The Raptors’ post-title rebuild came sooner than expected — and Kawhi leaving wasn’t the start of downfall

The Raptors also didn’t fall apart when they had to pack everything up and live in a Tampa hotel ballroom for a year. That was handled as well as it could be, and the tank itself was a reasonable reaction, though they didn’t trade Kyle Lowry: The then-34-year-old free-agent-in-waiting hadn’t been traded at the deadline because his contract demands started floating around the league, depressing his value, and few teams were ready to pay $30 million (U.S.) for him. Miami was, though. The result was Scottie Barnes, the franchise’s best draft pick since ... Siakam in 2016? DeMar DeRozan in 2009? Chris Bosh in 2003? Either way, a team two seasons removed from a championship added a future rookie of the year and all-star. That was just organizational competence.

No, the descent from that moment to the current low ebb began there. That 48-win season in 2021-22 was built on a core four of Siakam, Fred VanVleet, OG Anunoby and Barnes. All four were good players. All four were valuable. Their connection on defence created a top-10 unit without a rim protector; their offence lacked a superstar but was egalitarian enough to work. VanVleet was an all-star. Siakam was third-team All-NBA. Barnes was the rookie of the year.

Two seasons later, the Raptors won two fewer games than the year of the Tampa tank and lost their own first-round pick anyway. VanVleet is in Houston, lost for nothing in free agency. Nick Nurse and Lowry are in Philadelphia, still Toronto heroes but with a better chance of winning in the playoffs. Siakam helped carry the Indiana Pacers to a second-round playoff matchup against Anunoby and the Knicks; Anunoby, playing to type, missed the bulk of the series to an injury, and Siakam moved on to play in his second career Eastern Conference final.

And here in Toronto, Raptorland lurched from low point to low point, to the fifth-worst record in franchise history. For Masai Ujiri, the result has been ... well, humbling might be the best word for it. How did it happen? How did a championship team lose its way? Inside the organization, they have asked themselves the same thing, or something like it: What could we have done differently? They were grafting players from a title team to a rising star. But together, they were the wrong guys.

Siakam was on the way up. He worked on his mid-range shooting, his shot creation, his passing. He also took more mid-range shots, of course, but he tried to be a No. 1 guy. He was on a four-year, $130-million contract. If he put together enough accomplishments by 2023-24, a supermax deal was possible.

VanVleet was the natural replacement for Lowry. Both undersized, both tough, both leaders, and VanVleet was on a four-year, $85-million deal through 2023. He and Siakam went all the way back to the Raptors 905: Siakam as a 27th pick, VanVleet as an undrafted, undersized guard. They trusted one another.

Anunoby missed the title run with an injury, and remained a part-time player, but there were some in the organization who had always considered his ceiling higher than Siakam’s: His strength and his defence were just waiting for his ball skills and fluidity to catch up. Anunoby believed that, too. He was on a potential bargain deal — four years and $72 million, through 2025. He would make his first all-defence team in 2023.

But Barnes was the most talented of them all, by a lot. He fit into the team’s spaces, with athleticism and a sense of the game: Scoring, rebounding, passing, defending. After that rookie season, Ujiri called him “one of those players of the future.”

Maybe that was the moment something could have been different. It became clear that Barnes occupied a lot of the same real estate as Siakam on the court, even as Siakam expanded his range. Meanwhile, Barnes and VanVleet weren’t clicking. VanVleet was the natural heir to Lowry’s role as team leader, but Barnes wasn’t easily led: Some in the organization bemoaned the fact VanVleet refused to try to build off-court bridges to Barnes — to go out with him and bond over some young-person nights, for instance — and the disconnect manifested on the court.

The bond between VanVleet and Siakam and their position as the two top dogs in the organization meant that when the shot clock ran down, one would look for the other. Barnes finished fourth on the team in front-court touches his rookie year, behind those two and Anunoby, and was third in his second year. Numbers of that nature had Ujiri lambasting his team as “selfish” in the wake of the 2022-23 season. One reason Jakob Poeltl was brought back for a first-round pick was that, among his other abilities, he is one of the least selfish players in the game.

