Tank or not to tank? Raptors are in purgatory when it comes to losing for draft lottery

Depending on which group of Raptors fan you belong to, you either awoke to or were tucked in by a rare bit of positive news from this season on Monday. Early on Tampa time and just before deadline for Japanese media, the Raptors announced the signing of Yuta Watanabe to a standard NBA contract. The deal is a celebration of developmental success and a spotlight shining on the roadblock in the discussion around “tanking.”

Before we unpack the T-word, some info on Watanabe’s deal: As I reported Monday morning, the contract is for two years, keeping him in the mix through the end of the 2021-22 season, at which point he’d be an unrestricted free agent. Watanabe will now earn the prorated NBA minimum salary for his service time for the remainder of the year, which amounts to about a $233,000 raise over what he would have earned if he remained on a two-way contract. The NBA removed restrictions on two-way playing time this year, so there’s no real change to Watanabe’s playing status. Instead, the Raptors reward him for a strong season to date, and the extra cash-in-hand functions as the price to get a second year on the deal.

Watanabe’s 2021-22 contract, worth $1.76 million, is completely non-guaranteed. He will have $375,000 guaranteed if he remains on the roster three days after the to-be-determined offseason moratorium date, and his deal will be completely guaranteed if he makes the team out of training camp. It’s fairly standard developmental play: a reward now for the work to date, summer in the team’s developmental system and an inside track on a roster spot for next year.

For the 26-year-old, who barely played over his first two pro seasons on a two-way deal, it’s the more complete realization of his dream. There are no caveats to his status as an NBA player now (or to his NBA salary). He’s made it, and he’s earned that, without question.

Earned, not given. #WeTheNorth pic.twitter.com/n3BKP7oBdR

— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) April 19, 2021

Now, to the idea of tanking. Watanabe is a perfect example of why the concept needs reframing. I touched on this a bit Friday after Watanabe, Paul Watson Jr. and Freddie Gillespie posted career-best nights in treble. The short of it is players do not “tank.”

Whomever the Raptors put on the floor will be trying to win. There’s no way around that. Watanabe played for a contact conversion and is now getting an early start on his case for inclusion on the 2021-22 roster. Watson has a non-guaranteed 2021-22 year on his deal, as well, and is trying to make a case to stay in the rotation if the team gets healthy. Gillespie earned a second 10-day deal and is trying to show he’s a piece worth developing longer-term. The Raptors have won three consecutive games with three, two and then one player with a guaranteed contract for next year. Rookie Malachi Flynn was the only one of the 10 players Toronto played in Sunday’s victory who has a dollar guaranteed beyond the end of this season.

Sure, there’s some nuance there. Gary Trent Jr., at 22 and ahead of restricted free agency, doesn’t have to worry about his NBA status. He’s also trying to nudge his next contract higher, though, showing flashes of two-way upside beyond what he could in Portland. Chris Boucher has a place in the league and a team-friendly non-guaranteed deal for next year, but what if it’s not picked up for cap space reasons, or what about his next deal? DeAndre’ Bembry, Watson and Watanabe all have small non-guaranteed deals which provide good value if they’re kept around but are also easy to waive for flexibility, meaning they’d all be looking for their next jobs. Khem Birch is probably sticking around, he just doesn’t have a contract beyond this year.

Moment: Career Nights

Open Gym presented by @Bell pic.twitter.com/UA0oO9qvnr

— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) April 17, 2021

The list goes on with Stanley Johnson (UFA), Rodney Hood (non-guaranteed) and even Aron Baynes (non-guaranteed), who isn’t playing but might still jump at the chance to continue making the case he’s still a reasonably useful depth piece, as he was showing before the Birch addition. The only regular right now with a certain future is Flynn, who spent the first half of the year barely playing and is trying to show he’s ready for real, positive NBA rotation minutes. (Spoiler: He is.) None of those players care about the team’s odds of landing a better draft pick who could conceivably take their spot next year.

“Listen, I’ve said this, you guys have been asking me this for weeks now, and I’ve said I’m trying to get this team to play hard, play the right way. I think it was pretty evident last game with whoever,” Nick Nurse said Friday. “It’s pretty much a night-before, day-of-the-game, sometimes an hour before the game I know who’s available. … So it’s who’s there, we’re gonna get ’em to play hard and play the right way and guard and next-action basketball and all that stuff. That’s it.”

