The Toronto Raptors moved to 1-4 over their last five games after a 123-112 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday night. There were some positives in this loss, with RJ Barrett going off for an efficient 31 points, 14 rebounds, and five assists, and Immanuel Quickley pouring in 26 points himself. But on a night where the two top dogs for the Raptors stepped up, pretty much everyone else came up short. Sure, Collin Murray-Boyles and Jakob Poeltl held up their end of the bargain defensively, but the Raptors' depth really didn’t come to play on a night where one little extra boost could’ve flipped the result.
This goes to a bigger developing trend of the recent stretch of games without Scottie Barnes or Kawhi Leonard: the rest of this Raptors core continues to be super inconsistent.
The Raptors' supporting cast is becoming impossible to trust
To some, this may look like me trying to avoid praising Barrett and Quickley, two players I have been super critical of lately. But that’s not my intent. They were both phenomenal last night and stepped up the way fans have been asking them to. The issue is that this level of play hasn't consistently been there over the previous four games, and when it finally did arrive, no one else could hold up their end.
As a core, this group is super out of sync. Too many players on this roster have been all-or-nothing to start this season, and have a lot of us wondering what their actual night-to-night impact can be because they’re all over the place.
Take Ja’Kobe Walter, for example, who had 17 points and shot 5-of-10 from three against the Celtics on Wednesday. The game before that one, he shot 4-of-13 and had 12 points against Memphis. On Thursday, he finished with six points on 2-of-8 shooting. Those stat lines are all over the place and look way more like the production you’d be getting from someone who is your ninth or tenth man, as opposed to someone starting on the wing for you right now.
Back to Barrett, who during the four-game stretch prior to Thursday was shooting sub-40 percent from the field and sub-22 percent from three. Then he evened things out by popping off, shooting 13-of-20 from the field and 57 percent from three against Philly. Quickley is in the same boat. Even though he had a great scoring night against the 76ers, he also shot 3-of-14 against Boston the previous night, including 1-of-8 from three.
These up-and-down swings in production aren't an issue when they come from players you aren’t counting on to help you win games every night.
If rookie Allen Graves or sophomore Alijah Martin are having swings like this, it’s not a concern because they aren’t considered every-game players when this team is at full strength. But when you have that type of unknown production coming from two every-game starters like IQ and Barrett, or an important rotation piece like Ja’Kobe Walter, it makes you wonder: can this team count on players outside of Barnes or Leonard to be consistent enough to win a playoff series?
The best teams in the league are the ones where a head coach can look at a rotation player and know what kind of production they're getting 90 percent of the time. The Raptors don’t have that. Yes, I understand role players are going to struggle when stars go out because it puts so much more of the defensive attention on them. But once in a while, having everyone click and step up on the same night would be nice and put some of the concerns about the supporting cast to rest.
I love Jamison Battle, but when he’s the most reliable player from a production standpoint, you aren’t going to be a very serious basketball club.
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