VANCOUVER — It’s too early to be worried about anything, and it’s too early in the NBA pre-season to be worried about the Toronto Raptors starting lineup, especially since its first sniff of game action as a unit came Monday against the Denver Nuggets, one of the most seasoned and effective first fives in the NBA.
With those caveats out of the way, the Toronto starters looked (predictably) like a group that was still trying to figure things out, as Brandon Ingram took the floor as a Raptor for the first time alongside Scottie Barnes, RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley.
Another caveat: missing from that group was Jakob Poeltl, the veteran centre who sat out the annual NBA Canada game in front of a loud, sold-out crowd at Rogers Arena as a precaution after he developed a sore back in the lead-up to the game.
For the record, the Nuggets went home with the win, 112-108, in what was a tight contest throughout the second half, much to the delight of the very pro-Raptors crowd. Toronto’s third unit and G-League hopefuls had multiple chances to tie the game in the final minute before a late Denver three sealed it.
Toronto’s next pre-season game is in Sacramento on Wednesday.
But how the Raptors starters come together and how soon is a matter of great importance. They have a lot invested in them — literally — as they stand to earn $136.4 million this season as a group, but also because while their bench has plenty of bodies and lots of energy, they don’t have among them the kind of talent that can carry games consistently. Change the tempo? Up the energy? Run a disorganized or under-motivated team off the court on occasion? Sure. But the Raptors starters will need to hold their own against the league’s better teams if they are going to be heard from in the Eastern Conference this season.
After they played just under 100 minutes together and were a cumulative minus-37 against the Nuggets, the only fair assessment is that there is still plenty of room for improvement.
“I thought that we brought a lot of intensity and were really competing,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “Now we’re in the stage where we have to clean stuff up.”
First, the good news: in his first NBA action since a high-ankle sprain on Dec. 12 cut last season short at 18 games, Raptors newcomer Ingram looked perfectly comfortable doing what the team acquired him to do — creating offence in the half court.
Ingram finished with 19 points on 6-of-12 shooting and was 6-of-7 from the free-throw line, spending most of his 22 minutes matched up with the Nuggets’ Christian Braun, one of the league’s more tenacious wing defenders. Ingram seemed mostly unbothered and flashed enough skill that you can’t wait to see what it looks like when it’s not his first NBA game in 303 days. He got fouled on his first drive to the basket, stepped into a triple coming off a screen on his next touch and then turned Nuggets wing Cam Johnson inside out on a drive to the rim later in the first quarter.
And he looked comfortable shapeshifting off the ball, too: slipping behind the defence for a dunk on a nice pass from RJ Barrett or cutting into space to create a target for a driving Sandro Mamukelashvili on another. He used his six-foot-eight height and long, languid arms to find Quickley over the top of the defence for a triple. Then, he put it on the floor on another drive that opened the lane for rookie Collin Murray-Boyles to grab the offensive rebound and score in the third quarter in perhaps the Raptors’ best stretch with him on the floor.
“I was just really, really happy for him that he has the chance to play and compete and be with his teammates (after such a long layoff),” said Rajakovic. “But he’s so talented, not just to score the ball, but how positions himself on the court — he had one great cut in the first half — he’s an enormous talent piece on the floor.”
That part’s all good. And it’s not hard to project Barrett getting used to being the third or fourth Raptor on opponents’ scouting reports after being near the top as the Raptors’ leading scorer a year ago. He played under control for the entire game, drifting to open spots on the floor for threes, making three of six, and just as often driving and looking to pass (three assists) as was looking to score. His 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting in 21 minutes came easily.
“I’m just here to help,” said Barrett. “Obviously, we have some talented guys on our side, so just trying to do my part out there.”
But it will be interesting to monitor where Barnes — and to a lesser extent Quickley — fit into all of this. Barnes, the focal point offensively for most of the past two seasons, looked a little bit out sorts. It wasn’t so much that he was 0-of-6 from the floor as that he took just six shots and didn’t look comfortable on any of them. His three-ball (0-2) remains a question mark as he starts Year 5, and his attempts to get into any mid-range looks weren’t fruitful either. He was still impactful — he had five assists and three steals in 18 minutes — but rather than being the positionless maestro he can be at his best, he looked like a man without a position.
As for Quickley, you can sympathize with the challenge of running the point with this group: there a lot of capable scorers who deserve the ball, but Quickley himself needs to be a threat — especially from deep — for the group to have the spacing it needs. Quickley played just 33 games last season and is doubtless still finding his feet. He finished with eight points and three assists in his 20 minutes, but got only three triples up, which is a long way from the 10 per game he said he’s hoping to be pulling this season for the Raptors.
