Zach's WTF Teams (Raptors 1 of 3)

[___Rand___]

Do people really have hard time envisioning the type of basketball we can play with this roster? A futuristic style.

I can see it, CMB and Jakob (non-shooting, big duo) can work well. It just leans more to the defence.

We can be a "low scoring" team (avg 105 on a bad night) that just keeps our opponents to 90-100, with relentless defence.

More demoralizing for our opponents that on other nights average 110.


Is everyone just stuck on the current style of play?

Problem is, Darko isn't a defensive coach.

[MoneyBall]

I wills ay Zach Lowe is slipping. He called Jakobe Walter - Jabari Walker at one point. For a guy who prides himself on knowing the lesser known guys, that was a flub.

This stuff is all for engagement hits and they definitely got it from Toronto fans who he refers to as Spooky Mulder conspiracy types very accurately.

I get my own kids' names mixed up all the time.

[ash_k]

from a pure-talent perspective, this will be the most talented starting 5 we have ever had.
RJ likes to spot on that 3 and will be the first option on transition basket thus the fit will be fine with BI as the "main option" in half court.
Without JT and Hali, we should finish ahead of both teams, head coach and injuries permitting.
Is Orlando's Bane+Banchero+Wagner+Suggs superior than BI+Scottie+Yak+IQ+RJ! Sorry, not a chance!

[anotherhomer]

tbh, paying 32.5M to IQ looks really bad , esp in this new cap environment

[ash_k]

tbh, paying 32.5M to IQ looks really bad , esp in this new cap environment

it does not. He was "injured" for the first time of his career.
He pushed himself too hard, last summer, in preparation for the season, to justify his contract. He has learned his lesson.
IQ,in the regular season, will be worthy of the contract. In the playoffs though?! remains to be seen after that debacle from his last playoffs appearances

[mihaic]

tbh, paying 32.5M to IQ looks really bad , esp in this new cap environment

it does not. He was "injured" for the first time of his career.
He pushed himself too hard, last summer, in preparation for the season, to justify his contract. He has learned his lesson.
IQ,in the regular season, will be worthy of the contract. In the playoffs though?! remains to be seen after that debacle from his last playoffs appearances

He contributed nothing last season. He'd better turn it around.

[ciueli]

Do people really have hard time envisioning the type of basketball we can play with this roster? A futuristic style.

I can see it, CMB and Jakob (non-shooting, big duo) can work well. It just leans more to the defence.

We can be a "low scoring" team (avg 105 on a bad night) that just keeps our opponents to 90-100, with relentless defence.

More demoralizing for our opponents that on other nights average 110.


Is everyone just stuck on the current style of play?

What you're talking about it exactly what this team was doing during the Vision 6'9" fiasco. They tried to play a different way than everyone every other team with minimal 3 point shooting but a lot of good defensive switchy forwards. Gamble for steals score in transition, get lots of rebounds, play fantastic defence with no mismatches to attack. It worked for one weird season when teams didn't want to bring their stars to Toronto due to COVID and not wanting them to get trapped across the boarder, then fell apart the next season when teams figured out how to counter it.

[anotherhomer]

tbh, paying 32.5M to IQ looks really bad , esp in this new cap environment

it does not. He was "injured" for the first time of his career.
He pushed himself too hard, last summer, in preparation for the season, to justify his contract. He has learned his lesson.
IQ,in the regular season, will be worthy of the contract. In the playoffs though?! remains to be seen after that debacle from his last playoffs appearances

He contributed nothing last season. He'd better turn it around.

he looks like a 22M a guy player

[links135]

The take is a little out there, no one can shoot? Quick and Ingram are obvious shooters, you replace RJ with a shooter (Dick, Jakobe, Ochai) and it is balanced enough... Not may teams around the league with 5 shooters

Dick and Jakobe are definitely not shooters...Ingram and Quickley can be shooters. The only true shooters on this team is Ochaji and Battle. Shooters are guys that are hitting 37%+ from the 3point line. Thats 4. Problem is you cant play these 4 players at the same time. Or Poetl will foul out in 20minutes..

Actually catch and shoot we now have about 6 of those guys, we just only have IQ really for pullup 3's. Maybe Ingram occasionally or if one of the younger guys gets better at it.

Battle, Agbaji, Dick, Ingram, Walter and i'll put IQ there since he shot 36.8%. Even RJ was 36.5%.

[links135]

Do people really have hard time envisioning the type of basketball we can play with this roster? A futuristic style.

I can see it, CMB and Jakob (non-shooting, big duo) can work well. It just leans more to the defence.

We can be a "low scoring" team (avg 105 on a bad night) that just keeps our opponents to 90-100, with relentless defence.

