A Toronto Raptors team that has been ravaged by injuries is finally getting closer to full health.
Franchise player Scottie Barnes was a full participant in practice on Wednesday and could return to the lineup as soon as Thursday against Minnesota after missing 11 games with a fractured right orbital bone.
Barnes looked “really good” after finally being cleared for contact and a real practice, according to Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic, who said “we’ll see how he responds tomorrow.”
Toronto doesn’t play again after the Wolves game until a four-game trip starts Sunday in Cleveland.
Barnes has averaged 19.3 points, 7.8 rebounds and 6.0 assists in his four appearances, including a win over Philadelphia. The team went 2-9 in his absence, but won on Monday against the Indiana Pacers.
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Barnes, still sporting a red eye from the contact with Nikola Jokic, said he was only in pain for the first week following the injury.
“My eye is pretty good. It’s a little red, but that don’t mean nothing. It feels good,” Barnes said.
Barnes liked what he saw from his teammates while he was out, even if it didn’t translate to many wins.
“We’re some fighters. We’ve got some dogs on our team. We want to win and we’ll just keep, every day, striving to get better,” Barnes said.
“These guys, they’re working their ass off every single day. I’m just ready to get back in there whenever that time is and just work my ass off with ’em, try to get wins.”
RJ Barrett, Jakob Poeltl and Gradey Dick thrived in the absence of Barnes, but nobody seems worried about how things will work once he returns. They don’t see any ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ types of scenarios.
“We all know how to play with each other. We had some reps at it, but we couldn’t get that many due to some injuries,” Barnes said. “But now we all know how to fit in with each other, play with each other, get each other going, and we know what we all like. We’ve been at it for a little while. We’ll get things going with time.”
Rajakovic and veteran Garrett Temple agreed, saying Toronto’s system makes it less of a challenge for a star, high-usage player to fit back in.
“To be honest with you, it should be pretty easy for us because that’s our style of play. We moved the ball quite a bit. We were playing off of each other,” Rajakovic said “If one team decides on a certain night to put more emphasis on Scottie, that should open up more room for RJ, and vice versa, and that should help Gradey with his spacing.”
Another Raptors wing could be back in the mix soon as well. Veteran Bruce Brown, who had knee surgery just before training camp, went through his first full practice on Wednesday and “looked pretty good, now it’s a thing of conditioning with him and where he needs to be,” Rajakovic said.
Barnes had an even sunnier outlook on Brown, saying, “Bruce, he’s moving a little bit. Bruce looking athletic, moving, sliding his feet, closing out. Bruce looking good.”
That makes sense since Brown had said late last season that he had not felt right for a while due to his knee issue.
Rajakovic said rookie Ja’Kobe Walter also went through a full practice — “a lot of positives there, we’ll see how he reacts tomorrow after one day of contact” — and veteran Kelly Olynyk “did a bit, not all.”
The one negative was starting point guard Immanuel Quickley “did nothing with team.”
At least Rajakovic added that he hadn’t heard anything at this point about Quickley possibly needing to undergo surgery.