The Raptors Are Defying The Odds…

The Raptors Are Defying The Odds…

The Eastern Conference is extremely unpredictable. I guess basketball is in general. Here’s the top of it, right? We already made a video about the Pistons as they continue to win basketball games. I’ve given so much love to the Miami Heat. Just on yesterday’s podcast, I talked about Jame Hawkins being six man of the year and Eric Spolster being a candidate for coach of the year. But the team squished between both of them is a team I have not talked a lot about this season and I want to do it now. The Toronto Raptors have won nine of their last 10 games and are currently on an eightgame win streak. This video is brought to you by Bombas. Babas is a comfort focused premium basics brand with a mission to help people in need. The company was launched back in 2013 when they found out that at homeless shelters the thing that people ask for the most is just socks. So they made it their mission to try to help solve that problem. 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Thank you again to Bombas for sponsoring another video. And don’t blink, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, it is early in the season. But as of today, the Toronto Raptors are one of the few teams, one of the three teams in basketball with a top five offense and a top five defense. Are you kidding me? Now, my opinion about this Toronto Raptor team over the offseason has gone up and down and up and down. I remember at the beginning of the offseason, uh, when we got to free agency, I was like, man, this Toronto Raptors team is really expensive for a team that probably won’t be as good. And as I continue to walk through the film, um, and think about the team a little bit more, I ended up on September 18th, 2025 doing an episode of Small Ball with Kenny Beum where I was buying and selling your NBA opinions. And one thing I bought was from S. Baron Henny. Sorry, S if I mispronounced your name. I feel like I always do. Oh, he gave me three NBA opinions. One, the Celtics will end up with the top pick. Don’t look like that’s gonna be the case. Um, but the second was the Toronto Raptors will be a good basketball team. Somewhat controversial. And in that episode, I kind of talked about why, again, I was buying that they were going to be good, but also played the part that says, hey, the the Raptor skepticism, I think at some points are are really warranted, right? And I went through a bunch of different questions I had about this team. Even though I was I was buying. We did the overunder podcast. I said the Toronto Raptors at I think it was 39 and a half. They’re at the bare minimum of 500 team. And right now through the first month, they’re a lot better than that 500. And I think it’s so interesting because again, I’m looking through my notes from this episode of the podcast that all of the questions that I had about the Toronto Raptors, again, they haven’t all been answered, but I have a genuine idea about that question, right? Because you got to remember this Toronto Raptors team had not played together at all. Brandon Ingram gets traded for. He only plays what 18 games last season. They give him this big old contract and all, but we hadn’t seen how he would fit alongside Scotty. We hadn’t seen how they fit alongside these other guys that they’ve dedicated a lot of time and money to. And I broke it down in the sense that pretty much everybody outside of Yakapurle, and I guess I probably should have included Yaka Purdle, had something to prove, right? And that was the reason of skepticism from Scotty Barnes to RJ Barrett to Brandon Ingram to Manu Quickley who I had is one of the most intriguing players for the entire season and lastly with coach Dark Rayakovich. And I kind of want to read you through some of the questions that I was posing to myself and to the audience about the Toronto Raptors before the season started and I’ll give you whether or not they answered that question or not. You know, the first person we’ll talk about is the head of the snake, Mr. Scotty Barnes. One of my biggest questions was whether or not Scotty Barnes is going to dive into being a three-point shooter. And if he was, what would that percentage in volume look like? Because last year there were stretches in December um where he took a ton and by the end of the season he basically wasn’t taking them at all. And through the first month of the season, right now we can say he’s attempting three a game and he’s shooting 40% on those three. Most of them being completely wide open. But who cares if you’re going to shoot 40% on those? Again, not being his bread and butter, that is nothing but found money. Can he become the elite transition finisher we project him to be? Now, the reason this was here is because last year there was a stat, and I I didn’t I guess I still don’t have this in my notes, this part, but he was one of the bottom uh players when it came to playing transition basketball, finishing at the rim through transition. That doesn’t make sense. We know Scotty Barnes is super athletic. We know he likes to get on the break. We know that the Raptors part of their identity was getting on that break. Will Scotty Barnes be able to turn himself to an elite finisher? I I said that he had uh basically every tool imaginable outside of somebody like Giannis to be one of the best finishers in transition. And