Rajakovic praised Quickley’s poise and organization, for what it’s worth, and said that Barnes was outstanding defensively, his three steals part of the Raptors effort that forced 31 turnovers by Denver which, coupled with Toronto’s 15-8 edge in offensive rebounds, would normally be the pillars of a winning box score. Just not when you shoot 12-of-42 from three and put Denver on the free throw line 35 times.
Again, it’s the earliest of early days, but with so much emphasis put on the starters in the lead-up to the regular season — Rajakovic has played them together exclusively in practice to jump-start their chemistry — there’s still a lot of room for growth. But after one game, there are interesting developments that may or may not become trends that will require monitoring.
Hot start for Murray: The way Nuggets head coach David Adelman put it was kind of perfect: Jamal Murray, the Canadian star who has become part of Nuggets lore as he starts his eighth season in the Rockies, is known to play his best basketball in May and June, not so much in October and November. “As the year goes on, that’s been the talking point. But it is all about winning at the end, and we all know what he is in the biggest games. He’s been the hero, many times for us. … It’s not about him statistically playing great at the start of the season, I think it’s about him getting in the flow earlier.” Murray looked the part against the Raptors, as he scored 17 points on 6-of-10 shooting, including 3-of-6 from three. Adelman says Murray’s focus was being in the weight room over the summer, and he reported for camp in great shape. Nothing to see here, says Murray, who is starting his ninth season and hoping to win his second NBA championship. “We know what we have in our locker room. It’s all about executing. We don’t want to have to make excuses. We just want to push and hit the ground running … but I can only bring the right energy toward the game. I’m not doing anything different, I didn’t grow taller, I didn’t develop a third hand, I’m just playing basketball and trying to do it with more intent and more focus.”
Bruce Brown loves Toronto! The one-time Raptor is back with the Nuggets, the team that he won a championship with in 2023 before he left to sign a two-year deal for $45 million with the Indiana Pacers. But that deal became the lynchpin of the trade that saw Pascal Siakam go to the Pacers, and the money match that was used by Toronto to acquire Ingram from New Orleans. With his contract up, Brown signed for the veteran minimum of $3.08 million in Denver. All good, but the versatile wing raised eyebrows in Toronto when he was gushing about how excited he was to return the Denver. “As soon as I got to Toronto, I thought about coming back to Denver right away,” Brown told Andscape’s Marc Spears. To any Raptors fans who felt slighted, when I spoke with Brown before Monday’s game, he was happy to clarify that the desire to be back catching passes from Nikola Jokic and competing for an NBA title was not a reflection of his feelings toward Toronto: “That wasn’t a shot to Toronto. That was, I went to Indy for three months (after) finally getting to pick where I wanted to go, and (the Pacers) trade me. So I’m like, ‘Why the hell did I leave somewhere where I loved, to get traded three months later, right?’ So it wasn’t a shot to Toronto, like, I love Toronto, I loved the city, like I was always outside in the city. I was doing things. They have some of the best fans in the league, the city’s one of the best in league. So it wasn’t a shot to the fans or the city or anything like that. Not at my teammates, my former teammates, it was just a business decision. And they kind of just like, turned my words.”
A ring is the thing: Jonas Valanciunas is entering his 14th season in the NBA and his first with the Nuggets. The respected and well-liked veteran centre was acquired to give Jokic some help against some of the bigger lineups in the Western Conference and also as a fulcrum for the second unit when Jokic sits. It might be his last season in the NBA — he has played on three teams in the space of 12 months and is in the last year of his contract. After playing in Washington and Sacramento last season, he was giving serious consideration to playing in Europe this season — even now, his kids are at school in Lithuania — but the Nuggets were convinced he was an important piece for them and made the deal to get him. Whatever happens, playing on a team with Jokic represents Valanciunas’ best chance to win a championship since he was with the Raptors, only to be traded for Marc Gasol midway through what turned out to be Toronto’s championship season in 2019. “We have a special mission, we have a lot of talent in this locker room, and we just got to bring everybody together, know our roles and operate together,” said Valanciunas. “At this stage of my career, I just want to win no matter what. This team is capable, so I’ll dive in 100 per cent and do my stuff, whatever my role is, I don’t care, my goal is to win. I think every player in the NBA wants a chance to win a championship and it excited me too, but it’s not going to be easy.” There’s not a Raptors fan who wouldn’t be happy if Valanciunas got a chance to swig some champagne after coming close but no cigar with Toronto.
