Morning Coffee - Mar. 10, 2025
Gracefully tanking is hard when the kids play so damn hard
In a lost season for the Raptors, tanking etiquette can be hard to define — and defend - Toronto Star
Look, nobody’s trying to be a moralist here. We live in an upside-down world where folks who do the right thing are often cast as suckers and integrity can seem like a relic of the previous century.
But whether or not you hold sacred the notion that a professional sports team ought to try and maximize its chances to win games, the thing that’s most jarring about the Raptors’ recent mockery of fourth-quarter competitiveness is the blatant nature of the enterprise. There are easily a million ways to slyly reduce your team’s chances of winning a game while maintaining plausible deniability of a laydown and also getting your young guys plenty of run. What the Raptors have been doing isn’t one of them.
You’d need to be a diehard fan to name the five Raptors who played the most fourth-quarter minutes Saturday. That’d be, in order of playing time: A.J. Lawson, Colin Castleton, Jared Rhoden, Orlando Robinson and Jamison Battle. If your reaction to most of that list was “Who?” don’t feel badly. That group is stacked with players intimately familiar with life on two-way and 10-day contracts. Odds are most won’t be around long. All of which can give you the idea that what the Raptors are up to is less about nurturing talent than it is about boosting lottery odds.
Maybe it only makes sense that in the spirit of a season that saw the Raptors retire the number of a player who demonstrably quit on the franchise to force a trade, the Raptors are pooh-poohing any semblance of competitive standards in the name of getting what they want. Nothing like keeping alive the legacy of Half Man, Half a Season.
That the Raptors have won three of their past four games speaks to a schedule that’s seen them pitted against sub-.500 strugglers Orlando, Utah and Washington. Consider it a credit or a curse: the Raptors’ benchwarmers have come to play.
For all that, my colleague Doug Smith called the Raptors’ late-game player deployment against the Magic last week “troubling” and “shameful.” Add in “begging for a call from the commissioner,” and that sounds about right to me.
You can find fans who don’t agree. Some are praising the Raptors’ devil-may-care ruthlessness. To those folks, maximizing lottery odds with a side dish of player development sounds ideal.
The problem is, the NBA has always claimed to frown on blatant tanking. A couple of years ago, when Victor Wembanyama was the impending No. 1 pick, commissioner Adam Silver said he put franchises “on notice” that he was watching for funny business.
Raptors mailbag: The ‘shameful’ Magic game, Chris Boucher’s playing time and the Luka Doncic trade - Toronto Star
Can we safely assume the call to remove our starters, one by one, against Orlando was GM Bobby Webster’s call and not coach Darko Rajakovic’s? Does Webster’s evaluation of Rajakovic go up because he followed orders and took the starters out?
You called it a “shameful” move. I’m not really disagreeing. I get it; I totally understand your sentiment. But where precisely does that finger point?
Last question: Does tanking or ethical tanking undermine player development by undermining the innate desire to win? Does it send a message to players that it is sometimes OK to not try your best?
—Jeff V.
I’m sorry, this question came originally at a length longer than the stories I tend to write off games. I had to pare it to its basics.
The decision to sub players in and out and when rests solely with the coach in the moment. He would be smart enough to know what his bosses would think of it.
There is blame aplenty. The league is complicit, as I’ve said, by incentivizing losing at some level, and organizations trying to shift the weight of lottery odds have to take some blame.
It’s not that it tells anyone that it’s OK not to try — everyone on the court or on the bench in the moment is trying their absolute best, never ever forget that — but it tells players and fans that losing might not be the worst thing. And I think that’s bad.
Expect more Raptors wackiness after wild two weeks - Toronto Sun
To recap: Two Sundays ago the Raptors, without starting point guard Immanuel Quickley, completely outclassed a Phoenix Suns team that has Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and the NBA’s highest payroll. An unexpected night, to be sure, but that one had nothing on some of what was to follow.
Losses to Boston and Indiana were expected and uneventful, but on Feb. 28, we might have seen the stunner of the season. Up by 16 points in Chicago in the fourth quarter, the Raptors fumbled and bumbled away the lead, but still should have left the United Centre with a victory.
Instead, Quickley, back in the lineup, fouled Coby White on a desperation three-pointer at the buzzer of a three-point game. The shot fell, White hit a free throw and the Bulls forced overtime, eventually running away with it in the extra period. We’ll give that one a 9/10 on the weirdness scale.
The Raptors began a two-game set in Orlando two games later and promptly blew another fourth-quarter lead. With overtime looming again following a 24 second shot clock violation by the Raptors, Toronto eked out a win when Magic star Franz Wagner blew a layup after the Raptors got mixed up on a switch defensively. Scottie Barnes was able to recover just quickly enough to get into Wagner’s peripheral vision.
But if you thought that was the height of the zaniness, Toronto was just getting started.
In the rematch with the Magic Toronto rested most of its top players down the stretch, yet won the game on a wild three-point make by rookie Ja’Kobe Walter with 0.5 seconds remaining. It was an extremely difficult attempt, one that rarely falls, but Walter got it to go.
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On Friday, with Utah in town, Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic rested Jakob Poeltl and RJ Barrett, but played Barnes and Quickley. Minus Poeltl, the team was manhandled by Jazz giant Walker Kessler, who had 25 rebounds and eight blocked shots, and only led by six points late in the fourth. Unlike in prior games, when Rajakovic let his young players get the experience of trying to pull out a close game, letting his stars rest, Barnes and Quickley returned to smack away the Jazz. That was a bit confusing (more on that later).
But the grand finale came Saturday in the first of two home games against NBA-worst Washington. The Raptors rested Quickley, but a minutes limit on Poeltl, fell behind by 13 in the second half, and by three with 46.3 seconds remaining. A Jamal Shead layup and Washington miss inexplicably gave Toronto a chance at another win. After the officials missed Shead stepping on the sideline, which should have resulted in a turnover with 2.3 seconds to go, the Raptors called a timeout to set up another play, and to get a new inbounder. With Shead freed up to do something else, he got the ball and hit a layup at the buzzer, bringing the crowd, and his teammates to their feet in a raucous celebration. A group of five where the rookie Shead was the most experienced (it also featured A.J. Lawson and Jared Rhoden, who have been in the G League most of the season, Orlando Robinson, who hasn’t been a Raptor long, and Colin Castleton, who just arrived on a 10-day contract during the week) had pulled it off — seemingly.
But upon review it was found that the ball was still on Shead’s fingertips as time expired, giving Washington the victory.
The Raptors, after the big celebration, didn’t seem too broken up over the loss (Utah hadn’t on Friday either), and Washington didn’t seem overly thrilled about the turn of events themselves.
Welcome to life in the tanktastic portion of the NBA standings. There will be more like this over the final 18 games. Sometimes Rajakovic will go with youngsters late, sometimes he’ll return his veterans. There will be plenty of nights one, two or three key Raptors get rested entirely. It’s still unclear whether we’ll see the team’s best scorer, Brandon Ingram, at all this season (he took part in the pre-game warmup, getting up shots and his injured ankle seemed a lot better on Saturday).