Six takeaways from the Raptors’ middling 6-game homestand

After a disappointing performance against the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday, the Toronto Raptors ended a six-game homestand which was their best season.

The homestand was initially pegged by many as a pivotal point of the Raptors’ season, but in the end it didn’t really do much to improve or dwindle the team’s fortunes much. Toronto is now in 11th place in Eastern Conference, with five games less than.500. However, there’s still hope that things can get better.

A familiar script for a Raptors side that’s been searching for any semblance of positive consistency seemingly all season long.

Here are a few takeaways that stood out during Toronto’s latest stretch of mediocrity.

No hints given about trade deadline strategy

For many, Feb. 9 is looking like it’ll be the most important date of this Raptors season.

The trade deadline for this season could be a significant one, unlike previous seasons. As such, it is important to understand where the club may look as the deadline approaches.

The six-game homestand was meant to provide some clues as to what the Raptors may be thinking at the deadline. It also provided potential assets in Pascal Siakam and O.G. Anunoby, Fred VanVleet and Gary Trent Jr. all swirling around the rumour mill, but going 3-3 doesn’t really tell you much.

The three victories came against, at the time, a slumping Portland Trail Blazers team and against a Charlotte Hornets squad (twice) that’s trying to tank. The losses came against the Milwaukee Bucks and a solid New York Knicks team, as well as the Hawks at home.

These six games ended in a predictable manner. Even though Atlanta lost was devastating, winning against the Blazers was a solid result.

The Raptors have a lot to learn from their six previous games. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of room to interpret what they should do at deadline.

If you’re in the camp they should be sellers, then seeing them perform poorly against Atlanta and run out of steam against the Knicks gives credence to that argument as those are teams that, if the Raptors were really contenders, they should be able to handle.

If you want to see Toronto be buyers, however, the competitiveness with which it played the Bucks and the victory against Portland – with Damian Lillard – is also pretty good evidence for that side of the coin.

As with their entire season, it was nearly impossible to get a glimpse of who the Raptors are during this homestand.

According to Nurse, the losses were caused by a lack energy and not effort.

If Nick Nurse, Raptors coach, is to be believed then the Raptors’ struggles have been due to a lack energy but not effort.

“Come on, man. No more effort questions,” Nurse told a reporter at practice Sunday before abruptly leaving his availability.

Despite the poor optics of that exchange it’s fair for Nurse to believe that his team is putting in effort.

“[Our environment] is still very hardworking and professional and focused and all of that stuff,” Nurse said. “From my standpoint, they continue to get here, work really hard, both individually and as a team.”

He sees the Raptors struggling in energy, though.

“We’ve got a long way to go with consistency,” Nurse said after the Atlanta game when asked what he’s learned about his team over their last six games. “I would have liked to have said we’re making some progress with just being ready to go energy-wise and connectivity-wise and all that stuff and then tonight it didn’t look like we had very good energy to start the game.”

To Nurse’s point, the Raptors began Saturday’s game down 20-3 before finally picking things up midway through the first quarter. Even against Milwaukee, that cameback was amazing, but the Raptors were unable to overcome a largely inept third quarter.

It is unclear if this is due to a lack in energy or effort. It can be true that the Raptors are working hard during practice and in their spare time and it can also be true that during the games that effort hasn’t always been apparent – even if you want to call it energy or anything else.

Workplace offense

One very noticeable trend over their past six games was that when Toronto is scoring the basketball, it’s probably going to win.

The Raptors won three games, scoring 117, 132, and 124 respectively. In those games, they also managed to score 42 3-pointers. They only scored 108 points and hit only 26 triples in their losses.

Defensively in those defeats the Raptors played well enough to win, but simply didn’t score enough to get the job done.

This is a sign of a problem that the team has been dealing with all season. The Raptors aren’t a great shooting team and don’t have enough of it to really survive in the modern NBA.

This leads to the discussion about what they should do by the deadline. They could either add shooting to their team to make up the gap or sell their stars in order to start again with shooting as their core value.

Fred VanVleet still has a lot to do

In what has been a rough season for Fred VanVleet, he had another down stretch over Toronto’s last six games culminating with a dreadful three-points, 1-for-9 showing Saturday.

As it turns out, VanVleet is still dealing with a nagging back injury that at this point we all should just expect to persist all season long unless he’s shut down.

Back problems don’t just go away overnight and given the heavy workload VanVleet must take on as the team’s primary ball handler and one of its defensive leaders, it’s reasonable to assume he’ll be playing hurt for the rest of the campaign.

This is bad news, especially for the Raptors if they are trying to move up in the standings.

Scottie Barnes is back

The play of Scottie Barton was a positive from the homestand.

Over the six games, Barnes averaged 17.2 points, 7.2 rebounds and five assists — showing the kind of aggression going to the basket that helped him win rookie of the year last season.

Barnes’s sophomore season has been a bit of a disappointment as his desire to play point guard and act as a playmaker this season has appeared to rob him of some of that aggressiveness that made him so successful before.

He has shown a lot of talent and strength in scoring in the last two games. It should be a boon for the Raptors and him in particular.

Looking ahead

Monday, the Raptors will be in New York to face the Knicks. They’ll open a stretch where they play 10 of their next 12 road games.

This could make a difference in the direction they choose to go at the deadline, as they have a road record of only 5-13.

This homestand was a repeat of their previous one, but they appear to still be in neutral.

We hope that the Raptors make a decision soon about our future for the benefit of everyone involved.

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