Toronto Raptors: Top 4 Team in the Conference Next Year?

Toronto Raptors: Top 4 Team in the Conference Next Year?

Uh so let me make the case for the Toronto Raptors being top four. And um I I’ll start off right now is that the Raptors have competent players to good like good slashcompetent uh players at every position. And those players are going to be in their prime. Uh, so Scotty Barnes, Brandon Ingram, Emanuel Quickley, uh, RJ Barrett, uh, Yakob Purle, and then, you know, a whole bunch of players off of the bench, hungry players off of the bench. So, they have some guys who know how to play basketball and they play all of the different positions on the court, which is like that sounds like uh you know, putting on your dating profile just like I can I have a job and a car and you know a place to live and some and I can make pasta. It’s like very bare bones. You’re not really bragging very much. But this is like compared to the Eastern Conference, if every other dating profile was like, you know, just the the pits like live in my mom’s basement. I don’t uh I’m not employed. You know what this is? You know, the the Milwaukee Bucks are like the equivalent of like they’re handsome, but they are are a felon or something, right? So, I I get where you’re going with that. They’ve got like the most important thing, but everything else is like just horrible. Red flags all over the place. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, um yeah, they have a primary scoring threat. They went and picked out picked up Brandon Ingram. Um I like him. Uh three level scorer. They definitely needed a guy like that. He the one of the levels of scoring uh three-point shooting and the other one of them scoring at the rim. He’s not the best, but he he can do those things. Uh, and then there’s uh, strong defenders. Uh, Yaka Purle is a pretty good defender. Scotty Barnes is a very good defender. Uh, they have guards who can guard. They have wings who can guard. They’ve got role players 3 and D. So I I and yeah, they a lot of teams don’t really have a starting caliber center. Like two of the teams that we were talking about, the uh, Pacers and the um, the Celtics, they don’t have a center. And I mean, you just have to kind of hearken back to the days of when the Raptors were running out. Um, oh, Aaron Baines and you know, like Precious Aua, Alex Len, like it’s a very important puzzle piece and they don’t get a lot of credit, but you definitely need that kind of player and a lot of teams don’t have that. So, Yakob Purle, hey, that’s why they gave him the big box this off season. Uh, another thing is is that synergy is a big part of winning basketball. Uh, it’s not totally known right now whether the synergy of the team will be amazing. I think that there are some certain flaws that the team has like shooting that could come back and bite them. So, there are a couple of players that are purported shooters, but I don’t know whether or not all of those players are going to be able to shoot consistently throughout the season. What do you think are the kind of like the strengths of the roster right now? Yeah, I think I think you’ve got a couple guys who can be uh a little bit primary creators even if somebody like Scotty is not the best at creating his own shot. He’s very good at creating for others. I think there could be a good synergy between him and Brandon Ingram as as they said Scotty likes to pass, Brandon likes to shoot. That I mean in a simple terms that should work, right? Um I think when it comes I I like what you said about how they’ve got competent players everywhere. That matters. You’ve got some teams that are just trotting out whoever at the two guard spot or or at the three because they’ve overpaid everybody else. not overpaid, but they’ve got big superstar contracts, so they have to um like save in other ways. Paying everybody decent, so they’re all kind of at that same level. I mean, we’ll see how it goes, but I think for the Raptors to get that fourth uh top four spot, it comes down to two things, and that is health of Brandon Ingram and Quickly because we didn’t really see Quickly much. They intentionally sat him a lot and they intentionally sat Brennan Ingram a lot. But it would be health of both of them. You need probably 60 70 games out of both of them. Yeah. To really be at your full strength. And then the other thing would be can Scotty take another step. How much more is there in it? Can he put together an efficient season? He doesn’t have to be going and scoring 24 point per game, but in his role, can he score a much more efficient 19 or 20? We’ve seen Evan Mobley be very effective as a 17 18 point per game player because it’s very efficient. So, he thrives as a second, third option. That’s fine. If Scotty can put that kind of season together while giving that elite defense, while giving that playmaking, rebounding, you know, the utility knife thing that he does, but bumping up his efficiency, I think that’ll take the team to that next level and they’ll start winning a lot of those games against some of those better teams.

Julian and Steve give their best-case scenario for the Toronto Raptors next season.