Positively wild lineup suggested for the Raptors to try this season

Should the Raptors get wacky this season?

They are at a disadvantage when compared to the best teams in the league; coming off of a 25-win season, with a young roster that has barely played together, it makes sense to incorporate some out-of-the-box ideas into their gameplans. Usually that means to shoot more 3-pointers, work in zone coverages, invert pick-and-rolls and have a guard screen for a big.

One option is to employ unique lineups, a grouping of player that forces opposing defenses to get out of their comfort zone in order to match up. For all that the talk this summer has revolved around the starting lineup and who will fill the fifth and final spot (Gradey Dick certainly looks to have the inside track now) in the course of a game the team will have the chance to play all manner of lineup combinations.

Last season the Toronto Raptors played 701 different 5-man combinations. The most commonly used group by a country metre was the original starting lineup of Scottie Barnes, Dennis Schroder, OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam and Jakob Poeltl. The "new-look" starting lieup checked in next with Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett and Gary Trent Jr. swapping in for Schroder, Anunoby and Siakam.

That leaves 699 other lineups that the Raptors deployed throughout the year, and some of those were truly unique. Per Cleaning the Glass, Toronto played in a "three-big" alignment with Siakam, Precious Achiuwa and Chris Boucher all on the court together for 35 possessions, bizarrely scoring at an insane rate. Such a group with Scottie Barnes and Dennis Schroder in the backcourt outscored opponents by 87.5 points per 100 possessions.

As the Raptors look ahead to next season, one possibility is to swing entirely in the opposite direction. Dan Favale of Bleacher Report suggested this small-ball configuration: Immanuel Quickley, Bruce Brown Jr., Gradey Dick, RJ Barrett, and Scottie Barnes.

How small could the Raptors go?

That's a lineup with exactly zero big men, and the 6'7" Scottie Barnes as the nominal center and perhaps also the primary ball-handler and playmaker. Quickley and Barrett can and would operate with the ball in their hands a lot as well, but giving Barnes the ball allows the Raptors to space the court around him with four shooters (applying the label loosely to Brown).

On offense this group would be dynamic, capable of shooting and scoring from every position on the court. Brown's cutting becomes much more lethal without a big cluttering the paint, and Barnes has the room to operate inside with players moving around the perimeter instead of underneath the basket.

The question marks of course come on defense, where the Raptors are not just playing with a "smallball" center but playing Barrett as a small four and Gradey Dick as a light-in-the-shorts small forward. There is not a lot of bulk to this group, making them vulnerable not only to teams with big centers but with size and strength anywhere in the lineup. Who in this group is stopping LeBron James from getting into the paint? Paolo Banchero?

The idea iss that the Raptors could make up on offense what they give up on defense, and that may be true. What's more, the scarce numbers of this type of combination from last season speak to the defense's ability to survive or even thrive in this configuration; Per Cleaning the Glass, in 138 possessions last season with Scottie Barnes as the "center" on the court, the Raptors were +3.7 per 100 possessions, and the defense actually carried the day with an extremely robust 17.1 percent turnover percentage.

That would be the theory of this group: score in bunches on offense, cause havoc and produce turnovers on defense before an opponent even gets into the paint.

It's a positively wild lineup, and it is untenable as the normal diet for the Raptors. Could they break it out against the right opponents? Absolutely, and perhaps even as a closing lineup from time to time. If Gradey Dick develops and Bruce Brown returns healthy, this group may just have some juice to it.