Three quarters of the 2024-25 Toronto Raptors season is over. The 30th campaign in franchise history has seen the first number retired, a major trade and a lot of losses, especially on the road. With 75% of the games played, it’s a good time to grade the Raptors.
Here’s our report card. The marks are a combination of performance and our pre-season expectations:
HEAD OF THE CLASS
JAKOB POELTL – A
Poeltl has been excellent. He’s turned in one of, if not his best offensive season while still providing stout defence.
Toronto’s defence craters without the big man on the floor and the best way to assure good lottery odds is to not play him down the stretch.
Toronto is 6.3 points per 100 possessions better with Poeltl on the floor than when he’s off, trailing only Chris Boucher this season.
RJ BARRETT – B+
Barrett was superb offensively after being acquired from New York last season and the question was could he keep it up. While the shooting hasn’t quite been at the level it was for Barrett’s first 32 games as a Raptor, it’s still been better from everywhere than in the past and Barrett’s evolution as a playmaking forward has been a success. His usage rate has never been close to this high and Barrett has done a nice job of creating while still getting to the free throw line. Defensively he’s still below average, but his compete level is way up and he’s doing a better job at that end.
CHRIS BOUCHER – B+
As mentioned, Boucher leads all Raptors in on/off splits, he’s been the driving force off the bench in a number of wins and has done everything asked of him. He hasn’t complained when benched and he’s always ready when called upon. He’s known as a consummate professional for a reason.
Boucher worked hard to better understand how he could fit into Darko Rajakovic’s system and it has paid off.
EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS
OCHAI AGBAJI – B-
Agbaji looked bad in his first months as a Raptor. Certainly as poor as he’d played in his first two NBA seasons. But he returned a different player, getting off to a strong start to the season. Even if that play hasn’t quite carried over, Agbaji has overall been one of Toronto’s best two-way players. He’s shot 40% from three, been tasked with some of the toughest defensive assignments, especially when Scottie Barnes is out of the lineup, and has shown that he deserves consideration as a long-term bench piece, though financial considerations could make him expendable.
JAMAL SHEAD – C+
The rookie point guard took the backup role away from Davion Mitchell, who has since been traded and looks like a nice find from the midway point of the second round.
Shead is a great athlete, the fastest player on the team and has a bright future. He’s still a bit erratic and hasn’t quite translated his defensive instincts and ferocity into a lot of success there, but it should come in time. Few expected Shead to be an important rotation piece this early.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
SCOTTIE BARNES – B-
The positives with Barnes: His defence has been top notch. Few players can guard as many different positions as well as Barnes and at times he’s been a monster at that end of the floor.
He’s also taken major strides as the team leader and his turnovers haven’t gone up even with slightly increased usage.
The not so good: His outside shooting has been extremely rough (just 26.9%, a career low, seventh-worst amongst all players with at least 100 three-point attempts and he’s one of only six players with 200 attempts shooting under 30%). Teams aren’t scared of Barnes beyond the arc at all, and it makes it harder for him to score. He also hasn’t been as consistent every night as franchise players tend to be. Sometimes he looks like a superstar, others he just blends in.
IMMANUEL QUICKLEY – B-
Missing so much time has hurt Quickley. Lately he’s been finding a groove, developing the balance needed between being a major scoring threat while also creating for his teammates. He’s an essential part of the offence because he’s one of the NBA’s deadliest pull-up threats from three-point range and because he can get inside.
The major gripe with Quickley is he’s been weak defensively. His long arms should make him a threat to get steals and deflections, but that hasn’t happened often enough. And his slight frame has allowed him to get overpowered too often.
Quickley will need to improve defensively moving forward.
HEADING TO SUMMER SCHOOL
JA’KOBE WALTER – C
Injuries cut into Walter’s crucial summer and early-season learning time, but he’s shown some flashes of two-way potential. He gets after it defensively and right now that area is ahead of his offence. Walter also attacks aggressively and has a nice-looking shot, though like Dick, not enough of them are falling.
Walter doesn’t turn 21 until next September. He needs to get stronger and will do that as he grows into his body. You can expect plenty of minutes for him down the stretch and that will help Walter moving forward.
There’s a good player in there, it’s just going to take time.
JONATHAN MOGBO – C
An under-sized centre in college, Toronto wants Mogbo to be a wing in the NBA. Trouble is this team is so short up front he’s had to spend too much time miscast in the middle so far (65% of his minutes). It would be nice if Mogbo got most of his reps at power forward and even small forward the rest of the season, but if Poeltl plays sparingly it will be hard to make that happen.
Hitting nearly 30% of his three-pointers so far is a nice start for a prospect billed as a “non-shooter” and he’s hit more than 70% from the free throw line too.
Mogbo has been most impressive in stints as a defensive wildcard, capable of creating chaos and bothering opponents. He’s also been strong on the boards and it’s a plus that he can start a fast break himself, the way he did at San Francisco after hauling in rebounds.
He’s still quite raw though and it could be a while before Mogbo is ready to be a high rotation player on a good team.
GRADEY DICK – D+
Billed as the best shooter in his draft, Dick shot 36.5% on three-pointers as a rookie, but there at least were encouraging stretches (40% in January, 49% in February). This year Dick has been consistently mediocre from deep from start to finish, looking little like the shooter he was at Kansas and in high school. Teams are still defending him like he’s a huge threat at least and he moves well off the ball, but at some point it would be nice if shots started falling consistently. The fact that Dick also has nearly as many turnovers (83) as assists (98) is also concerning.
What’s worse is that Dick has been by all objective measures one of the worst defensive players in the NBA this season. Great offensive players (think prime Damian Lillard) can make up for being extremely weak at the other end. Toronto’s front office group are big-time believers in Dick. In Year 3 he’s going to have to start validating some of that faith.
INCOMPLETE
JAMISON BATTLE
ORLANDO ROBINSON
GARRETT TEMPLE
@WolstatSun