MIAMI — With about two weeks to go in the Toronto Raptors’ wayward season, as Scottie Barnes worked out with a phalanx of coaches, one staffer remarked innocently enough, “Maybe we got all of the bad stuff out of the way this year.”
You can understand the thought, and Barnes’ broken bone in his hand was only a small part of the notion. The list of negative things that have surrounded the Raptors this year, which ended with a 118-103 loss putting them at 25-58, is substantial.
• The New York Knicks sued them for allegedly stealing proprietary information before the year started, implying new head coach Darko Rajaković’s inexperience meant he had to crib from others, a dispute that is still ongoing.
• The Toronto Star reported earlier in the year that Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment was divided on the issue of bringing a WNBA team to Toronto, indicating discord within the ownership group, which was mentioned again in a late-season Sportsnet story on new company CEO Keith Pelley. What all of this means for the future of team president Masai Ujiri is unknown, but certainly worth monitoring.
• On media day, when asked about Pascal Siakam, Ujiri referred back to his prior comments about last year’s team being selfish. He wasn’t impugning Siakam — at least, not exclusively — but it was a bizarre comment for someone known for his excellent communication skills.
• After a mediocre start in which the Raptors, again, appeared to have no discernible strength, Ujiri traded OG Anunoby and Siakam in era-ending deals separated by 18 days.
• A camera caught Barnes leaving the bench a few moments before a blowout loss to the San Antonio Spurs in February, violating one of the league’s perhaps silly unwritten rules. When asked about whether he had met with the team about the issue the next day, his answer contradicted Rajaković’s.
• Barnes and Jakob Poeltl suffered season-ending hand injuries days apart in early March. RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley went on bereavement leave in quick succession in the same month, truly heart-breaking events.
• Not coincidentally, the Raptors lost 15 games in a row, the second-worst losing streak in franchise history. All the while, the Raptors’ brass and fans could not bank on a forthcoming draft pick as a reward for the pain, as they sent a top-six protected pick to San Antonio for Poeltl last year. The Raptors finished with the sixth-worst record in the league, giving them a 54.2 percent chance of falling in the lottery and losing the pick.
• Centre Jontay Porter left the team because of a gambling investigation that insinuates he left games early to assure the unders on his player props hit. Commissioner Adam Silver has publicly referred to what Porter is being investigated for as “a cardinal sin,” with the possibility of banishment raised.
“Easily the most change, the most things happening at personal levels, injuries,” Garrett Temple said the night the Porter news broke. “This is easily, I guess you could say, the craziest season (for a) team I’ve been a part of in terms of all of these all these parts, all of these things happening, for sure.”
The Raptors are Temple’s 12th team in 14 seasons.
“This season, I feel that it threw everything at us,” Rajaković said, “and everything that it had at me as a first-time head coach in the NBA.
When a season goes haywire like this one, there is often an effort to explain what happened — the inside scoop on the internal dynamics. That isn’t the case with the Raptors this year, because the most dramatic moments, save for the potential squabbling and power moves within the ownership group (hey, the Raptors aren’t the Minnesota Timberwolves), have happened publicly. Instead, much of what happened this year was the result of the sins of seasons past.
The most dramatic interpersonal issue was when Barnes was upset because Anunoby and Siakam, two of the four players who had been his teammates…
This article was originally published by a theathletic.com . Read the Original article here. .