I just watched Bill Simmons and company slag the raptors for seven minutes. Saying they will be hard under 29 games this season.
https://youtu.be/G2BQ4okHiNs?si=X-grsc5K8dI-NlIH
I think they will surprise some people this year and all least compete for the play in.
Reasons for optimism:
1) A full year of Darko knowing who his team is and running plays for Scottie as the number one instead of having a confusion over Pascal and OG wanting it
2) Scottie locked in as the leader and face. He's a hard worker and really works on his game all year.
3) The vibes look great, as a long time Raptors fan I have to say the last couple of years the vibes have been way off. This year the team looks like they like playing with each other and know what each other's skills are.
by jagaimax
27 Comments
It’s not about the Raptors wins.
It’s about the contenders wins, and they need to allocate those losses somewhere.
I know a few things.
1) I will watch every game this season.
2) The Raptors won’t win 30 games. Take the under.
As long as the young players develop that’s all I care about this year
I don’t think they’ll be 29 games under .500.
I’m predicting something closer to a 32-50 record. So, 18 games under .500.
Why are you listening to that dumbass
I’m thinking we’ll go over. Somewhere like 32-36 wins?
This might sound nuts, but I predict 40-42. Good enough for play-in.
I’d almost hate to say it out loud, especially as someone who’s been down on the Raps lately, but I think they’ll compete 💪💪 and turn some heads doing it 🙂
I’m on the over. Last year we got crushed with injuries and lack of time together. But when they did okay together, BbQ Yak were really good. I think we have a solid starting 5 and a decent bench that should be about to win 33-ish games at the worst healthy, but I could see closer to 40 wins.
The problem the Raptors have is that they are paper thin from a rotation perspective.
I think they probably have around the 12-18th best starting rotation and somewhere around the 24-30th bench in the NBA. If everyone can stay healthy, they could be the 8th best team in the East I think.
Injuries always happen and they have such a thin bench that any injuries will mean that they will have G-league quality players in their rotation with any injury.
The drop off in quality of losing a starter to injury is just acute with them that it will cost them games.
So a perfectly healthy Raptors team I think could win 40 games; but with woefully thin roster I think 28-32 wins is where they will be.
If the Raptors had good health and played to win through the whole season, they absolutely win more than 29. They might win more than 39.
But the roster is thin. If Scottie’s out, they’re in trouble. If Poeltl’s out, they’re in trouble. If Quickley’s out, they’re in trouble. This is different from most teams on the Raptors’ tier, who might have one good player that they can’t afford to miss, but have decent depth elsewhere. I think injuries keep the Raptors on a mid-30s pace through the pre-trade-deadline period, and if they’re in that spot, like last year they pull the plug and position themselves for a high draft pick.
The Raptors have a worst roster they have 4 rookies on the roster. Dick has played 60 games in his career, 2 years removed ftom high school. There is no way they win 30. I’d bet my house on it. Plus, 2/5th of the starting five is already injured before game 1! Scottie is not 100% to start the year either. We will be tanking by US Thanksgiving. Book it.
If they can stay healthy and see growth from Gradey and some other young guys then this team can surprise. I would see it as more likely next season that they get near 40 wins. If any starter can’t put up minutes the team is not deep enough to gain momentum.
they said “is it time for an investor call on masai ujiri?” lmao
We might win 1 game in the first 10 games of the season
So much of it depends on whether they trade vets away at the deadline and start shutting down guys or not
You’re like the BlueJays fans thinking the roster as it stands will break .500 next season.
You get points for always seeing the positive, but you then lose those points- and then some- for being completely and utterly wrong.
They’re in a rebuild, and this is Year 1- that’s AT LEAST 3 years of sucking.
should easily but if we don’t than the tough questions need to be asked
Just salty the Raptors beat the full strength Celtics the night before. I’d take the over on 29.
They are just selling the betting odds which were set at 29.5.
Do they have a top 20 starting lineup? The only starting lineups we are definitely better than are the Wizards, Blazers, Pisstons, Nets, and the Bulls. We’re in the same tier as Charlotte and the Jazz. Even worse, our depth is terrible. Arguably worse than some of those teams. Depth is very determinate of wins. One of our starters goes out it becomes really rough fast.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Our last 20 games include 3 games against Washington, 2 games against Portland, 2 games against the Nets, a game against Detroit, 2 games against Charlotte, and a game against Chicago. Over half of those games are against the stinkiest teams when they are at their most tanking. On the other hand, those games being back loaded means our win percentage could be so bad by the trade deadline that we might’ve thrown in the towel.
Slight over if everyone is healthy. Maybe 33-35 wins at best. This team has major flaws which includes depth and a coach who hasn’t shown he can get this team to play D.
Watched the clip, and I remember why you should only listen to these guys if you’re a Celtics fan.
Personally I have the Raptors under, because I don’t think the starters play 82 games each, and I don’t think the bench is good enough yet to put together many wins if any of them go down for more than a couple games. Plus, I don’t think the head office is pushing at all for wins this season. But when the starters are healthy, they are going to be fun, and get some wins.
Rusillo in particular managed to insult Quickley, Barrett, Poeltl and Ujiri, and talked about Bruce Brown’s contract into next year, so that speaks a lot to his analysis. So I’m personally hoping Quickley in particular makes him look like the moron he is. And not a single one of these clowns even mentioned the Davion Mitchell fleecing. Look elsewhere for in-depth analysis of any non-Boston team.
Simmons along with the entire US sports media habitually underestimate Toronto. 34-36 wins incoming.
For me the issue is defensively, we’re going to get run over. I hope I’m wrong.
We’ll all be watching!
Took the under solely because of the schedule we have to start the year. We’re gonna get hit pretty early that we’re not there yet with the top teams and will start sitting guys in March/April.
Even if we’re on pace to go over 29 wins 60 games in, there’s no way Masai doesn’t sit guys for any minor injuries to get better draft odds.
This is one of the reasons Jalen Rose and Bill were great on their season previews back in the Grantland days. Jalen isn’t an echo chamber like House and RR can be.
Example:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHgYPnOorp_90kGw8BuSfbLqnOJKOOwBB&si=laNovCSMbicrRol1
As it stands, there isn’t enough talent and we haven’t seen consistent enough discipline for this to be a good team.
But perhaps with a full year of coaching and entire summer, the team can surprise us. We’ve seen countless times that the difference between a bad team and a good one (not championship level) is not that large. It’s a game of possessions. Be consistent enough and you will win enough games. This is how teams like the Casey raptors and Budenholzer hawks won games. Their bench often won their minutes and they were fairly disciplined (ie limited turnovers, generally fewer mistakes).