5 Things the Toronto Raptors Will STRUGGLE With This Season

With a new, young core, there are inevitably a number of processes that the 2024-25 Toronto Raptors will struggle with.

With the 2024-25 NBA season less than a month away, hope is in the air, and no team has lost a game yet! It’s a great time for previews, projections, and getting our hopes up about rookies or new acquisitions. We recently posted our win projections for the Toronto Raptors this season, and yesterday Rebecca Schapelhouman gave us five things that the team will do well this season.

So amongst the highs of a new season being upon us, let’s take a sharp turn and take a sobering, pessimistic look at what the Toronto Raptors will STRUGGLE with this upcoming season.

Winning Basketball Games

No easing ourselves into this list. Flat out, this team is going to struggle to win games. Now, I know I projected them for 38 wins this season, but that’s still less than half of the 82-game schedule. While that article was full of hope and optimism, it’s time to get real and pessimistic.

As exciting as it’ll be seeing this new core take hold and develop together, they are very new to each other and many are taking up new, larger roles for the first time in their careers. Scottie Barnes is the only member of the projected starting five for the Raptors this season that were here before February 2023. No, Jakob Poeltl’s 2016-2018 Raptors tenure does not count seeing as there was a five year gap before he was re-acquired at the 2023 NBA Trade Deadline.

Immanuel Quicklet, RJ Barrett and Gradey Dick all only became Raptors last season, and during the final stretch of the season, both Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl were out with injuries. Ochai Agbaji and Kelly Olynyk started many games at the four and five, respectively, from March onwards.

Add in new backup guards with the defensive-minded Davion Mitchell and rookie Ja’Kobe Walter, and, oh yeah, Bruce Brown still plays for this team too. The Toronto Raptors have a whole slew of new lineups to put on the floor, and the early season will likely be used to figure out what works. When you throw enough at the wall, something is bound to stick! (Don’t try that at home)

While I’m still optimistic that this team can reach my projection of 38 wins, it’s not like they’ll be blowing their opponents out of the water. Scottie Barnes is the closest this roster has to a star player, making his first All-Star appearance last year. I’d expect second year head coach, Darko Rajakovic, to lean more on Barnes and run the offence through him. Outside of him, everyone is going to have to play their roles, and swing the rock in Darko’s high-tempo, ball movement offence.

Boiling all of that down, this season isn’t going to be about wins and losses. It will be about development, learning and growing as a group. They’ll struggle to win, and the long term goal is that those struggles will lead to learning, improvements and future success.

Defence

One of the biggest reasons the Raptors will struggle to win games this season is going to be their defence. A team once built around lengthy, switchable defenders and one of the best point of attack defenders in Fred VanVleet, the Raptors are in search of a new identity on defence.

Barnes and Poeltl are big, tall, interior presences that will do a solid job defending in the paint. Both should pick up a solid amount of defensive rebounds and blocks, as they can play off of each other with their size and athleticism. The rest of the lineup is what is concerning.

Immanuel Quickley is a small, shifty guard who, with the right coaching, could mold himself into a Fred VanVleet style of defensive point guard. However, he’s nowhere close to that yet. Quickley’s backcourt partner is sophomore Gradey Dick, who wasn’t even in the NBA for his entire rookie season. Gradey seemed to find his footing offensively by the end of last season, but defence takes time to develop, especially against the best, strongest, most physical athletes in the world.

Even RJ Barrett at small forward, who’s an experienced NBA player despite his youth, could struggle with locking down opposing wings. Barrett lined up at the two most of his NBA career, so sliding down to the three now poses a new challenge on the defensive side of the ball. Will Barrett be able to hold his own against the stronger wings in the league full-time? Or will we see a shift back to the two-guard for the former third overall pick?

The Raptors know their backcourt and wing defence is going to be an issue. The team acquired former top-10 pick Davion Mitchell as a backup, defensive minded point guard to relieve Quickley. Mitchell will likely be lower in the rotation, but the Raptors’s famed development staff will look to work with him on the defensive side of the ball to bring out some of that potential that made Sacramento take him so highly in the 2021 NBA Draft.