More demoralizing for our opponents that on other nights average 110.


Is everyone just stuck on the current style of play?

Problem is, Darko isn't a defensive coach.

We were quite literally an average defensive team last year. While injured, and starting Dick. Just not giving up the most free throws in the league and becoming average there would put us in the 10 defense.

[TheGeneral99]

Listen from an outside perspective I do see the issues...we have a lot of similar players, Ingram is looked at as an injury prone dude, Quickley is a bit of unknown because he was a back up and then injured almost the entire season last year, Barrett is seen as an empty stats guy and or young guys havn't proven themselves yet etc.

What I think they fail to note is that despite Quickley being out for 50 games, despite Ingram sitting the 2nd half of the season, despite injuries to a bunch of players and deliberately tanking by sitting our best players throughout the season, we still won 30 games. It would be shocking to me if we weren't at least a 40 win team next year unless we had major injury issues. We added Ingram, the #9 pick in CMB and have a couple nice young players who are ready to produce off the bench. It's a flawed team, but won't be a bad team.

[Tripod]

Do people really have hard time envisioning the type of basketball we can play with this roster? A futuristic style.

I can see it, CMB and Jakob (non-shooting, big duo) can work well. It just leans more to the defence.

We can be a "low scoring" team (avg 105 on a bad night) that just keeps our opponents to 90-100, with relentless defence.

More demoralizing for our opponents that on other nights average 110.


Is everyone just stuck on the current style of play?

What you're talking about it exactly what this team was doing during the Vision 6'9" fiasco. They tried to play a different way than everyone every other team with minimal 3 point shooting but a lot of good defensive switchy forwards. Gamble for steals score in transition, get lots of rebounds, play fantastic defence with no mismatches to attack. It worked for one weird season when teams didn't want to bring their stars to Toronto due to COVID and not wanting them to get trapped across the boarder, then fell apart the next season when teams figured out how to counter it.

Except that vision was never executed when you have FVV and GTJ in the starting lineup and have no starting level C....or even a good backup C.

[ash_k]

tbh, paying 32.5M to IQ looks really bad , esp in this new cap environment

it does not. He was "injured" for the first time of his career.
He pushed himself too hard, last summer, in preparation for the season, to justify his contract. He has learned his lesson.
IQ,in the regular season, will be worthy of the contract. In the playoffs though?! remains to be seen after that debacle from his last playoffs appearances

He contributed nothing last season. He'd better turn it around.

in fairness to all them, that season was kind of unreal for every one, hard to stay Motivated when you bosses want you to be pulled from games to avoid winning for a "Dylan Harper"if you will (he is no Carmelo Anthony)

[tecumseh18]

I don't know why the US media is so focused on the tax aspect of this team. We're less than a mill over, and it will be easy to duck under at some point before the end of the season.

Everything starts to make sense if RJ goes to the bench early on and one of JKW (my bet) or Gradey Dick takes his place with the starters. Then RJ gets a chance to be a supersub leading the second unit like his hero Manu. Not worried.

[Pointgod]

Zach's pretty even-handed. He likes all of our starting five individually, but has doubts about their ability to function together. In particular, BI, RJ and IQ do not have a history of playing in ball-sharing-heavy offences... or a long track record of making teams/teammates better. That's the offence.

On defence, he does think they will do well, but calls out those who trumpet how the team finished last year, given that many of the key starters were not the primary contributors and the soft schedule to end the season.

What could turn his opinion around? Scotty takes an All-NBA level leap and/or IQ plays the way he's being paid to play. He does like the bench, but also does not yet see a next-gen star on our current bench. Acknowledges that the team has all of its picks and a good deal of flexibility going forward. Thinks Jak got paid what he's worth.

I would say his primary concern is the team's ability to shoot 3s at a clip that can keep them competitive in today's NBA... and how BI and RJ are going to function together.

So Lowe pretty much gave the non homer analysis of this team. Prepare for the pitch forks and the Zach Lowe is trashs and American media hates Canada takes.

[SpezNc]

Zach's pretty even-handed. He likes all of our starting five individually, but has doubts about their ability to function together. In particular, BI, RJ and IQ do not have a history of playing in ball-sharing-heavy offences... or a long track record of making teams/teammates better. That's the offence.

On defence, he does think they will do well, but calls out those who trumpet how the team finished last year, given that many of the key starters were not the primary contributors and the soft schedule to end the season.

What could turn his opinion around? Scotty takes an All-NBA level leap and/or IQ plays the way he's being paid to play. He does like the bench, but also does not yet see a next-gen star on our current bench. Acknowledges that the team has all of its picks and a good deal of flexibility going forward. Thinks Jak got paid what he's worth.

