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why are the raptors so much better than we are?

Looking at the Raptors last year and going into this season I thought Raptors were our best case scenario. The rosters don;t look to be a huge difference but I must have a home bias towards our guys. I don't think Casey is a superior coach to Clifford. Is is just that Demarr and Kyle are just that much better players than Nic and Kemba?

Is it the bench (this is a problem for us this year but I struggle to see Raps bench as being great)

I just look at the Raps as similar to us- I have never considered Kyle or Demar as legit superstars but really solid allstars ( guess I am being proved wrong on this one) and I general thought our role players and theirs seemed similar. Is it just that they have 2 guys that can really score and we only have one and a half?

Considering that our starting 5 when healthy has a top 5 Net rating, then the disparity is most likely due to two things 1) our bench 2) inability to close out games.

Last year we did good job winning close games, but I don't think that is the case this year.

Our bench is most likely the #1 reason.

Good point fats, do you see any way to help bench play? I loved the c.lee trade last year and really miss lin on this team, but would something like staggering minutes differently help? Would Frank at the back up 5 help? Does it just come down to ramon vs lin's play from last year?

And we get lots of injuries

A legit 1st or 2nd team All-NBA player and quality depth through 12 which is huge during the regular season. Really, Toronto along with Utah are probably the NBA's deepest teams.

For the Playoffs the gap should close considerably between Toronto, Charlotte, and Boston.

MA- so you see a huge gap between Kyle/Demar and kemba/Nic?

They have Norman Powell, Corey Joseph, and Terrance Ross off the bench, the first two being great defenders and decent two way players.

Our defense is atrocious off the bench.

Pretty much the reason we are 20-19 and not 29-10. We have blown far too many games this season

powerforward wrote:MA- so you see a huge gap between Kyle/Demar and kemba/Nic?

Between Lowry and everyone else. I'd easily take Nic or Kemba over DD.

Ma- ok I looked at Kyle numbers and I get that he probably is a decent bit better than kemba. Better stylistically every way except ppg this season and that is really close.

I am willing to eat crow on Casey as a coach, I have been very critical of him in the past but tough to argue with the success they've had. I still think TOR is more of a regular season team though, when teams get to game plan for DeRozan that will dramatically change how TOR has to do things.

TOR has had remarkable stability, and I think that means something. They are so familiar and comfortable with their system and most (all?) of their rotation players have had the same role for multiple seasons.

That's part of the reason why I'm not too stressed about this season for us. I want to do well, but we have our core locked in and we have a bunch of guys in new roles / that are still learning to play together. We can make a whatever Cho wants move at the deadline and then sign one more significant piece next offseason, then next season is when I'll freak out if we we are near .500 in January.

I feel like we loss a lot of games because of the Hibbert-Hawes dynamic whether they were playing in the frontcourt together or Clifford entrusting Hibbert over Hawes. Throw in Sessions' 1-on-5 tunnel vision style of play. Those are the main reasons why we're 20-19 instead of at least 25-14.

The biggest difference to me is we're trotting out Zeller, Hibbert and Hawes and they're trotting out Jonas Valanciunas. Jonas has more potential to score than our centers combined but he's not terrible defensively either. And yeah, you have to give Casey some credit since he took what Clifford considered wet garbage in Biyombo and got him a huge contract.

Definitely the bench, but i also think Clifford has done a pretty terrible job with rotation/lineups and playing time allocation and has cost us the chance to win a fair amount of games. I think Clifford has done a crappy job this season in some ways. Not going to lie.

Eoghan wrote:And yeah, you have to give Casey some credit since he took what Clifford considered wet garbage in Biyombo and got him a huge contract.

Poor Orlando fans.

Its frustrating because we could have signed biyombo for like 4/ $24 probably when he was an RFA . And have him coming off the bench in place of hibbert for roughly the same price.

But i think the point mystical apples is making is that rotations will shorten a lot in the postseason and the penalty for employing sessions and Hibbert will be less pronounced

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GlenRiceARoni wrote:Its frustrating because we could have signed biyombo for like 4/ $24 probably when he was an RFA .

Not sure why you are assuming that. Ezeli has chronic injury problems and was injured during the FA period and still signed a 2 year $15M deal.

yosemiteben wrote:

GlenRiceARoni wrote:Its frustrating because we could have signed biyombo for like 4/ $24 probably when he was an RFA .

Not sure why you are assuming that. Ezeli has chronic injury problems and was injured during the FA period and still signed a 2 year $15M deal.

Yeah but that was in the summer of money. We could have signed biz a year before the cap hike.

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fatlever wrote:

yosemiteben wrote:

GlenRiceARoni wrote:Its frustrating because we could have signed biyombo for like 4/ $24 probably when he was an RFA .

Not sure why you are assuming that. Ezeli has chronic injury problems and was injured during the FA period and still signed a 2 year $15M deal.

Yeah but that was in the summer of money. We could have signed biz a year before the cap hike.

Just takes a lot of assumptions about what Biz was willing to do. His agent knew cash was going to be available the next summer, and it was really smart of him to get the PO after one year and to sign with a team that was very likely to be in the playoffs. We can just say he would have signed a long term deal at $6M per year the summer before the cap spike, but that doesn't mean it is true.