3 Glaring flaws that will come back to haunt the Raptors this season

Flaw No. 3: Perilously thin at forward

Scottie Barnes. Jonathan Mogbo.

That is the list of true forwards the Toronto Raptors have on their 18-man roster. That's it. The most valuable position in the NBA and the Raptors managed to end up with just two of them.

RJ Barrett will likely start at small forward, and at 6'7" Gradey Dick is tall enough to play some minutes there. At the other end, Kelly Olynyk's shooting helps him to survive as a stretch-4 in certain matchups. The Raptors will certainly fill in those minutes; it won't step onto the court with four players.

Yet a lack of forward depth limits the team's versatility; they are essentially forced to play a touch small at all times, and if they wanted to try Scottie Barnes out at center they would be pushing Barrett all the way down to power forward. If Barnes were to go down again, the lineup combinations would be either clunkily large with two bigs, or perilously small with two wings at the forward spots.

Jonathan Mogbo is also a second-round rookie who will likely see rotation minutes from day one simply because of the positional scarcity on the roster. Does Toronto see the 6'4" Bruce Brown as more of a forward? Were they banking heavily on signing a player they couldn't get, or on Sasha Vezenkov sticking around?

As things stand, they go into the season with two forwards, one of them a raw rookie. That's a difficult place to start from in the modern NBA, and it will likely come back to haunt Toronto this year.