according to Synergy so far through the first month of the season, he’s in the 80th percentile when it comes to transition finishing. That’s that’s really good compared to last season, 1.3 points per possession uh when it comes to transition. While in the previous season, I was a bit wishy-washy with Synergy because I don’t know what part of Synergy I can show and what I can’t. Matter of fact, I’ll show it. So, here’s Scotty Barnes. Last season he was averaging one point per possession when it comes to transition basketball. That puts him in like the 28th percentile which is below average. And then if we go to this season it’s up to 1.3 80th percentile which is very good. You take that that’s a huge jump. Also something that plays a little bit of part about 20% of his possession 21% I guess last season came from um transition while this year it’s about 23. So up about two and a half% but um pretty good. The next question I have for Scotty Barnes, will Brandon Ingram being there take some pressure off of him offensively and allow him to be more efficient? And when I talked about it, I wasn’t talking about efficiency in the sense of uh uh percentage-wise, but just like some of the shots that he was taking last season didn’t feel like efficient looks, but it was something he had to do. And I do feel like, again, not looking at the numbers and all, I do feel like Scotty Barnes is settling a lot less this season. I guess I could get into the numbers. Uh 38% of his shots this season are at the rim while last year was only 30. and a lot of those the the other 70% ended up being mid-range jump shots and again he’s getting to the basket a lot more. So Brandon Ingram has allowed that to be the case for him. And the last thing I have for Scotty Barnes is when will everybody being healthy allow him to stop taking and settling for mid-rangers. The it’s still out. The verdict is still out on that. He is shooting 50% on those long mid-rangers. So I guess it’s a win there. But he is still taking a good amount of them. But overall Scotty Barnes has been I said this on small ball a little while ago. There are certain times your stretches, two to three minute stretches, sometimes an entire game where you watch Scotty Barnes be like, “Oh my god, that looks like a top 10 player.” And one thing about Scotty, the overall counter stats may not translate to him looking like that. But I promise you, man, the encore impact is superior. So, he’s been everything I think Raptors fans could have imagined this part of his career, and he looks like a complete stud. And if we were doing all stars right now, he’d objectively be an all-star. The next one, I’ll pass on the R.J. Bear thing. R.J. is going through injury right I think they’re going to get a second opinion, but I mostly question his um his passing leak that he showed us last season. How would that be utilized? We still don’t have enough sample size to really know, but I’ll go to Brandon Ingram because he is the guy that didn’t have any games played with this team. The first question I had was, will he fit into what we know about Darko system? Now, we didn’t know a lot about who Darko was as an NBA coach because he had been having teams that weren’t really built for whatever. But one thing we did know is that they were a team that passed the ball a lot. Last year, they were sixth in total passes per game. They were seventh in assists per game and second in potential assists. And if you look at what’s going on now, all those numbers have dropped off a little bit. And I don’t think it’s for the detriment of the team necessarily. Sometimes you see a team end up being a really good passing team as far as how many passs they’re getting or how many potential assists they’re generating. And some of that is because they don’t have an offensive guy that can really create for themselves. And Scotty Barnes immediately comes into this team and able to do that. Yesterday they had a game where a lot of people really struggled to shoot the ball and one guy that they could really count on was Brandon Ingram who I think ended up with 37 points. So though it does change the dynamic of how many passes or what the passes look like, I think Brandon Ingram has showcased to them why you trade for him and why you extend him. They needed somebody in the half court that can get a bucket. And my last question for Brandon Ingram, again, all these questions are before we’ve seen this product, was if you’re playing into Brandon Ingram strengths, does that mean more pick and roll with him as the ball handler? Actually, his I’m looking at the numbers right here. His pick and roll numbers are down significantly as far as how many pick and rolls he’s getting per game or percentage of his touches being pick and roll. Um, the efficiency is also down there, but again, I don’t I don’t know if we’re still very early on into things. I I say all this to say Brandon Ingram has been exactly what they could have asked for. But the biggest question about them all was whether or not Darko Rayakovic was an NBA level coach. And through the first week and some change of the season, I it looked like no. They started off one one and four if I’m not mistaken. And some of the I’m going to vividly remember their game against the Houston Rockets where there were just many times where they decide to throw two at the ball handler and it felt like they