Rookie Ja’Kobe Walter has also been highly touted for his long wingspan despite standing an inch shorter than RJ Barrett. His rookie season will likely be tough to watch from a defensive perspective, but developing into a 3&D wing is not out of the question with the fresh faced 20-year old.

Size

Going back two years ago, who would’ve thought this would end up on this list? Goodbye Project 6’9”, the Raptors are now a somewhat small team.

As mentioned previously, Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl should serve as solid interior defensive presences, the latter standing at seven feet tall and the former likely a few inches taller than his 6’7” listing. No issues there. Nor are there any issues with backup center Kelly Olynyk, who’s three-point shooting and mobility will likely make him a capable stretch four as well. Sounds good so far, right?

Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends. Gradey Dick, RJ Barrett and Ja’Kobe Walter all stand around 6’5” to 6’6”, which is impressively tall for the average human! However, that’s nearly bang on average across the NBA. But size isn’t always just height, it also means weight, strength and play style.

Outside of Barnes and Poeltl, I don’t see any big, strong players on this team. Even Kelly Olynyk, nearly seven feet tall and 240 pounds, doesn’t really play a strong game. I talked about physically as a detrimental part of this team’s defence, but it could end up impacting all aspects of their game as well. Can they grab offensive rebounds if their opponent is consistently bigger and stronger? Will they be able to finish through contact at a high enough rate to keep defences on their toes?

This team is a drastic change from the Raptors squads we’ve been used to in recent memory, so with it will likely come a new play style to accommodate for that. Only time will tell if Coach Rajakovic is smart enough to scheme his way out of a size disadvantage most nights.

Center Play Outside of Poeltl

I promise this is different from size, but the two points do tie in quite nicely.

Jakob Poeltl missed 32 games in 2023-24. That’s nearly 40% of the season. Last year, the Raptors were tanking to try and retain their first round pick (I wonder who they traded it for) so losing Poeltl was more than acceptable, since they didn’t really have the personnel to replace him. This year, they surely added to their center depth, right?

Well, not really. Kelly Olynyk is still here, but that’s not a comfortable, full-time starting option if Poeltl misses time. They did add Bruno Fernando, who played 45 games for Atlanta last season, but that’s not also a reassuring choice. I suppose Scottie Barnes could fill in as a small-ball center similarly to how Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby have done in the past?

We see the issue here, right? Even with Jakob Poeltl, 48 minutes is a lot of basketball. Clearly, the team is going to run small and Olynyk should play more time at the five than the four. Either way, in a league that is shifting back to a mid-2000s style of game with multiple bigs on the court at a time, the Raptors don’t have very many versatile bigs.

I’ve already outlined why size will be an issue for this team, so now imagine sliding Barnes down to the five and putting out a small ball lineup. Potentially good in short bursts, but also potentially exploitable if they need to go to it too often.

In order for this Raptors team to reach their full potential, Poeltl is going to have to play 30+ minutes a night, every night. That’s a lot for any player, but especially a seven-footer with a recent injury history. If he ends up out of the equation, the center spot in Toronto is going to be a major issue once again.

Injuries

Injuries happen to every team, but it is notable that Toronto’s two top players are both coming off of season-ending injuries.

Neither Scottie Barnes nor Jakob Poeltl should be feeling the effects of those injuries come opening night, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be reaggravated. Even moving outside of Barnes and Poeltl, this team’s depth is severely lacking.

Of their backup guards and wings, Bruce Brown is the most experienced veteran with six seasons (and a championship) under his wing. Outside of him, there’s one rookie, one former top-10 pick who hasn’t been able to crack a playoff rotation, and another recent former top-15 pick only entering his third season. There’s a lot of room for players to take on new roles if someone goes down, but if any of Brown, Agbaji, Mitchell or Walter become long term starters, that’s not a good sign for the Raptors’s success.

On the note of depth rotation players, is Chris Boucher ever going to play his way back into the rotation? He would surely help out with some of the size and backup center issues with this squad. It’s probably not likely, but it’s always a great time when the Slimm Duck gets some minutes.

That feels like enough pessimism for today, so while the 2024-25 Toronto Raptors will inevitably have their struggles, the fun is watching this young, new core grow together to overcome them. Let’s go Raptors!