QingJames wrote:Roger Murdock wrote:QingJames wrote:
Siakam missed 14 games.
Anunoby missed 34 games.
Vanvleet missed 17 games.
Trent missed 12 games.
Tell me more about this injury luck and lack of missed games? As you say, they had no depth, and their best three players missed a combined 65/246 possible games. That's more than a quarter of the season. Yet they managed to eke out almost 50 wins with lots of missed time and no depth. They're a lock to beat that 44.5 line, which assumes that they are a worse team than last year even though their youth has a year to improve and they have more depth.
Did you follow last season? Thats barely anything. Most starters missed 15 games last year. The only rotation player who missed an unusual amount of time last year for the Raptors was Anunoby and hes the 4th best guy on the team.
Heat: Butler missed 25. Adebayo 26. Lowry 19. Herro 16.
Bulls: LaVine missed 15. Ball missed 47. Caruso missed 41. PWill missed 60.
Cavs: Garland missed 14. Allen missed 26. Mobley missed 13. Lauri missed 21. Sexton missed 71.
76ers: Missed 61 games out of Harden/Simmons, Embiid missed 14, Green missed 21
Bucks: Giannis missed 15 games, Jrue missed 15, Middleton 16, Portis 10, Allen 16, Pat 17, Lopez 69
You get it. A starter missing 10-15 games last year was par for the course. Raptors had it easy, sans a bit longer hold out from OG.
Seems like it was all pretty comparable among teams' top players to me, with the exception of Miami who seems to have suffered a longer duration of missed top among their top 4 than other teams.
Don't really rate guys like Sexton, who Cleveland was almost certainly better without, or roleplayers like Connaughton and Green. I didn't include guys like Birch who missed 27 games or Dragic, who made it clear he wasn't interested in playing for the team, or Precious who missed 10. Also, you admit that the Raps had **** depth so not really sure how you can say a team like Chicago had worse luck with injuries to their roleplayers when the Raptors went without quality bench players the entire season.
Those guys missing time is obviously less important than a team's top 3-4 players, and it seems like the Raptors top 3 guys missed as much or more combined time than all those other teams you listed except for Miami.
Chicago: LaVine + DeRozan + Vucevic = 30 missed games.
Miami: Butler + Adebayo + Lowry = 70 missed games.
Cleveland: Garland + Allen + Mobley = 53 missed games.
Philly: Embiid + Maxey + Simmons/Harden (weird to equivocate this with injury luck when Simmons' missed time had nothing to do with injuries or luck but w/e) = 82 missed games.
Milwaukee: Giannis + Jrue + Middleton = 46
Toronto: Siakam + Anunoby + Vanvleet = 65 Missed games.
So seems to me that the Raptors were right in line with 'bad injury luck' that other teams had last year to their top players. Again, if you want to quibble about roleplayers I'll just say that not having roleplayers is worse than losing roleplayers for 15-40 games.
Raps have more well rounded 4th/5th starters..injuries to other teams' 4th-6th guys would dramatically lower their depth, making it worse than the raps situation. Most teams 4th/5th guys are not nearly as good as trent/barnes. Any argument over the rap's lack of depth is nullified a bit when we consider that their 4th/5th guys were relatively healthy.
Trent/Barnes missed 20 games total
Lonzo/caruso missed 88 games total. Thats not even counting patrick williams who missed 65 games.
Brook lopez alone missed 69 games
Rubio alone missed 47 games. You may not rate sexton, but losing both him and rubio decimated their back court rotation. Losing a 20ppg scorer for 70 games is not a loss?
Herro/Strus missed 30 games on top of their big three missing more games than the raps big three you highlighted.
Hawks had a good amount of injuries as well. Their 2nd-4th best players (collins,bogs,hunter) missed 76 games total.
Sixers had a lot of turnover and they were without BS until the harden trade. They also lost danny green for the season to ACL. Ben missed 50ish games and green missed 20 plus playoffs.
So essentially the raps top 5 missed 85 games. All of the other teams highlighted definitely missed more than that from their top 5. Now, with that said, were the raps luckier than other eastern teams? Maybe just against the bulls, cavs, and possibly the bucks.
