Spurs put Raptors’ rebuilding plan into perspective

TORONTO — The San Antonio Spurs are 40-77 over two seasons when Victor Wembanyama is in the lineup.

Extrapolated over 82 games, the team with a player widely acknowledged as the most potentially transformative talent to enter the NBA in two decades has played at a 28-win pace over two seasons.

The “Stifle Tower” wasn’t in the lineup night when the Spurs made their one visit to Toronto on Sunday night, and he won’t be on Apr. 13 when the Raptors make their one visit to San Antonio on what will be the final day of the regular season. Wembanyama has been shut down for the rest of the season since he was diagnosed with a blood clot in his shoulder during the All-Star break, though the long-term prognosis seems positive for the budding superstar, thankfully.

Not that having or not having Wembanyama play has been tangibly significant to the Spurs bottom line: they are 13-22 in the games he’s missed over two seasons, which translates to a 30-win pace.

Although, that’s mostly a quirk. The Spurs were so bad last season that prime Michael Jordan wouldn’t have made all that much difference, and this year they’ve made an effort to add some quality veterans – Chris Paul, Harrison Barnes, De’Aaron Fox (also now done for the season) to make sure they had a better supporting cast around him, which has helped keep them above water when he hasn’t played, for the most part.

The more telling number is that the Spurs have been nearly 9.8 points better per 100 possessions when Wembanyama’s on the floor than when he’s not this season, and the difference was 6.9 points/100 last season. His impact is significant.

But the point remains: when it comes to accumulating wins, it takes a lot more than a generational talent who even NBA players describe as an alien — for his combination of height (seven feet, three-and-a-half inches), wingspan (estimated to be eight feet) and skill (he made threes through his first 100 games than Steph Curry and more blocked shots than any player in the past 35 years) — to turn a losing team into a contender.

Something worth keeping in mind even as the Raptors — falling into the jet-lagged black hole so many teams do after coming back from a west coast road trip — were on the wrong end of a 123-89 blowout to the Wembanyama-less Spurs.

Earlier in the day, a lot of NBA eyes were tuned to the Duke-Baylor matchup in the second round of the NCAA tournament, the most prospect-rich contest of March Madness so far.

The Raptors would love it if the 50-or-so losses they’re going to take by season’s end will end up with them winning the draft lottery and using their first overall pick on consensus No.1 Cooper Flagg. Losing to San Antonio dropped Toronto’s record to 24-47 and keeps it with the league’s seventh-worst record, a 7.5 per cent chance of picking first and a 32 per cent chance of picking in the top four.

Flagg had 18 points, nine rebounds and six assists in 29 minutes as Duke advanced to the Sweet 16 with an 89-66 win that was never in doubt. His all-round game is one NBA teams can dream of.

Baylor star VJ Edgecombe — widely expected to go in the top four — had 16 points on six-of-12 shooting. Duke big man Khaman Maluach – a seven-foot-two freshman who looks like the kind of presence who could anchor an NBA defense for a decade or so and might be available outside the top four where the Raptors will most likely pick — had eight points, five rebounds and two blocks in his 23 minutes.

Any of the big names in the draft and doubtless several players with less buzz would help a team like the Raptors, there is no question of that.

But how much of an immediate difference any incoming NBA rookie can make is questionable. As the Spurs have learned in the Wembanyama era, even the greatest prospect in a quarter century can’t rescue a team on his own.

Which is why what the Raptors have been doing for the past two months has been so encouraging — Sunday night proving the exception rather than the rule.  There are plenty of ways to state the case, not the least of which is that even after getting spanked Sunday, Toronto is 16-16 since Jan. 13 after starting the season 8-31.

Their second-half surge may have peaked with their showing against the red-hot Golden State Warriors on Thursday as the Raptors — even while short-handed and giving plenty of minutes to rookies, two-way players and recent signees — pushed the Warriors to the limit. So much that Golden State veteran Draymond Green recognized the Raptors and head coach Darko Rajakovic in his post-game comments.

“(I) think he’s an incredible coach,” said Green, who was bantering with Rajakovic about the Raptors game plan, which called for abandoning the Warriors big man at the three-point line. “He got those guys playing hard as hell. So you just tip your cap to him …”

And while getting beaten so badly by the Spurs on Sunday can’t be brushed off — learning how to compete through the quirks of the schedule is an NBA skill a young team has to master as surely as they do a defensive game plan or scouting report —  Rajakovic is justified in taking some satisfaction in what the Raptors have done the past two months, of which the performance against the Warriors was emblematic.

“We talked about it several times, in terms of playing against really good teams and seeing where we are and what are the areas for us to improve …” Rajakovic said. “We talked about that a lot, for us it’s important to have those games against great teams, there’s so much to learn, how to close the game, how to run offence at the end, how to get a stop when you really need to get a stop. So that was a really beneficial game for us and (I’m) very proud of our guys.”

While it hasn’t been great for their standing in the draft lottery — at their low ebb this season the Raptors had the third-best odds —  it’s been a positive indicator that the Raptors won’t have to troll along the bottom of the standings for long before returning to some version of competitive relevance, at least in the Eastern Conference.

There was less to be proud of on Sunday. Playing their first game back after a 10-day west coast road trip, the Raptors looked lethargic for long stretches, a rarity this season. Toronto was down by 20 points after the first quarter, having surrendered more turnovers (10) than they had made field goals. Things didn’t measurably improve after that as Toronto trailed 62-40 at the half and fell behind by as much as 32 to start the fourth.

But those kinds of efforts have been few and far between, and almost always can be attributable to combinations of injury, schedule, fatigue or illness. The progress of the Raptors’ five-member rookie class has been encouraging, namely Jamal Shead on Sunday who had a career-high 17 points and six assists starting in place of Immanuel Quickley, who was resting along with Jakob Poeltl. Scottie Barnes continues to make strides in his fourth season, he finished with 22 points, six assists and six rebounds, though his six turnovers gave his line some unfortunate symmetry. And under Rajakovic the Raptors have almost uniformly played hard and cohesively this season.

It’s enough evidence to be optimistic that with the return addition of Brandon Ingram (who is progressing through his rehab from an ankle injury, but is still not close to returning) and possibly one of the big names in the NCAA tournament added to the roster, the Raptors tour through NBA purgatory might be short-lived.

But as the Spurs and Wembanyama have demonstrated over the past two seasons, one rookie — even a prospect as great as the Spurs star is or what Flagg projects to be — isn’t going to turn around an NBA team on his own.

The good news is the Raptors might not need as much turning around as previously thought.

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