Five reasons to watch the Raptors for the second half of NBA season

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This Raptors season has 30% to go. There could be more, if the current two-game winning streak isn’t a mirage. The first 70% of the regular season wasn’t overly encouraging, with the Raptors going 21-36, good for 12th in the Eastern Conference. Still, if you’ve tuned out after the blockbuster trades, here are a few reasons to check out the early stages of Toronto’s retool:

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1) The development of Scottie Barnes: Barnes is the new face of the franchise and the all-star is definitely a top talent. He is going to be as good as he wants to be. It’s up to Barnes. If he can stay focused, become more consistently dominant (taking over entire games, instead of just one or two quarters) and better dealing with bad officiating, he can become one of the best Raptors ever. Barnes has had some monster games lately, stuffing the stat-sheet, but his three-point shooting hasn’t returned to his early breakout form. If it does, watch out.

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2) There’s a new point guard in town: Immanuel Quickley is now Toronto’s point guard of the present and future. He’s going to get a nice raise this off-season as a restricted free agent, but if he keeps playing like he has since the break (24 points in each of the two games, along with 13 rebounds, eight assists and better than 50% three-point shooting), he’s going to earn himself even more money. Quickley sputtered heading into the break with subpar outings in three of five games, but it’s clear he has significant potential. Quickley is an elite shooter and he expertly shifted to true point guard mode in the second half of Friday’s win over Atlanta after his shooting started drawing extra attention. The progress of Quickley’s partnership with Barnes will be interesting to monitor the rest of the way. The better they co-exist, the more dangerous the Raptors will be moving forward. Quickley ranks 35th amongst qualifying players in three-point accuracy this season and 10th amongst those with at least 300 attempts.

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3) The arrival of Gradey Dick: The 13th pick of the 2023 draft was given a chance early by head coach Darko Rajakovic, but clearly was not ready for the big stage. Adrenaline carried him through the first four games of the year and he hit some shots, but Dick then went 6-for-30 from three-point range in 11 November games, only played 14 minutes — total — in December. Dick returned late in January after a team-imposed special workout program got him more prepared for the NBA and the results have been extremely encouraging. In the 15 games since, Dick has shot 43.1% from three and 50.5% from the field. He’s at 45.8% over his last 12, about the same as Kawhi Leonard, Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving. We’d call that good company. Dick is forcing teams to guard him and he’s opening the floor for teammates because he’s such an outside threat. Dick has shown some toughness, a knack for rebounding and isn’t as lost defensively as you might expect to be as a rookie with one year of NCAA experience. He might even crack the starting lineup down the stretch, though Rajakovic might have found something with the Dick, Kelly Olynyk, Ochai Agbaji, Bruce Brown group with one of Barnes or Quickley.

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4) Is he for real? RJ Barrett was the third pick of his draft and the top high school player for a reason. He’s a gifted player with a lot of potential. He showed some of it while playing for the New York Knicks, but battled inconsistency. It’s easy to forget the Mississauga native is only 23 years old with a lot of untapped upside. Barrett started out on a tear upon joining the team he grew up cheering for. He’s shot 54% as a Raptor, much better than the 42% he averaged in parts of five seasons with the Knicks. He’s shooting the three at close to a career best clip, is above 60% on two-pointers (48% as a Knick) and is also averaging more rebounds and assists than ever before. Rajakovic believes Barrett has a lot of promise as a playmaker. We’ve seen some of that recently. Poor free throw shooting and a sore knee are currently holding Barrett back a bit, but he’s now Toronto’s leading scorer on the season.

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BONUS: Is the pick in or out? Toronto sits seventh from the bottom of the NBA standings. If that holds at the draft lottery, the San Antonio Spurs get Toronto’s first round pick from the Jakob Poeltl trade. Toronto only keeps the pick if it lands 1-5. Memphis (20-37) and Brooklyn (21-34 before Saturday’s game) appear to be on the downswing and it seems highly unlikely the NBA’s bottom five teams are catchable (they are dreadful and already at least five games behind Toronto). Even if Toronto can get to sixth from the bottom, there are no guarantees the pick will be retained since the team with the sixth-best odds of winning the lottery has 30% odds of dropping to seventh and 20.5% of dropping to eighth (and just 8.6% of staying at six and around 9% each of jumping into the top 4).

If you like the drama of watching the standings though, it will be interesting to see if the Raptors prioritize a run to the play-in (something Rajakovic says they will do), or start doing some strange things in the hopes it will help them keep their pick.

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