If Raptors are serious about tanking, they’re not doing it hard enough

There’s no honour among tankers.

The Raptors aren’t being subtle, but to keep pace with the teams around them at the bottom of the standings they can’t afford to be.

The Philadelphia 76ers have finally come to terms with their lost season. They’ve dropped 13 of 15 games, shut down oft-injured former MVP Joel Embiid, and appear highly motivated to keep their first-round pick, which is owed to Oklahoma City if it falls outside of the top six.

The Chicago Bulls, who reacquired their pick at the trade deadline, are barely – and reluctantly – holding onto the final play-in spot. They’ve been especially cautious with injuries to their veteran starters, with three of them missing Tuesday’s game, a 22-point loss to Cleveland.

The Washington Wizards, who start three rookies, are on pace for 16 wins. The Brooklyn Nets have lost five games in a row. The Charlotte Hornets have dropped eight straight and 17 of their past 19. And that’s just the East.

This is the time of year when the teams that are serious about tanking get really serious. It can be a shameless – and at times shameful – endeavour, but with a draft system that incentivizes losing, and in a sport where one special player can drastically alter an organization’s fortunes, it’s hard to blame anybody for partaking.

We see it every season, and it’s especially blatant when the upcoming rookie class features a consensus top pick and possible superstar in the making, like this one does in Cooper Flagg.

For clubs stuck in purgatory, ones that aren’t likely to attract that calibre of player in free agency, it makes logical sense to do everything they can to improve their lottery odds and chase salvation in the draft, awkward as that pursuit may be.

This week, Toronto officially entered the race. It was inevitable, and has been trending in this direction for a while.

This was always supposed to be a rebuilding campaign, even before a barrage of early-season injuries set them back. They traded away three veteran role players at the deadline, and despite acquiring Brandon Ingram, they’ve insisted that the short-term plan hasn’t changed.

A big part of that plan was to secure a top pick in this top-heavy 2025 draft before pushing forward next season. And so, it hasn’t been a surprise to see Jakob Poeltl on an unspecified minutes restriction since his return from hip injury, or the young guys getting more meaningful run post all-star break.

But in Tuesday’s game against the Magic, they took it a few steps further. Poeltl checked out with eight minutes remaining, fairly standard based on how Darko Rajakovic has been managing his starting centre’s usage of late.

However, 20 seconds later and with the team up by nine points, Scottie Barnes joined him on the bench. Immanuel Quickley had subbed out a couple minutes earlier.

None of them would get back into the game, even as Orlando made its comeback. With RJ Barrett getting pulled inside of the final two minutes, the Raptors closed the game with two rookies (Ja’Kobe Walter and Jamal Shead), a couple players on two-way contracts (A.J. Lawson and Jared Rhoden) and a recently converted two-way player (Orlando Robinson).

In a twist of karmic justice, the team that seemed to be doing everything it could to lose went on to beat the one that had its two stars, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, on the floor and was trying desperately to win. It was a cool moment for the 20-year-old Walter, who hit his first ever game winner, but a bit of an embarrassing one for the organization.

It’s yet another reminder that players don’t tank, front offices do. Regardless of who’s on the floor, those guys are all playing for something – whether it’s their next contract, their next job, or simply to prove that they belong at this level. Mostly, they’re competing to win because that’s been engrained in their DNA as athletes since they started playing the sport.

For those who feel like the Raptors crossed a line or dishonoured the game the other night, well, get used to it. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Remember how they ended up with Barnes?

In his final act with Toronto, a season Masai Ujiri would later dub the “Tampa Tank,” a healthy Kyle Lowry missed eight of the last nine games, all losses. OG Anunoby was shut down around the same time. Fred VanVleet only played in half of the team’s 36 games after the all-star break.

It got to the point where some players couldn’t even remember the specific ailment they were supposed to be out with, but the result was a bottom-seven record, which turned into the fourth-overall pick and eventually a franchise cornerstone in Barnes.

It will be more difficult to pull off this time around. Lowry was a pending free agent, likely on his way out and looking to land one last big contract – in other words, resting him down the stretch probably didn’t take much convincing. This is a younger team.

Then there’s Toronto’s friendly end-of-season schedule. Of their 20 remaining games, none come against teams with a top-10 record and 16 come against teams in the bottom 10. They’ve got as many games left against the 12-49 Wizards as they do against winning teams (three). If they couldn’t lose these past two contests against an Orlando team that was trying to win, what chance do they have against teams that are playing to lose?