weren’t playing together. It was like the the whoever was sending the two, the other three guys had no idea was happening. They were sending two right across half court and allowing that person to get the ball up and now the opposing team is playing four versus three. It just looked really bad. But since then they’ve been able to buy in completely and before the season started Darko did tell us that they were a defensive oriented team and I just didn’t see that through the first couple weeks and now you see it. Last night is the perfect example. The Cavs on the second IVA back toback the the the Raptors on the second IA back to back. It’s so easy for them to phone it in and do very traditional coverages and not really like hone in on a single thing. And I saw a lot of Cavs fans and my mentor saying, “Hey man, the Raptors just showed us a playoff defense and we had no idea what to do.” It was like one of the few games where Donovan Mitchell went into the fourth quarter and like, “Man, Donovan Mitchell hasn’t really put his print onto this game just yet.” Now granted, there wasn’t a lot of people alongside Donovan Mitchell to to really alleviate some of that that pressure that the Raptors were able to to throw at him, but who cares? That’s from the Raptors perspective. Who cares? We don’t care. We just want the ball out of Donald Mitchell’s hands and we’re going to do everything in our power to do that and secure this win. And they did. Vibes are high. Brandon Hingham talking about how he’s happy to finally be on the team or everybody loves basketball. I’m like, oh, who could he possibly be talking about back in New Orleans who didn’t love basketball? I don’t know. I just I don’t know. There’s just a lot to be to like about this team from even in the bench unit. Sandro Mamush Philly who’s been coming in and looked like one of the best value gets a free agency. I’ve always been a Jamal Shed head. I love him. He’s the first bench player to put up 100 assists. I think I read this morning. So, he’s been doing his thing. But Emanuel Quickley since we got the Yakapurle back. Emanuel Quickley has been pretty good. I’m reading this here from the Raptors Republic. Shout out to the team over there. Emanuel Quickley settles things down as he hopes as he stops on the hopes as he stops on the dime on the drive hitting a mid-range pullup. He’s quietly shooting the beefy 51% on drives. 51% complimented by a monstrous and career best 74% at the rim, albeit on a minuscule volume. So, you know, there was an early time in the season where I just wasn’t really in love with the Emanuel Quickley game. And I do think that having Yaka Purle in that lineup does benefit him. I still don’t know what the ceiling of this team is. Just like I I feel that way about all of these surgeon teams right now that we have a smaller sample size with. But I can say today I’m really enjoying some things. They’re their schedule coming up is the Pacers tomorrow, then the Hornets. Then we get down to some we get to some teams now. We got the Knicks. The Blazers are a competing hard fought team every single night. The Lakers, the Hornets, this when does the tough super tough stretch of their schedule start or will they not have one of those? because sometimes even though again you’re playing all all of the teams sometimes it’s never like here’s six straight playoff teams and as I’m looking at it man um I don’t know if they’re going to have one of them stretches man let me let me just go through this one more again one more again I guess the NBA right so anybody can get you on any given night but oh it might be this little run here you got Celtics then Nets okay then you got the Heat then you got the Wizards okay let’s Start off here. Warriors, Magic, Nuggets, Hawks, Hawks. That’s That’s a nice little stretch. Depending on what the health is for the 76ers, this back toback could be interesting. But I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know if their brand of basketball sustainable enough for them to be top 10 in off I’m sorry, top five. I know it’s not sustainable enough to be top five in offense or top 10 in top five in defense, too. Something does scare me ultimately about the super high transition teams when it comes to, you know, thinking super big picture about the ceiling of teams. Um, we’ll see if the Toronto Raptors kind of fit into that. But overall, it’s been a huge fun watch. Scotty Barnes is a star. Brandon Ingram looks good. Um, Messiah, Messiah, man, you deserve you deserve something, brother. You deserve something. People didn’t see the vision and somehow you put it together with this team is good, dog. Before we get out of here, I want to let you know that the Enjoy basketball brand just had another drop. I’ve been wearing this hat. This the Enjoy um Enjoy Run Club hat. We got hoodies, we got shirts, we got hats. This is a different take on what a run club is. Y’all know run clubs is usually like the people that run the marathons and stuff. No, that ain’t us. We get different kind of runs, which is at the court. Five on five runs, three on three runs. It’s some of our best work as always. I’m just recognizing I’m enjoyed out, but hell, it’s my brand. Uh so I’ll put the link in description. Be sure to cop. It is extremely extremely limited. Uh always appreciate your support and I will see y’all

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