Three players who are starting to step up for the Toronto Raptors

After a dismal 1-6 start to the season, the Toronto Raptors are beginning to find their footing, thanks in large part to the improvement of some key role players.

It hasn’t been a great month for the Toronto Raptors to start the 2020-2021 campaign.  Sluggish play and lacklustre defence led to some surprise losses early on, and that skid had some people wondering if it might be time to consider a semi-rebuild.  They seemed to have righted the ship somewhat, despite a loss in their most recent contest to the Indiana Pacers.  Over the last ten games, they have a 6-4 record, and they’ve looked like a much more engaged ball club on both ends of the floor.

It’s important to note that the Raptors are by no means out of the woods yet; five of those six wins came against teams below .500, including victories against two depleted teams in Dallas and Miami.  The Raptors are still sitting outside the playoffs in a much improved Eastern Conference, and have yet to beat a top team so far this season.  Nevertheless, things have at least been starting to trend in the upward direction in Toronto, and a big reason why is the fact that several role players have shown signs of turning their poor play around.

These three Toronto Raptors players have really started to turn a corner and play well

Perhaps no player heading into the season was, or is, as important to the Toronto Raptors’ fate than Anunoby.  While we all essentially knew what we would get from the likes of Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam, the fourth-year forward represented the sort of wild card that could significantly raise the team’s ceiling if he took the leap many expected he would take offensively.

Through the first seven games, it didn’t look promising.  Anunoby was shooting just 29 percent from three, while averaging 12.9 points per contest.  Those numbers simply aren’t good enough if this iteration of the Raptors is going to be successful.  Since then, however, Anunoby seems to have gotten his game on track.  Excluding a sub-par performance in the loss on Monday, he had previously upped his scoring average to 16.6 PPG over a nine-game stretch, while shooting over 50 percent from beyond the arc, not to mention a brilliant 30-point-performance in a big win over Indiana this past weekend when the team was shorthanded.

The elite defence will always be there with Anunoby, but he must become a more reliable offensive weapon for the Raptors to truly make something of this season.  Anunoby probably won’t be the next Kawhi Leonard, but if he can elevate his game to the level of a Shawn Marion prototype, it would be exactly what the doctor ordered for a Toronto Raptors team that can struggle to score.  Anunoby still has a ways to go offensively, but his recent improvement has been a huge key for the team’s uptick in play.