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Ujiri and Raps are in a luxurious spot

B R UCE ARTHUR

The Toronto Raptors can’t wait to keep waiting, and it’s not a bad place to be. As training camp begins, people will watch to see whether Toronto is deeper, whether Fred VanVleet is more durable, and which Raptors made the biggest leaps. This is a team with continuity from last season, and through the summer. They could be good.

And still, this is a team waiting for its future to come, whatever it is. That’s not a bad thing; it’s actually a bit of a magic trick. The Raptors aren’t a title contender, but this is a 48-win team that should be better this year while also running a 24/7 development program. If you have to wait for the stuff of true contenders, as most not-quite-great teams do, this is the way to do it. Preparation is the key to success, they say.

“We play sports to win,” said team president and vice-chair Masai Ujiri at the team’s media day. “Simple. We can do whatever we want, but we play sports to win. We compete to win. We expect to win, and it doesn’t matter what phase we are at as a team.

“Are we good enough to win a championship? I don’t know that we are there yet. But are we good enough to grow and make a jump? I think so … It’s a challenge to make that jump. But winning is why we play, and winning is what we want to do in the NBA here. We always want to win, and we are going to win again.”

He really does believe that, and the Raptors are laying long-term groundwork while the balancing act goes on. Ujiri’s long-awaited stylistic experiment — his army of looming, agile, long-armed, skilled and intelligent wings — is effective, and sustainable for now. Head coach Nick Nurse’s sky-high threshold for playing time might make it hard to add new players to

the system, but it means a team that operates at the highest strategic levels. This is still an organization with championship DNA.

It just doesn’t have championship talent again, yet, because of the same old song: You need superstars in this league. Pascal Siakam says he wants to be a top-five player in the NBA, which is most rarefied air — if you picked names from a hat that would mean displacing two of Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Kevin Durant, Luka Doncic and Steph Curry — and until Siakam is an aboveaverage three-point shooter at the very least he’s going to fall short. (There are some good early reviews on his further progress inside the three-point line, which is encouraging.)

And then there’s Scottie Barnes, who is clearly the future superstar in residence. His rookie-of-theyear campaign was remarkable for a lot of reasons, but maybe the most impressive one was this: He barely forced a play all season, couldn’t really shoot threes and still improved all the way along, figuring out the spaces in the game he could fill. Barnes will surely make a second-year jump. But the Raptors are waiting for him, too.

“Young players take time in this league,” said Ujiri. “We saw an example of that in Boston. They had young players and … went through some adversity, and grew to where they are. But it really takes time in this league, and we are happy with his progress. An exciting and incredible young player in this league that is going to have an incredible career, and hopefully win a championship here.”

Ujiri really does believe it. There might also be a shortcut, but not yet.

The Raptors did indeed look into a Durant trade with the Nets over the summer, and it was said the former MVP was interested in Toronto as a destination, but O.G. Anunoby doesn’t seem to have been enough of a headliner in return without enough first-round picks to fill a wheelbarrow.

Another superstar will hit the market at some point — or the same one again, if Brooklyn implodes — and the Raptors will still have a pile of draft picks and some pretty appealing players, and Ujiri will weigh the fit in addition to the talent. He won’t just burn talent and picks for, say, a Donovan Mitchell. He has refined taste in superstars.

It’s a luxurious situation, really. In the pre-Kawhi Leonard years, the only route to that star was to steal one in the dead of night. Now the Raptors can hunt for an addition while Siakam strives and Barnes incubates.

And if this team adds one star and keeps its core, a return to championship contention could happen just that fast. This should be a 50win team, even in a deeper Eastern Conference. The machinery of development will keep grinding, though VanVleet will hopefully be better preserved.

“We have to make a jump now as this team,” said Ujiri. “We always look at things … and try to be as active as we can. We’re also focused on who we are as a team, and where we want to go as a basketball team. Sports is about winning. We want to win here. Sometimes it’s good to be patient, too, and wait for the right moment.”

It’s a pretty neat trick, really. It’s not guaranteed to succeed, but you can see there from here. Enjoy the grind. It’s building toward something.

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2022-09-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

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