe them.
“From training camp, we believed it. We were confident we could get in this position,” said Barnes, who led the Raptors against the Nets with 18 points, 12 rebounds and 12 assists for his ninth career triple-double. “The season is always going to have some ups and downs, but if you get through it, push through it. I thought we did a great job of pushing through it. Stuff happens, you can try to go out there and win the next game, win the next game. I felt like we got through that and through those moments as a team.”
Their reward is that they get to test themselves in the playoffs against a veteran team with championship ambitions.
“From when I got here, I would always be one of the ones saying, ‘when you do things the right way, the results are going to come.’” said RJ Barrett (22 points on 9-of-15 shooting), who has been to the playoffs twice in his career with the New York Knicks, and now gets to do it with his hometown team. “We’ve been doing things the right way. We’ve been working, building. This is the result of that. Obviously it’s still a process. But this is a good step for us. I don’t think many people thought we were gonna be here. I’m just very proud of this group, how hard we work, how together we are. That’s going to continue in the playoffs.”
Or as Barnes said when asked about what he’s been telling his younger teammates about post-season basketball: “Just be ready for the physicality. You got to love this s—, this s—’s fun. Be ready to go. Try to win and I think our guys can go out there and try to win.”
Three-point Grange, bonus edition!
But how did the Raptors get here? It’s been a trip, starting in Calgary for training camp and winding up Sunday night with a playoff spot.
Here are 10 moments that defined the Raptors’ season.
1. Jakob Poeltl misses first pre-season game: How little we knew. Poeltl missing the NBA Canada game in Vancouver against the Denver Nuggets was described simply as precautionary, a result of a sore back he’d developed following the intrasquad scrimmage at the end of training camp in Calgary. Poeltl went on to miss 20 of the Raptors’ first 27 games, rarely looking like his best self, before missing 27 of the Raptors’ next 28 games. But eventually the big Austrian returned and has missed just two games since the All-Star break. He’s still not been at his best — his rebounding rate is his lowest in seven years — but any chance the Raptors have to be at their best now or over the next four years that the 30-year-old is under contract relies on his good health.
2. Jamison Battle to the rescue: It’s a long time ago now, but it felt like the Raptors’ season was hanging by a thread back on Halloween. Remember? After a blowout win over the Atlanta Hawks on opening night, the Raptors got pummelled in four straight games, losing convincingly to Milwaukee, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. The Raptors were 1-4 and seemed too small to compete against teams that had any kind of quality size (Giannis Antetokounmpo was still firing on all cylinders for the Bucks, Anthony Davis for Dallas and Steven Adams for Houston. And of course, Victor Wembanyama for the Spurs). The Raptors were trailing Cleveland by 10 midway through the third quarter when Darko Rajakovic turned to Jamison Battle in search of some offence. Good call! Battle finished 7-of-7 with six triples and was +28 in 15 minutes in a game the Raptors desperately needed to get.
3. The easiest schedule in NBA history: In mid-November, the Raptors had righted the ship and were 7-5 when opportunity knocked. Ahead of them was what might have been (at the time) the easiest stretch of games in NBA history: over the next six games, they were due to play Indiana twice, as well as Brooklyn and Washington. At the time, those teams had a cumulative 3-32 record. There was only one time previously that three teams in the same conference had been 1-10 or worse. To play them four times in just over a week was too good an opportunity not to take advantage of. The Raptors did just that, running their winning streak to nine games. It was the defining stretch of their season. Even with the win over Brooklyn Sunday, the Raptors finished just 10 games over .500.
4. Collin Murray-Boles did what? There was never a moment this season when the burly rookie didn’t impress. On the first day of training camp, Scottie Barnes was calling him a “beast, a monster.” Grown men were overwhelmed by the 20-year-old’s brute strength. But on Jan.5th against Atlanta, Murray-Boyles signalled that he was more than a promising rookie with plus athleticism as he put up 17 points, seven rebounds, seven assists, three steals and two blocks without a turnover, while making countless winning plays — screens, loose balls, deflections — that don’t show up in the box score. It was the first time in 35 years that a rookie put up at least those numbers without a turnover. Forgetting turnovers, the only rookies to hit those thresholds in the past decade are Amen Thompson, Victor Wembanyama and Lonzo Ball. We’ve seen since that it was not a fluke. Even while battling a thumb injury on his shooting hand, Murray-Boyles has proved himself an essential piece of the Raptors’ rotation and a potential difference maker in the playoffs.
