Pinning down what the Toronto Raptors will be in the second half is a fool’s errand

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A four-game sample isn’t necessarily the best measure of what a team is, but when it’s the most recent four it is, at the very least, an indication of which way things could be headed.

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On that basis the Raptors head into their second half of the season starting tonight in Dallas in pretty decent, if not all together uncertain, shape.

This team has proven that when healthy, and sometimes even when not, they can compete with the best in the league.

The win over Milwaukee last Saturday was proof of that while the night before when they lost in Detroit showed the Raptors the other end of their spectrum.

Even at the halfway point, the gap between the Raptors best and their worst remains extremely, well, gaping.

Fred VanVleet, the man leading the Raptors charge to consistently good performances admitted after that win in Milwaukee the team still has to get better.

“I think it shows our potential,” he said of what was probably the team’s most impressive win of the year. “We’re one of those teams that I feel can compete with anybody when we’re at our best. When we’re not, we’re pretty average. The challenge is to be consistent and raise the floor and let your bad nights be better than what our bad nights have been. With a young team, I think the weather is a little bit more unpredictable. It’s been up and down.”

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In the following effort in Miami, the Raptors gave an upper echelon team in the East everything it could handle before succumbing to their hosts in a 104-99 loss.

It was very similar to a game a week earlier against Western Conference powers Phoenix Suns who were life and death to get out of Toronto with a win. It was a result, despite the loss, that left the locals and their tuned-in fan base feeling almost giddy about the way the Raptors played.

In truth, even with half the season gone, no one can say with much certainty what is in store for this team in the second half.

They have a solid core of three veterans in VanVleet, OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam who are the foundation of the club.

The future foundation, or at the very least the fourth member of that core, appears to be here as well in the form of Scottie Barnes who, as a rookie, has joined that trio and looked very comfortable with them.

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Barnes, though, for all his athleticism and his well-above-average passing skills, is still learning the league, learning what it takes to play an 82-game schedule and what it means to be a professional.

You won’t hear a single complaint about the progress he has made to this point, that’s how far ahead of the curve he is. That said, he’s still learning the things VanVleet and Siakam and Anunoby have already figured out that has allowed them to develop a routine that allows them to be the consistent producers they are.

Barnes will get there and perhaps even surpass all three, but right now he’s still playing catch up.

Through 41 games if Barnes’ rapid development isn’t the biggest surprise of the year, then it has to be what the team is getting from Gary Trent Jr.

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The young shooting guard arrived from Portland in the Norm Powell trade as a guy who could create for himself and score when his team needed a bucket. He continues to be that player, but his buy in to the defensive mindset and defence-first mentality that Nurse demands of every player on his roster has been nothing short of eye-opening.

Along with being that guy who can bail out the Raptors offence when things get stuck and more than hold his own with the other big three when everyone is firing on all cylinders, Trent Jr. has been a defensive plus turning teams over and piling up steals and deflections or simply holding his own defensively alongside the big three who all prioritize defence and take pride in making it hard on the opposition.

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That defensive focus and improvement from even a year ago has made Trent Jr. impossible to take out of that starting five, something many of us initially thought would have to happen to address the mismatches at the centre position when the Raptors start small.

Trent Jr.’s defence had made that conversation a non-starter to this point.

The most obvious and predictable need for improvement comes after you go seven or eight deep on this team.

In the 6-7-8 range, Chris Boucher is finding his niche of late while Khem Birch has struggled to remain in the lineup due to injury, but when he has been in, he has been solid. Precious Achiuwa is showing signs of being another plus-defender but he remains very much on the raw side.

That their depth gets questioned should not be a surprise for a team that only returned eight players from a year ago. The bottom portion of the roster isn’t flush with experienced vets but rather young prospects looking to develop into a group that can maintain a lead and on occasion add to it when the starters need a blow.

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What it means for the Raptors over this final 41 games is likely a heavy reliance on those top eight guys and the hope that those plaerys can maintain health so there isn’t the need to reach further.

Whether that’s realistic with the pandemic still very much a factor in all of our day-to-day lives remains to be seen.

TIPOFF

Raps at Mavs
Tonight, 8:30 p.m., SNET

SCOUTING REPORT

Don’t look now, but the Mavs are a top five team in the Western Conference under Jason Kidd. Kidd has this team playing lockdown defence and it’s a big reason the team is 8-1 in January. The Mavs are allowing opponents a league least 97.7 points per 100 possessions. With that kind of defence and Luka Doncic doing what he does offensively — he’s coming off another triple double in a win over Oklahoma City on Sunday — the Mavericks are making a good push out West. Dallas has won nine of it’s past 10 home games as well so the Raptors are in for a fight.

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MARQUEE MATCHUP

We seem to keep coming back to Anunoby for these matchups but that’s just the life of always taking on the opposing team’s top scorer. Doncic is less than an assist shy of averaging a triple double in January when he’s putting up 21.8 points, 10.1 rebounds and 9.6 assists nightly. Anunoby did not fare too well in the first and only other meeting this year when Doncic had 27, 12 assists and nine rebounds in an early-season win over Toronto in Toronto.

DID YOU KNOW?

Dwight Powell and Tim Hardaway were starting for the Mavs back then, but both come off the bench now in favour of Max Kleiber (who is questionable for the game with left knee soreness) and Jalen Brunson … Reggie Bullock is also questionable for this game.