But as the bonds that carried the team to 48 wins evaporated, the changes came. VanVleet left for nothing in 2023, and there wasn’t a great replacement available. As last season disintegrated, the Anunoby trade brought back Immanuel Quickley and R.J. Barrett; the Siakam trade mostly brought back picks in a bad draft. Maybe if Siakam had been the first to be moved, back in 2022 or 2023, the sequence could have changed and Barnes would have had more room to grow, sooner. It wouldn’t have been an easy move; it would not have been unreasonable, though.

Now the team is starting again, centred around Barnes. He led the Raptors in touches this past season, but for all his gifts he still hasn’t shown the ability to truly drive play, and it’s still debatable whether the Raptors are asking too much from the 22-year-old Floridian. Head coach Darko Rajakovic, in a viral rant about officiating after a loss to the Lakers, said Barnes “is going to be the face of the league,” which seems a stretch. When Ujiri was asked in January if Barnes is ready to be the face of Toronto’s middle-of-the-pack NBA franchise, the team president couldn’t say for sure.

“I don’t know if he’s ready for that responsibility,” Ujiri said. “The hardest thing to do in this NBA is to find those kind of players — that’s the hardest thing, is to find that exact type of player that has that basketball IQ, that has that size, that develops his shooting, has the charisma, has the character, to become that player.”

In other words, there’s a lot riding on Barnes. Considering he has acknowledged being in less-than-optimal shape in his disappointing sophomore season and has shown signs of being less than receptive to veteran mentorship, the franchise can only hope he grows into his role, and pronto.

But even if Barnes overdelivers on his promise he’ll need help, and the internal goal is to add two more difference-making players to make a core. Is Quickley one? Far from clear, and he and Barnes, after signing their extensions, will make up more than 50 per cent of this year’s cap. (That percentage will decline as the cap expands with new TV money.) Can Barrett’s defence ever develop? Even with Poeltl, it’s not a contending core; it’s a rebuild. 

The Raptors’ scouting staff, led by Dan Tolzman, was under considerable pressure in the draft, and there is a real need for value from draft picks Ja’Kobe Walter, Jonathan Mogbo, and maybe even late second-rounders Jamal Shead and Ulrich Chomche. The franchise that found Anunoby and Siakam with the 23rd and 27th picks of their respective drafts has recently hit a player-procurement cold streak, with the once-promising likes of Malachi Flynn and Christian Koloko no longer with the organization.

The front office remains very close to what it was in the title year. Ujiri, general manager Bobby Webster, Tolzman and more. Can they regain their touch? Is this just a natural swing in a fast-moving league? The Raptors are 194-196 since the title.

It’s debatable as to whether Ujiri had too much faith in his own players, or too much faith in his ability to move them for what he wanted. It’s debatable whether in waiting for Siakam’s three-point shooting to arrive, he had too much faith in his organization’s past successes. It’s debatable whether his prizing flexibility for a big move — Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, Damian Lillard — put too much faith in his own abilities to pull off a second transactional miracle, or even whether the so-far fruitless clearing of decks for the second coming of the Kawhi trade amounted to anything more than a Jontay Porter-esque gamble. And it’s debatable whether the idea the organization would keep finding VanVleets and Siakams — which is hard for any organization in any sport — may have been impossible.

Those elements were tent poles of Ujiri’s hugely successful tenure. At the moment, the tent is pitched in muck.

“It’s my first time going through something like this,” Ujiri said in April. “Sometimes it’s unwatchable ... We have to grind through it.” After announcing the contract extensions for Barnes and Quickley, Ujiri said, “we will win again here, and it’s guaranteed we’re going to win again here.”

Unlike the other franchises in town, the Raptors set the bar as high as it could go: that collective ecstasy of a championship parade, of a swaggeringly drunk Marc Gasol and a triumphant Lowry, and of millions in the streets on a summer day, sweltering together. That day, the city came together like it never had.

Well, now the Raptors are back down with everyone else in this town: with glittering resumes gathering dust, memories and rings packed away, and the hope they still have the excellence that worked before.