There are two factions of Toronto Raptors fans right now: Those who loved Tuesday night’s win at Orlando on Ja’Kobe Walter’s absurd three-pointer with 0.5 seconds remaining and those that hated the outcome because of how it impacts the standings.
Well, both sides need to get used to what played out because similar things are going to continue to happen.
OK, we don’t expect Walter to hit another one of those step-back miracles, but this Raptors team is going to win a good chunk of the remaining 20 games — even if that’s not what the front office, or Raptors Tank Nation wants.
Toronto did everything possible to increase its odds of losing Tuesday. Immanuel Quickley was only given just over two minutes of playing time in the final quarter, while Jakob Poeltl and Scottie Barnes had around four apiece. Canadian AJ Lawson, who has only 64 NBA games over three seasons, played the full quarter (and had a great game, we might add).
The Raptors will continue to rest Poeltl, keep Quickley’s workload under control and maybe even cut down on star player Barnes’ time, too.
The team’s best offensive player, Brandon Ingram, recently acquired from New Orleans, might only play in the final two weeks or so of the season — if at all — as he and the team patiently rehab his ankle injury.
Even so, it’s going to be awfully tough for the Raptors to finish the year with the league’s fifth- or sixth-worst record, gaining them better odds in the draft lottery.
To recap: Duke’s Cooper Flagg is seen as a generational player at the top of this coming draft. Rutgers stars Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey also are regarded as potential all-stars who would go first in many other drafts (ones without a Flagg or Victor Wembanyama at the top), and Baylor’s V.J. Edgecombe is a spectacular athlete who is heating up as a shooter, giving vibes similar to Anthony Edwards, Vince Carter and Jason Richardson.
There are other interesting prospects behind that foursome, but many teams will be jockeying hard for a better chance at landing one of those four.
Nobody is catching Washington (who Toronto hosts twice in the next week) or Charlotte or Utah (Friday’s opponent) at the bottom. They each will have 52.1% odds of drafting in the Top 4 and 14% odds of winning the right to draft Flagg first.
Those teams have far less talent than the Raptors and the Jazz even improves its odds nightly by often holding standout young centre Walker Kessler out in a bit of a shameless tanking move that the league looks the other way on.
New Orleans, fourth-worst right now, is three games behind the Raptors and, though loaded with some talent, doesn’t have as much as Toronto, either.
To make things worse for the Raptors, Philadelphia and Brooklyn are both only 1.5 games up on Toronto right now. Brooklyn overachieved early under former Canadian national team head coach Jordi Fernandez, but badly wants in on the Flagg and Co. sweepstakes — the franchise even traded a boatload of its own picks and pick-swap options last summer to regain control of its 2025 and 2026 first-rounders back from Houston, clearly planning to be as bad as possible this year and next. So, the Nets likely will do everything legally possible to be in that mix.
Meanwhile, Philadelphia — which. along with Phoenix, are the NBA’s biggest disappointments this season — has shut down former MVP Joel Embiid and knows winning even one playoff round will be a tall order.
The team owes Oklahoma City its first-round pick unless the pick lands in the Top 6. Meaning you can expect the Sixers to now do everything possible to keep sinking like a stone, even if the odds are better that Oklahoma City will come away with the 7-10 pick next June than the Sixers move up and keep it.
Just last year, the Raptors were in a similar situation, needing to stay in the Top 7 to keep their pick. Toronto dropped to eighth at the lottery and the pick went to San Antonio to complete the Poeltl trade (the Spurs moved it again to Minnesota).
The Raptors came out OK despite losing the pick, nabbing Walter at 19, along with Jonathan Mogbo and Jamal Shead later in the draft, plus prospect Ulrich Chomche and undrafted free agent Jamison Battle.
Right now, Toronto stands fifth-worst in the standings, with a 42.1% shot of drafting in the Top 4. Dropping to sixth- or seventh-worst means 34.8% or 34.5% odds, eighth would be 26.3% and ninth 20.3%.
Toronto probably can’t fall further than that, with Chicago four wins ahead and San Antonio at seven.
Our guess is Toronto ends up seventh-worst. New Orleans won the Zion Williamson lottery from that spot in 2019 and Toronto jumped from 7 to 4 in 2021, ending up with Barnes instead of others high on the team’s board like Franz Wagner and Jonathan Kuminga.
Atlanta won last year’s lottery with just 11.7% odds of moving into the Top 4 (and 2.5% of picking first) and the team with the worst record hasn’t won the lottery since the system was adjusted several years ago, but a team with 14% odds of winning (ie. a bottom 3 record) has selected first in each draft from 2020-23.
But past results don’t mean anything where lottery probability is concerned (just because Detroit dropped to fifth three years in a row doesn’t mean something like that will happen again. Each coin flip, or in this case lottery draw, is an independent event).
The worse Toronto finishes, the better its chances at Flagg or one of the other top prospects. But given the approach of the other teams mentioned and the fact the Raptors have by far the easiest remaining schedule of anybody.
The 20 teams Toronto still has to play have a combined winning percentage of only .358, per Tankathon.com, nobody else faces opponents with a combined winning percentage under .436.
That means that even if the starters get rested for quarters or full games, Toronto still is too good to fail compared to its opponents.
@WolstatSun