They have seven games left against the four teams below them in the standings – Washington, Charlotte, Utah and New Orleans – and five against the three teams right above them. They only have a 1.5-game cushion on Philadelphia and Brooklyn. Four games separate them from Chicago and the East’s final play-in spot. They’re too good to completely bottom out, but contrary to popular belief, they’re not too good to tank.

If the goal is to maintain their current lottery odds – a 10.5 per cent chance of landing the first-overall pick and roughly 42 per cent chance of moving into the top four – and it certainly appears they’re going to try, they’re not trying hard enough.

It seems crazy to say, given they just closed a game with five players that have six combined years of NBA experience, but they’re doing some real half-measured tanking right now.

They can’t sit Barnes, not while he’s healthy, at least not yet. He needs to make All-NBA to trigger his super max – a difference of around $45 million over the next five seasons – and he needs to play in at least 17 of the final 20 games to maintain his eligibility for the honour. It’s an extreme longshot, but optically, the team can’t be the ones to take that away from him. That would not go over well with the player or his representation.

Quickley has missed 39 games with five different injuries this season. He probably shouldn’t be playing in back-to-backs – they’ve got four left, including one this weekend – and it might make sense to shut him down at some point, but it stands to reason that they would want to see what they have in their $175 million investment and get him some more reps with Barnes.

They’re providing updates on Ingram’s status in two-week intervals, the first of which came on Thursday. The team says that he is progressing as expected but still limited to solo work without a timetable for his return to game action, let alone practice. We’ll get another update in two weeks, but his Raptors debut isn’t imminent, and there’s a reasonable chance it doesn’t come until next season.

Gradey Dick’s knee injury, which will keep him out of the lineup for at least two weeks, might not help the tanking cause as much as you would think. After a hot start to the season, he’s experienced his share of growing pains, especially on the defensive end.

The Raptors have been outscored by 146 points with him on the court since the beginning of January – the worst mark on the team and 48 points worse than anybody else – so it’s not like he’s been helping them win games.

But there’s still a lever they can pull. The path is obvious and it has been for a while, it’s just a question of whether they’re willing to take it: rest or perhaps even shut down Poeltl.

The Raptors are 2-11 without their starting centre this season and 6-39 without him over the past two seasons. Over the past three games – an overtime loss to Chicago and two-point and one-point wins in Orlando – the Raptors are a team-best plus-36 with Poeltl on the floor (no one else is better than a plus-13) and minus-43 with him off it. Even in limited minutes – between 22 and 26 in four games since his return – he’s helping them win. He’s that valuable and the depth behind him at the centre position is that thin.

Subtract Poeltl and all you’re left with is Robinson, Chris Boucher – who hasn’t played in more than a week – and Colin Castleton, who was signed to a 10-day contract on Thursday. Even undersized rookie big man Jonathan Mogbo is out for at least a week after breaking his nose against Orlando.

The Raptors are planning to rest Poeltl, as well as Barrett, in the first half of a back-to-back against the Jazz on Friday, so that’s a start, though Rajakovic indicated they expect to ramp him back up to his regular minutes soon.

The conversation with Poeltl might be an uncomfortable one. The 29-year-old vet has made it pretty clear in the past that he’s happy to be part of a rebuild but has no desire to be involved in a tank.

He’s eligible for an extension this summer and will surely be looking for a raise on the $19.5 million he’s owed next season. While they can’t technically negotiate a new deal in-season, there might be certain assurances that can be made – wink wink, nudge nudge – to make an early start to his off-season more appealing.

Like the players they rested in Tampa towards the end of the 2020-21 campaign, he’s the one guy that’s good enough, smart enough and experienced enough to be just fine without more late-season reps. By all-accounts, the Raptors see him as part of their core, and he’s always had a pretty good sense of where they stand.

“We’re definitely capable of winning some games [but] I know that’s not the main focus for us,” Poeltl said back on media day in September. “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.”

The problem is that balance is hard to find at this stage of the season. The Raptors are hoping to develop and build a competitive culture while simultaneously prioritizing their lottery odds, but those are contradictory goals. The schedule simply won’t allow for them to have their cake and eat it too.

On Friday, they’ll start a four-game home stand against Utah, followed by consecutive contests against Washington and another against Philly. It’s time to pick a lane and fully steer into it before it’s too late.