Raptors finally embracing the rebuild and so should we

TORONTO – Up until recently, the word “rebuild” was taboo inside of and around the Raptors front office.

Rarely used aloud and generally frowned upon as a concept, it simply wasn’t in their vernacular. It’s an inevitability in the NBA and throughout professional sports, an accepted way of life for teams looking to improve their fortunes by starting over or, in Toronto’s case, transition from one era to the next. It comes for everybody at some point and in some form or another, but Masai Ujiri was hoping to avoid it as long as possible.

The Raptors are a prideful organization coming off the most successful run in their 30-year history, and naturally, accepting a new reality took some time, maybe too much time. The path they chose has been debated ad nauseam – Did they wait too long to pivot? Did they maximize their assets along the way? But they’re here now. The ambiguity that hung over them going into last season is gone and the direction is clear.

They’re finally embracing the rebuild, and regardless of whether you agree with what came before it, so should we.

“I would use the word rebuilding,” said Ujiri, asked to characterize his club’s upcoming 2024-25 season on the eve of training camp. “Yes, in sports, you always want to be competitive and you play to win. We're going to play to win. But it is a rebuilding team. I think everybody sees that loud and clear.”

It will be hard to miss when they take the court for their first practice in Montreal on Tuesday. Of the 21 players invited to camp, seven have never appeared in an NBA game. The average age of the roster is 25, and that’s including the 38-year-old Garrett Temple, who was brought back as a valued mentor but isn’t likely to factor into the rotation.

The young core that emerged from last year’s mid-season makeover remains intact. Scottie Barnes (24 years old) and Immanuel Quickley (25) are the team’s most important players, and after signing expensive new contracts worth north of $400 million combined, they’re now being paid like it. Given how well he played in a Raptors uniform last season or with Canada at the Olympics this summer, RJ Barrett (24) looks the part of a foundational piece, as well. Clearly, they felt confident enough in 20-year-old sophomore Gradey Dick, as well as their draft night additions, to let Gary Trent Jr. walk in free agency.

There’s little doubt what they’re prioritizing at this stage of their development, and with the growing pains that tend to plague youthful teams in this league, wins could be hard to come by. They’re projected for 30 of them, which is generous after going 25-57 a year ago.

Finding joy in a season like that will require some recalibration, and not just from the front office. This is a fan base that got accustomed to watching competitive basketball. That was one of the reasons why these past two seasons – in which the team combined for a record of 66-98 and missed the playoffs – felt like such a letdown. The other reason, and this is notable, was that expectations were unreasonably high going into both campaigns.

That shouldn’t be a problem this year. Expectations in Toronto are as low as they’ve been in more than a decade. You don’t even have to temper them yourself; the team has done it for you.

“We're definitely capable of winning some games [but] I know that's not the main focus for us,” said veteran centre Jakob Poeltl. “This has to be a long-term project. I think we all know we're not going to go attack the championship this year. It makes no sense for us to try to win every single game and sacrifice development [in the process]. So, I think we've got to find the right balance there.”

If you can separate process from result, you might be able to view this season through a different lens. Is Barnes ready to make the leap from all-star to superstar in Year 4, and continue his growth as a leader? Can Quickley and Barrett maintain or even build off their strong post-trade play with a full season in their expanded roles? Will Dick pick up where he left off in the second half of his rookie year? How quickly will this year’s freshmen – Ja’Kobe Walter, Jonathan Mogbo, Jamal Shead and Ulrich Chomche – make an impact at the NBA level?

Think back to what it was like watching that 2013-14 Raptors team – led by young, homegrown stars like DeMar DeRozan, Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross – finally break through, or imagine how fans of the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Orlando Magic must feel watching their clubs complete successful rebuilds and turn the corner.

If it’s done the right way, there’s something special about following a team that is building for the future, rather than clinging to its past. The thing is, it’s not always done the right way.

It should be noted that the word “rebuild”, or a variation of it, was used six times over the team’s annual Media Day festivities on Monday: four times by Ujiri and twice by head coach Darko Rajakovic. No player used it, nor would you expect them to – although a refreshingly candid Poeltl came close.

Most would agree that a successful season for the Raptors would be one that pushes the rebuild forward and puts them in the best possible position for the future. What does that look like? That depends on who you’re asking. If you told the front office that the young guys would make meaningful strides but struggle to win games, resulting in a top pick in the loaded 2025 draft, they’d almost certainly deem that a success. Some might call that the best-case scenario. Professional athletes are wired differently, though. Given their competitive drive and the nature of their contracts, you can understand why their goals are more closely tied to wins and losses.

“I don't want them to talk about rebuilding – that's me,” Ujiri said. “They should be talking about winning and they should be talking about playing and competing. So, they're talking about the right thing. That's where you want their mindset to be. They do their jobs. We do our jobs, but the communication is always there.”

Coming off a challenging first season as an NBA head coach, Rajakovic’s job doesn’t get much easier in Year 2. He and his staff are the intermediaries, charged with carrying out the organization’s long-term goals while keeping the locker room together and focused on the day-to-day, and building a winning culture from the ground up. It’s hard to see those priorities aligning, which is why coaching a rebuilding team might be the toughest job in pro sports.

“Obviously the goal is to compete and to win every night,” Rajakovic said. “But at the same time, we’ve got to understand where we are, we’ve got to understand that we are starting Year 1 of our rebuild. We have a very young core, we have guys that we believe in, and we have work to do. Every night we are going to prepare to go and compete and fight and bring the best we can, but at the same time we have to see [the] big picture and understand what we’re trying to achieve. We’re trying to build a team that will compete for championships and we need to lay down the path towards that.”

He's off to a good start. Most of the roster was together, building chemistry on the court and bonding off it, in Las Vegas during Summer League in July, and then again in Spain after the Olympics ended in August. By all accounts, the team is gelling well and buying into Rajakovic’s vision, which is predicated on hard play and a more aggressive style of defence than what we saw last season. Everybody seems to be on the same page and, for at least 24 hours, the vibes are good – markedly better than last year’s Media Day, when Ujiri got defensive in justifying his team’s quiet offseason, Pascal Siakam sulked in the absence of a contract extension, and half the team wondered whether they would finish the season in Toronto (many of them didn’t, as it turned out). But that’s not worth much before the team has even held a formal practice.

It's a long season and adversity has a way of finding young and inexperienced teams. They’re already down a couple guards to open camp – Walter, Toronto’s first-round pick, who’s dealing with a sprained AC joint in his right shoulder, and veteran Bruce Brown, an interesting trade chip on an expiring contract, who underwent a surgical procedure on his knee earlier this month. Rajakovic did an admirable job of navigating his team through injuries, controversy, personal tragedy and a late-season tank last season. It seemed like everything that could go wrong did go wrong; how could it get worse?

Well, despite losing Barnes and Poeltl to season-ending injuries and dropping 21 of the final 24 games, the Raptors were only bad enough to draw the eight-overall pick, which they forfeited to San Antonio. If the front office is truly committed to the rebuild, enough to fully steer into the tank, things could get worse before they get better. Would they consider moving Poeltl ahead of the February deadline, or shutting their stars down early, and how would that be received in the locker room? Would that even be enough to out-tank the likes of Brooklyn, Washington, Detroit, Portland and Charlotte?

“When teams go through this you go out and set the tone [with] how you play and how you want the culture of your team to be,” Ujiri said in response to a veiled question about tanking. “You hope for the best, but we know, we all know what reality is in this league, and the draft is a way for us to build teams and to acquire players, especially in a market like our market.”

It's not glamorous, but every success story starts somewhere. It’s time to embrace the rebuild.