It's not uncommon for fan accounts or AI bots to put together "teams' of past NBA players and pit them against one another. It's an activity fans can undertake themselves somewhere like NBA 2K, and it's a fun thought exercise to consider that dredges up the best kinds of memories from past stars.
The Toronto Raptors themselves decided to join the fun this past week, putting together two teams of Raptors greats and asking fans "which team wins"?
Which team you got? 👀 pic.twitter.com/gwxm6BgSKW
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) September 17, 2024
Let's join the discussion and analyze this as if it were the NBA Finals. Which team is more talented? A better fit? Where would each team's strengths line up with the others' weaknesses? Let's dive in!
Team 1: A Powerhouse of Scoring
If you are wondering which team has the better collection of offensive on-ball talent, it's clearly Team 1. DeMar DeRozan and Kawhi Leonard are two of the great isolation scorers in modern NBA history, while Chris Bosh was a destroyed of worlds while with the Raptors and Jonas Valanciunas can fill it up on the block. Even Damon Stoudemire averaged 19 points as a rookie and 19.6 overall with the franchise.
In fact, in terms of points per game, three of the top four scorers in franchise history are on this team (Bosh, DeRozan and Stoudamire) and that doesn't count Kawhi Leonard, who is the Raptors' top scorer at 26.6 points per game but only appeared in 60 regular-season games (he averaged 30.5 points per game in 24 postseason games en route to the championship).
It's therefore not clear how Team 2 slows them down, although the fit of so many on-ball scorers is not as clean as it could be. Chris Bosh may have developed as a shooter and off-ball scorer in Miami, but "Toronto Bosh" was a 29.8 percent 3-point shooter and had a massive usage rate. Someone will need to operate without the ball, and this group likely doesn't have the shooting to maximize their fit together.
Defensively, while their backcourt is suspect, having Kawhi Leonard and Chris Bosh together in the frontcourt is a fearsome combination. If this team could bring in someone like OG Anunoby off the bench and shift smaller they would be even more fearsome as a two-way squad.
Let's take a look at Team 2.
Team 2: The Winners
Something that is true of the players assembled on Team 1 is that they did not see a lot of success while with the Toronto Raptors; other than Kawhi Leonard's single season, the rest of their group largely disappointed in the postseason, if they even got there.
That cannot be said about this group. Kyle Lowry and Pascal Siakam were starters on the 2019 title team and rank first and fourth in franchise history in playoff appearances. Vince Carter averaged 25.7 points per game in his 15 playoff appearances for the Raptors.
Where Team 1 is built on scoring, Team 2 is built on two-way players who do whatever is needed to win basketball games. They likewise are not particularly flush with shooting, but thy have defense at every position and players like Lowry and Siakam who can fit in around higher-usage stars.
Someone between Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady will have a significant mismatch, a player forced to defend them who will be roasted. The same isn't true in reverse, as this group has someone to match up with everyone on the other team.
Given that this version of McGrady was yet to come fully into his powers, however, this group doesn't have the elite shot creation at multiple positions that the other group does. If Team 1 puts Kawhi Leonard on Carter, however, suddenly the offense has the potential to slow down.
Which team would have the overall advantage?
Which team wins the game?
We'll assume for the sake of the exercise that the two teams are playing a single game, not a series, and that they will be playing under modern rules. That's not quite as jarring for the Raptors' earliest players in the 1990s as it would be for, say, Bill Russell and Bob Cousy suiting up for the Celtics, but it's worth noting.
The scoring ability of Team 1 is truly daunting. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that four of the five best isolation scorers in franchise history (with Scottie Barnes still working his way up the ladder) are on Team 1, including the bruising Jonas Valanciunas inside.
Yet games are won by teams, not individual scorers, and it's without question that that group is worse than the sum of its parts. Team 2, on the other hand, fits together in a much more cohesive way, with a clear No. 1 scorer, a pair of supporting stars and the ultimate glue guys in Kyle Lowry and Antonio Davis.
In one game anything could happen, of course, but the most likely outcome is that Team 2 finds a path to victory, with Lowry taking a timely charge on his former backcourt partner DeMar DeRozan and Vince Carter salting away the victory with a vicious dunk. Davis is able to contain Valanciunas, Siakam can stop Chris Bosh from taking over and the offense is too much "my-turn-your-turn" to truly sing.
Team 2 wins this one, 106-100