5. Barnes with the clutch block: Whatever happens in the playoffs, this season will likely be remembered as the year that the rest of the NBA recognized how special Barnes’ game-changing defence can be. He does it in every way — he was the only player in the NBA to finish in the top 10 in blocks and steals, blowing past his previous career marks in each category. But if there was one area that defined Barnes’ season, it was his proclivity for game-winning defensive plays. Four times this season Barnes blocked a shot in the final seconds to preserve a win: Nov. 17th against Charlotte, up two with 0.8 seconds left; Dec. 2 against Portland, up four with nine seconds left; Jan. 25 against Oklahoma City with 29 seconds left; March. 13th against Phoenix, up four with 43 seconds left. Taken together with the Raptors’ unexpected standing as the NBA’s fifth-best defence will get Barnes recognition as an all-NBA defender at season’s end.
6. Fourth quarter woes: Who knows what the Raptors’ record might be this season if games were just 36 minutes long? The Raptors’ performance in the fourth quarter was a problem all season. Their fourth-quarter offensive rating was 25th after 81 games. Weirdly, they had the fourth-best offensive rating in the third quarter. Overall, they were 15th. But there were moments when the Raptors’ fourth-quarter performance was a record scratch across an otherwise solid album of work, with blown leads down the stretch littering their win-loss record.
7. Detroit, finally: Amid what has been an enjoyable season with results that safely exceeded anyone’s (realistic) pre-season expectations, one of the hard-to-put aside dampers was the Raptors’ inability to beat good teams. They did finish 4-0 against Atlanta, which seems a little more impressive now given their second-half surge, and they were 3-0 against Cleveland, which isn’t nothing. But against the top three teams in the East, the Raptors finished a cumulative 1-12 and 1-11 against the top six teams in the West. At the point in the season when that seemed to be weighing heaviest, the Raptors put together what was arguably their best single-game showing as they handled their business against the first-place Pistons 119-105 on March 15, thanks to 61 combined points from Barnes and Ingram, and a 21-point, 18-rebound night from Poeltl.
8. Walter runs with it: When the Raptors played their intrasquad scrimmage on the last day of training camp in Calgary, Ja’Kobe Walter wasn’t slotted with the starters, nor was he slotted as a starter on the second unit. By default, that put the second-year wing third behind Ochai Agbaji and Gradey Dick among their collection of reserve wings, and sometimes fourth behind Jamison Battle. But Walter kept working, kept playing and finally earned his moment. Agbaji was traded to the Nets, Dick fell out of the rotation, and Walter’s superior defence kept earning him minutes over Battle. He’s since become a fixture in Rajakovic’s rotation. He showed his chops as an on-ball defender most memorably when he helped hold Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to 24 points (eight under his season average) in the Raptors’ win at OKC in January. His emergence as a shooter has been crucial as well. Walter came into Sunday’s game shooting a blistering 47.1 per cent from three since the All-Star break, pushing him over the 40 per cent mark on the season. He was three-of-five from deep against the Nets on Sunday.
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9. Ingram, Iron Man: By far the biggest question looming over the Raptors heading into the season was whether Ingram would stay on the floor long enough to make a difference. He hadn’t played more than 70 games since he was a rookie, and in the eight years since, he averaged 52 games per season. But Ingram started playing and never stopped. Sunday was his 77th of the season, just two less than his career high of 79. But he blew past his career marks for minutes played and points scored and had enough in the tank to play his best game (38 points, seven rebounds, seven assists) in a crucial Raptors win over the Miami Heat on Thursday.
10. Speaking of the Heat: As much as the Raptors secured their playoff spot on Sunday with their (predictable) win over the Nets, it really came down to two games against the Miami Heat earlier this week. A split or two losses would have likely consigned them to the play-in or, at the very least, in need of considerable help from other teams. Two wins would set up the situation the Raptors found themselves in — a win at home against the woeful Nets to solidify their spot. It was a perfect set piece: two relatively evenly matched teams, both on similar rest, each relatively healthy. Who would impose their will? The Raptors did as they blew out the Heat not once, but twice, with difference makers in each game. The Raptors had earned the opportunity through 78 games to that point, but with a chance to make it all count, the Raptors knocked the door down. It was impressive, in its own way.
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