Raptors must take advantage of dates with Wizards, Pistons this week

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As poorly as this season has gone so far for the Toronto Raptors, give it another month and things might be all but over for the struggling team.

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Toronto’s third three-game losing streak of the season (they’ve only won as many as two straight twice) has made Wednesday’s holiday break-ending tilt in Washington against the awful Wizards a bit of a must-win. Blowing a huge lead at home against a bad Utah Jazz team last Saturday left the Raptors at 11-18, the worst record by a Raptors team at this stage of a season since 2012-13.

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While this team gets two winnable games out of its next three in Washington and nearly historically bad Detroit, there’s a date with Boston in between (all the games are on the road) and after a home meeting with Cleveland, it will be time to hit the road for a grueling six-game trip that starts in Memphis, ends in Utah and tours California in between. Then it’s Boston again, contending Miami, resurgent Chicago and a bunch of other good teams.

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There aren’t many light touches heading all the way into February. It’s quite possible the team will be somewhere around 20 games below .500 when the NBA’s trade deadline pops up on Feb. 8.

Of course, they might surprise and figure out how to score efficiently and defend, both major issues in recent weeks, but it’s hard to see these Raptors becoming any kind of threat should they even make the play-in and win a game or two to get into the playoffs.

So far, Toronto is winless within its own division and would likely have to face Boston or Philadelphia in a post-season series. Or maybe Milwaukee. And while Toronto hammered the Bucks early in the Damian Lillard Era, things have changed and Milwaukee has looked much better since switching up its defence after that humiliation.

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Toronto is just 4-12 against opponents .500 or above, and a dismal 3-9 away from home, yet management has not made any moves and new head coach Darko Rajakovic has been resistant to tinker with his starting lineup (though he’s recently begun getting creative with his rotations and bench looks). But is it all just trying to put lipstick on a pig, or is this a bunch of talented players who simply haven’t fit and haven’t lived up to their potential together? Management seems to believe it’s the latter. Why else has nothing been done to try to come up with a more workable roster? But more likely it’s the former.

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These Raptors, while individually impressive, aren’t going to excel together. Not unless more shooting can magically get added, as well as more NBA-caliber guards. It doesn’t help that two roster spots have been wasted on two veterans (Thaddeus Young and Garrett Temple) who never play and fellow vet, Otto Porter Jr., who still can play and help, cannot get healthy enough to be relied upon. Free agent signing Jalen McDaniels seemed like a decent bet on the cheap, but showed little and is now out of Rajakovic’s rotation. Rookie Gradey Dick is too young, too slight, too overmatched to contribute yet and sophomore big man Christian Koloko has battled a respiratory issue that hasn’t allowed him to play.

The team reconvened in Washington on Boxing Day eager to get back on track. The schedule maker provided one favour before making life extremely difficult for them in putting Washington and Detroit on the docket this week. It’s a chance to build some positive momentum before the challenges mount.

But the Utah debacle showed that this team is capable of playing down to anyone. If it happens again surely changes will result.

@WolstatSun

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