I would say his primary concern is the team's ability to shoot 3s at a clip that can keep them competitive in today's NBA... and how BI and RJ are going to function together.

Good summary.

I don't think he mentioned liking RJ but yes he and the co-host doesn't know how the pieces fit together. I don't disagree. When Masai made the moves, I didn't question it because, I have faith in Masai, he obviously knows better than I do. There was quiet questions which I quashed.

The team is close to the cap. It's a lot of salaries. And my biggest problem for this roster is, the coach who's supposed to bring this all together and work the magic. He's not that guy. I haven't seen the capability from him in the 1st year when he had a potential Finals MVP and all the pieces on other teams people are raving about and made them look WORSE than Nurse - on offense which is supposedly his specialty, and on DEFENSE which was a top half or top 3rd defensive team in the year prior.

And I have ZERO FAITH in Ed Rogers to manage this team. Sure he can make money in a monopoly. But in a competitive situation? He's NEVER MANAGED in a competitive market like the NBA!!!

How do you know that Darko is not that guy?

It’s pretty clear that lineup he inherited in 2023 was not meant to last

-O.G knew he was gone (UFA summer 2024 and didn’t plan to resign with us)
-Siakam knew he was gone. He knew that the front office was trying to trade him. Even if he was a professional and was hoping to stay a Raptor it’s clear the relation between Siakam and the team was broken . Siakam didn’t look happy before he was traded.
-FVV just left leaving a hole at PG position

There was a lot of uncertainty. Then a massive overhaul of the roster. Then Barnes / Poeltl got injured. Then Families issues for RJ/Quick

For a rookie coach , I don’t think we should blame him too much for that season.

As for last season the team was fun to watch up to early December . We called it the ethical tank.

Then everything went downhill from early Dec to Mid Jan

From mid Jan to end of season, yes the season was easy but the team did rest many players and still was able to have a winning record in last stretch of the season.

The rookie did very good

He seems to be very good to develop players

Also I think Darko was better in his challenges in the second half of last season

We will how this season goes but it’s too soon to write Darko off IMO.

We will know more this season

[Clutch0z24]

I can understand why media people do not like the team atm....You can see some good on our team but we don't have a legit superstar, Have a high salary, And while we have some really good young players outside of Barnes who is not the young guy anymore we do not have a real Blue chip young prospect who looks to become that superstar....

So i can see where the cause for pause is happening....Just gotta hope the team actually plays well together this year.

[sidsid]

Do people really have hard time envisioning the type of basketball we can play with this roster? A futuristic style.

I can see it, CMB and Jakob (non-shooting, big duo) can work well. It just leans more to the defence.

We can be a "low scoring" team (avg 105 on a bad night) that just keeps our opponents to 90-100, with relentless defence.

More demoralizing for our opponents that on other nights average 110.


Is everyone just stuck on the current style of play?

What you're talking about it exactly what this team was doing during the Vision 6'9" fiasco. They tried to play a different way than everyone every other team with minimal 3 point shooting but a lot of good defensive switchy forwards. Gamble for steals score in transition, get lots of rebounds, play fantastic defence with no mismatches to attack. It worked for one weird season when teams didn't want to bring their stars to Toronto due to COVID and not wanting them to get trapped across the boarder, then fell apart the next season when teams figured out how to counter it.

Except that vision was never executed when you have FVV and GTJ in the starting lineup and have no starting level C....or even a good backup C.

And the vision is a cohesive idea on the defensive end - OKC was basically vision 6'5" - if we actually tried to play it, which we ended up doing only in a couple wins in the playoffs against the Sixers.

What the analysts are seeing is any functional style in the modern era.

We have skilled bigs who can pass, but will get in each other's way offensively, especially Jak as a non-shooter, where they need to operate in the middle.

We have skilled individual scorers, who like to drive a bit and score inside the arc, but won't have the space. The skilled bigs are built to feed movement, off ball scorers/shooters, who we really have 1 of in Grady, and IQ would be another, but has never played this way.

None of the main scorers on the perimeter are strong defenders, which puts all the pressure on the bigs.

We do a bit of everything, but nothing cohesively well. It's enough to muck through the regular season, and something that reliably gets picked apart in the playoffs on both ends.

[HangTime]

Since the end of the highschool draftee era, how many players have been the youngest on the roster, 2 years in a row?

[ForeverTFC]

Just listened. I agree with most of what they said, though I don’t think our young guys on the bench are as much of an afterthought as they insinuated.

Three most important takeaways - which I think are spot on:
1. Everything has been bet on Scottie
2. This is IQ’s prove it year
3. RJ has to go