It begs the question of what more the Raptors can do if the intention is to lose, or win less aggressively. However you want to phrase it — the Raptors would never use the word “tank” themselves — there’s no avoiding the incentives at play for the Raptors. On the one hand, they are currently in a play-in position, effectively in a three-way tie for one spot that would require a pair of wins to get into the eighth seed through the play-in tournament. That would result in a playoff series, and while the Raptors project as a very irritating opponent as far as one-eight matchups go, it’s hard to see this team beating Philadelphia or Brooklyn four times in seven games.

The cost of making that attempt is becoming a playoff team, even via the play-in, takes a team out of the draft lottery. As I explained last week, the lottery odds have been flattened so that there’s not as much need to fight all the way to the bottom, but that has the effect of shifting the leverage points elsewhere in the lottery.

As of Monday morning, the Raptors had an expected pick of 9.2 in the draft. Had they lost Sunday, that would jump all the way to 6.2. (That’s a little unfair since we’re working with half-games; Ties in the end-of-season standings see the odds split between tied teams. Still, it’s a big swing.)

*less than 0.1 percent chance of finishing that low; ^Teams who lose the play-in tournament slot into the lottery based on regular-season standings (no double-dipping or improving odds via play-in)

The Raptors — and you, dear reader — can’t live and die by those nightly swings. There are 14 games to play for Toronto and only five games separating 20th and 26th in the league standings. There’s even more leverage in the 21st-to-24th range, where a half-game separates four teams. Some teams, like the Thunder and Magic, have navigated that cluster aggressively. The Bulls tried to add at the deadline and flopped, then lost their best player to health-and-safety protocols. The Wizards want to make the play-in. Cavaliers fans seem as split as Raptor fans.

For their part, the Raptors appear to — to put this delicately — not have a strong preference as to the outcome of their games. During their current 6-4 stretch, Kyle Lowry has only played once due to a recurring toe infection and rest. Fred VanVleet has played twice due to a hip injury and suspension. OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam have each missed three games for rest that then had to be reclassified as minor injuries after the Raptors were fined for inaccurately reporting the health status of their players.

Those nights off have included situations that aren’t back-to-backs and wholesale rest nights like Sunday, where Trent — fresh off two missed games himself — was the only nominal starter playing. In 15 of the last 16 games, the Raptors have used a different starting lineup than the game prior; they’re at 27 starting lineups for the year, already just one shy of the franchise record from their inaugural 1995-96 season.

(Wins on 82-game scale vs. the number of starting lineups used by the Raptors. They used 22 in their championship 2018-19 season, then used just a single starting lineup for the entire postseason.)

When the team’s top players have played of late, the Raptors have been even better. VanVleet (+21.4), Siakam (+8.9) and Anunoby (+8.3) all have monster net ratings, which aligns with them being the biggest drivers of team success this year. (Boucher has a better net rating than all three, albeit in more strategically allocated minutes.) There is a cost to that in that the Raptors core four — those three and Lowry — have played just 366 minutes together. Even the long-term core trio of VanVleet, Siakam and Anunoby has only played 604 minutes together on the year, and Trent has played just 108 minutes in lineups that look something like potential 2021-22 starting groups. With so much rest and injury, the Raptors are sacrificing some element of chemistry or familiarity for the long term.

That is not strictly with losing in mind. We are still learning about the long-term recovery specifics after COVID-19 infection, and the data available suggests Siakam, Anunoby, VanVleet and Watson are all still in the range for post-acute COVID-19 symptoms. Anunoby had a calf issue, Lowry the toe, VanVleet the hip on top of the usual bumps and bruises he deals with. The medical staff who make these decisions may have been nudged to raise the bar for when a player is fit to play or when the risk is worthwhile, but this is not quite Al Horford being sent home. (Lowry would not accept being sent home; the golf is simply much better in the Tampa area than in Philly in April.)

This leaves the team in purgatory. Making the playoffs is fun. It’s a good experience for their developing pieces and it suggests development is going well since they’re winning “too much.” A higher pick in the draft — and better odds at a franchise-altering No. 1 pick — changes the long-term outlook more significantly.

It’s unclear what more the Raptors could do, though, short of signing me to their now-open second two-way slot and having me run 30 pick-and-rolls a night. You have to field a rotation, and the players they put on the court are going to play their asses off for their NBA lives. Even if it means a few more wins and fewer lottery balls, it’s better to be celebrating something like a new deal for Watanabe than bemoaning it.

(Photo of DeAndre’ Bembry, Yuta Watanabe and Stanley Johnson:  Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)