Morning Coffee - Feb. 21, 2025
Scottie Barnes vs Everyone: Tank or no tank?
Tanking is pointless. Scottie Barnes gets it - Toronto Star
“They can be excited; I don’t really give a damn about it,” Barnes said rather emphatically. “I’m trying to go out there and win games, try to possibly make something happen. So, they can try to be excited for that, but my mindset’s on a different place.”
Therein lies the conundrum facing the organization in the post-all-star stretch run starting with Friday’s home game against the Miami Heat.
Is losing really winning? Are the hearts of the players truly beating in rhythm with the front office? Is there a balance? Can it be achieved and everyone left satisfied?
No. Probably not. Unlikely. No.
Welcome to their nightmare, and there are so many angles to it that we could talk about it weekly until the end of the season and not exhaust them.
The fact that the Raptors have (according to NBA.com) by far the easiest remaining schedule, so there are wins to be had.
The fact that they need their very best players to get some time to play together works on the win side of the ledger, too.
And while it’s necessary to find playing time for young players, too, they don’t look too bad at all. Heavy doses of rookies Jamal Shead, Ja’Kobe Walter, Jonathan Mogbo and Jamison Battle are better than heavy doses of young players on other teams chasing better lottery odds.
The fact is, the Raptors have a good chance to win a bunch of games, on purpose or by accident.
Coach Darko Rajakovic is toeing a very thin line. There is no fibre in his body that won’t coach to win every game, but he’s cognizant of the longer term, too.
“It’s not necessarily (the) outcome of the game, or we win and now everything is great (or) if we lose everything is bad,” he said.
“We really need to focus to see those marginal gains and improvements with each of the players. So that’s going to be our focus. We’ve got to approach it that way and ... see the bigger picture.”
That’s why it’s going to be so interesting to watch these 27 games: to see who plays and how much, and to watch the fan base live and die and overanalyze every win and loss.
One suggestion: Judge the remaining games one at a time, see how the totals look when it’s all added up and deal with the blind luck of the lottery then — or revel in an amazing finish.
Scottie Barnes Shares Message for Raptors Fans Who Want to Tank - Sports Illustrated
Scottie Barnes doesn’t care about lottery odds.
Ask him about tanking or the league’s reverse standings, and he’ll scoff. He’s not checking mock drafts or speculating about which top college prospects might join the Toronto Raptors this summer. The off-court chatter about lottery positioning? Completely irrelevant.
What Barnes cares about are the real standings.
“We’re still in that fight,” he said Thursday after practice. “We still could make something happen. That’s my motivation. When I look at (the standings), I see that we still have a chance.”
And he’s not wrong.
Toronto sits five games behind the Chicago Bulls for the 10th seed in the Eastern Conference. It’s a sizeable gap, but the Raptors have the league’s easiest remaining schedule, while the Bulls have shown little interest in pushing for the playoffs. The door, however slightly, remains open.
“We feel like we still want to win,” Barnes continued. “We feel great going into every single game with the mindset and focus of trying to get better and trying to achieve that goal of winning.”
But the reality is, the organization has other plans.
Toronto has made it clear that staying in the lottery is the priority. The front office wants to add a top pick to a young core that has shown flashes of promise this season and use it as a springboard toward long-term contention.
“We really need to focus on seeing those marginal gains and improvements with each of the players,” said Raptors coach Darko Rajaković. “We've got to approach it that way and be able to see the bigger picture.”
That means more minutes for the team’s younger prospects. Ja’Kobe Walter is going to see an expanded role, as will Jamal Shead, Jonathan Mogbo, and Jamison Battle. Whether they rise to the occasion or struggle through growing pains, the experience will be valuable. If they find ways to win with real development, that's fine. If not, Toronto drifts further down the standings—exactly where the front office wants to be.
A significant portion of the fanbase is on board with that plan. Wins are nice, but not at the expense of sustainable long-term success.
Too good to fail? Raptors start second half in tough spot - Toronto Sun
But it’s not surprising the team’s players and coaching staff give exactly zero thought to draft positioning. They get paid to win games (though a big part of head coach Darko Rajakovic’s mandate since being hired was to develop his players and steer them into and through a rebuild) and will aim to be competitive as long as they are on the court.
Barnes said as much after practice Thursday.
“(Fans) can be excited about (the draft lottery), I don’t really give a damn about it,” Barnes told reporters. “I’m trying to go out there and win games, try to possibly make something happen. So, they can be excited for that but my mindset’s in a different place.
“I look at the standings every day. We’re still in that fight. We still could make something happen. That’s my motivation. When I look at it, I see that we still have a chance. We feel like we still want to win.”
Barnes is technically correct. The top nine spots in the East are probably out of reach (Miami is ninth with 25 wins, nine games up on the Raptors), but the final play-in spot is up for grabs, with Brooklyn and Philadelphia each 20-38, 3.5 games ahead of Toronto and Chicago five games ahead. The Nets have no incentive to compete and will likely tank hard the rest of the way. The Sixers need to make the play-in to at least help salvage a disastrous season, but could also go the other way, shut down Joel Embiid and Paul George and even Tyrese Maxey and hope for lottery luck.
If the Sixers don’t land in the Top 6, the selection will go to Oklahoma City. And while the team entered Thursday tied for the sixth-worst record, there’s nearly a 33% chance of a team in that position falling to seventh, meaning the pick would be gone. Should Brooklyn or Toronto overtake the Sixers in wins, the odds of retaining the pick get even worse.
If you’re scoring at home, as the NBA season starts up again, going from the bottom of the standings, last-place Washington has a great chance of staying at 30 the rest of the way; New Orleans and Utah, tied at 13 wins for second-worst, might not stay there unless they shut down some players; Charlotte is a disaster and we could easily see them sinking to second-worst; Toronto is in an OK spot, but might not lose enough games to get the high draft pick it needs, while still also managing to miss the play-in; Brooklyn will continue to embrace the tank; the Sixers will try to compete, at least for now; Chicago will waste away in no man’s land, like usual; Portland will probably take a foot off the gas following an unexpected run of success before the break and San Antonio will lose a lot of games now that Victor Wembanyama has been lost for the season.