March 7 2024 – Will Brady
It was always going to be an uphill climb for the Raptors to make the Eastern conference playoffs after trading away Pascal Siakam and O.G. Anunoby, but they may have been dealt a death blow with injuries to both Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl. Barnes underwent surgery on his fractured hand on Monday, and while he has not been officially ruled out for the season, it seems unlikely that he’ll be pushed to return in a compressed 4-5 week time frame.
On Tuesday, Poeltl underwent surgery to repair a torn ligament in his pinkie finger, and has no set timetable for his return. Without him, the Raptors have very little rim protection, but like Barnes, returning from surgery at this point in the calendar is a tall order. In their first game without both starters on Tuesday night, Darko Rajakovic moved trade deadline acquisitions Ochai Agbaji and Kelly Olynyk into the starting lineup: Toronto lost to the Pelicans at home by 41 points.
At 23-39, the Raptors now sit 5.5 games back of Atlanta for 10th place in the East. Down two starters and with just 20 games, a play-in berth feels like a pipe dream. The new focus for the team will be lottery positioning, which will be a delicate dance due to their first-round pick obligation to San Antonio.
As we all know by now, Toronto will owe their pick to the Spurs unless it falls within the top 6 selections. At present, the Raptors have the NBA’s seventh-worst record, 1.5 games ahead of Memphis. The Grizzlies are completely decimated by injuries themselves, but they have remained more competitive than their remaining talent suggests all season long: With an aggressive tank job, I believe the Raptors could dip beneath them.
Of course, due to the lottery rules, there’s no guarantee the pick will remain in the top six even if Toronto’s record is in the bottom six. This is the worst case scenario for the Raps, as they are staring down the barrel of handing over a premium pick to the Spurs and getting nothing for their wasted 2023-24 season.
In more positive news, the Raptors announced on Monday that they had agreed to terms on a 2 year, $26.5M contract extension with Kelly Olynyk. Locking the veteran big man up always felt like a certainty after they aggressively pursued him at the trade deadline, but it’s nice for Toronto to have cost certainty now, months before the start of free agency. Olynyk’s $12.8M salary for 2024-25 almost exactly replaces the $13M that Dennis Schröder was due to make before the Raptors dumped him to the Nets. As a result, Toronto still has a path to around $25M in cap space this summer if they decline Bruce Brown’s team option and renounce Gary Trent Jr.’s cap hold.
On the court, Olynyk is a good fit next to Scottie Barnes with his ability to space the floor from the center position. His passing also gives the Raptors’ second unit a hub to play through. I expect he will help in a significant way in 2024-25, assuming the Raps can fill some of their more pressing talent gaps in the starting lineup.
West Coast Hoops 