The Toronto Raptors have found success this season through their deep roster of quality players. One player who has proven to be a weak spot is Ochai Agbaji, and his play has been so terrible of late that he could be playing himself right off of the team.
Toronto's starting lineup this season doesn't seem like it would work extremely well together, but they have found the most success when all five of Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, Brandon Ingram, Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl have started, slotting their collection of bench players into place: the likes of Jamal Shead, Ja'Kobe Walter, Gradey Dick, Sandro Mamukelashvili and rookie Collin Murray-Boyles have excelled as a bench mob.
Over the last few weeks, however, Barrett has been sidelined with a knee injury. That has shaken up the rotation a bit, and the Raptors have fallen off both in offensive impact and in record. The silver lining for one player, however, was a pathway back into the rotation to prove himself after falling out of the mix early on.
Ochai Agbaji is in his fourth season in the NBA, a pivotal year as he will hit restricted free agency this summer. Agbaji had a glacial start to his career in Utah and upon first coming to the Raptors, but last year he finally broke through and was a perfectly competent 3-and-D wing.
Ochai Agbaji is tripping over his chance
That has all fallen apart this season. He started the year in the rotation, playing 20 minutes in the season opener, but that changed quickly as he was entirely unable to hit a shot. Across the first nine games that he played in, Agbaji went 1-for-12 from 3-point range, which is obviously a terrible accuracy but also a painfully low volume.
After a few weeks being on the fringes of the rotation, Agbaji stepped back in with Barrett's injury. Over the past 15 days, he has averaged 16.3 minutes per game, is 1-for-6 from 3-point range (again, one attempt per game is unacceptable from a wing) and has scored just four points per game.
Agbaji's defense has been fine; not a problem, but certainly not enough to make up for his disastrous offensive impact. Opponents are leaving him wide open and he can do nothing to make them pay. When he is on the court this season, the Raptors are scoring just 100 points per 100 possessions, which would rank worst in the league by a kilometer.
When Barrett returns to the lineup it seems likely that Agbaji will be pushed back out of the rotation entirely. His only saving grace is that the team doesn't have many options to defend bigger wings, as both Walter and Dick are more slight and no one is accusing Ingram of being fleet of foot. Still, if his offense is this bad, it's not worth it to find a role for him.
As free agency approaches, Agbaji was given a golden opportunity to step back into the rotation and prove himself. Instead, he is scared to shoot, missing when he does, and operating as an anchor to the offense, dragging it down when it should be soaring.
That could spell career doom this summer for the young wing.