CP173783204

01/04/2025 12:51 AM

TORONTO — In a perfect world, the Toronto Raptors‘ rebuild will be a quick patch-up job: take your lumps this season, get lucky in the lottery and try to hit the ground running a year from now. 

Who knows? It could happen. 

But chances are catching up to some of the NBA's best young teams won't be all that easy. 

While the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets are turning heads in the Western Conference, the East's version of young, good and stacked is the Orlando Magic.

Even with half a roster available, they were too much for a Raptors team that was at full strength other than RJ Barrett, who was held out due to illness as Orlando controlled the game from start to finish and left Toronto with the 106-97 win. 

The loss stopped the Raptors winning streak at one and dropped them to 8-27 on the season. The Magic improved to 21-15.

The Magic have flown under the radar a little bit even though they stood fourth in the East when they arrived at Scotiabank Arena Friday night, their season most notable because both of their two young stars — Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner — have been out for big chunks of the season with oblique tears on their right side, the kind of injury most commonly associated with left-handed power hitters, not basketball players. 

On top of those two injuries, the Magic will be without Mo Wagner — Franz's brother and the team's fourth-leading scorer — for the rest of the season after he tore his ACL just before Christmas. 

And their injury challenges kept mounting as with 3:06 left in the second quarter, Jalen Suggs — the Magic's third-leading scorer and All-NBA defender — had to be taken off the floor in a wheelchair after he dove to play a ball in the passing lane and hit the floor grabbing his lower back in obvious pain. He was later pronounced out with back spasms. 

But the Magic have remained in the mix thanks to a roster that seems to have quality rotation options down into the double figures and a team-wide commitment to defence. The Magic arrived in Toronto with the NBA's third-rated defence after having the second-best defence a year ago. 

If Suggs is out for any significant amount of time, it might finally be the setback the Magic can't overcome, but it doesn't change the overall picture in Orlando: under team president Jeff Weltman — formerly Masai Ujiri's right-hand man before he left the Raptors to take the top job with the Magic after the 2016-17 season – the Magic have developed a culture, infused it with elite talent and surrounded it with quality depth.

It’s taken them a while – this was a team that drafted Mo Bamba with the sixth-overall pick in  2018 when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was still on the board – but they give every indication of a team with momentum. They caught a big break when they were able to trade Nikola Vucevic to Chicago at the deadline in the 2020-21 season and used the pick they got in return to draft Franz Wagner. They got lucky again when the lottery balls fell in their favour, and they were able to choose Banchero with the first-overall pick in 2022. They had drafted Suggs fifth overall with their own pick in 2021 also. 

Banchero's already made an All-Star team, Wagner would have this season if he hadn't got hurt and Suggs is an All-NBA defender, all added in the space of two years. 

If they can shake the injury bug, they could be a sleeper threat in the East this season, but if not, they figure to be a factor in the conference for years: Banchero, Wagner and Suggs are 22, 23 and 23 years old, respectively. 

And in addition to the talent, they have a group that is committed to playing a ferocious style of defence, something not often seen with young teams. 

"When you look at the roster and the players that that they have, they have a couple of guys that are really elite. Jalen Suggs, he’s a guy with size, defends the ball a lot, really good active hands," said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic before the game. "And they are committed. They have continued … building the team, building those habits. What makes their defence good is the length and connectivity and ability to stay in front of the ball."

The Raptors got a full taste of it in the early going. When the Raptors snapped their 11-game losing streak with their big win over the struggling Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday, it seemed like everything came easily: the driving lanes were open, the three-point looks were open, the transition opportunities were plentiful. 

Immanuel Quickley and Scottie Barnes dominated. But against the Magic's legion of tough on-ball defenders and the length they can protect the paint with, life was much more difficult for the Raptors pair. Quickley was 4-of-17 from the floor for 11 points, though he did manage 11 assists against three turnovers, while Barnes’s line of 20 points and nine rebounds was bolstered by a pair of threes he hit early in the fourth quarter of a comeback that never really got off the ground given the Magic were up by 20 after three periods. 

The Raptors, it should be mentioned, only occasionally guard. The Magic's offence trails their defence even at the best of times, but especially without Banchero and Wagner and then Suggs. No matter, the Magic jumped out to a 37-24 first-quarter lead as they shot 56.5 per cent from the floor and 9-of-14 from three. The Magic aren't a great three-point shooting team – they rank last in threes made this season – but if you let 14-year vet Cory Joseph break down your defence the way the Raptors did in the first quarter, chances are you are giving up some good looks from behind the arc. Joseph had three assists – all for threes – and knocked down his own three in a three-minute stint in the opening period. 

For the game, the Magic made a season-best 19 threes on 44 attempts. The Raptors were 10-of-29 from deep, and the gap at the three-point line was the difference in the game. 

"Defensively, the biggest problem was the three-point line, especially that first half," said Rajakovic. "We just did not get close enough to shooters that we identified as shooters. We allowed rhythm shots, and they caught fire."

The Magic look like they've found another nice player in rookie Tristan da Silva, who was taken 18^th overall this past summer, one spot ahead of Raptors rookie Ja'Kobe Walter. da Silva led the Magic with 25 points 

But what the Magic really represent from the Raptors’ point of view is how steep a mountain Toronto is trying to climb, and how much it will likely depend on luck to make the journey quick and painless. 

There is no indication the Raptors – as an organization – are shying away from the reality of the task in front of them. They'd love to stumble into a budding star in the draft and make it all better right away, but it might not happen. 

In the meantime, there's the Magic, just one young team that has been where the Raptors are now but have pulled miles ahead thanks to a well-timed trade, some smart drafting and the lottery balls falling in their favour. 

All it took was luck, patience and then a little more luck. The Raptors should take note. 

Three points from Grange: 

1. No one was happier to be back in Toronto than Cory Joseph. The veteran point guard still knows how the lighting works and the rims bounce at Scotiabank Arena, where played two seasons for the Raptors in 2015-16 and 2016-17. He had one of his best games of the season against his old team and in front of a nice crowd of friends and family. How many? "Too many," he said. "I don't get it. I've been coming here for 14 years." He put on a show, however, finishing with 11 points while going 3-of-5 from three and adding three assists — both season highs — in 17 minutes. "I'm always excited to play here," said Joseph. "A lot of friends, family in the building, so you always get up for it." Joseph is clearly excited about the opportunity to play for the Magic, who signed him on a veteran minimum last summer. "For me, where I am in my career, where the organization is trending, it's amazing," he said. "A lot of the stuff I do is not on the stat sheet, but the experiences I've had  over my career, I get to share with these guys … I love it here."
2. The Magic's injury woes have created some opportunities for Caleb Houstan, the six-foot-eight wing from Mississauga, Ont. by way of the University of Michigan. The 21-year-old, who was taken 32^nd overall in the 2022 draft, got his first start of the season and performed well, making a pair of threes and playing a sound, smart game in his 24 minutes. The Magic's depth has made carving out regular rotation minutes a challenge even in Houstan's third season, but he's earned a lot of fans in the organization for his work ethic and professionalism. "Caleb, I joke all the time and call him 'the machine,'" says Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley. "He's in there early, he's in there late, he's in there on days you're supposed to take off. He's just an unbelievable, relentless worker."
3. An interesting development to monitor is that rookie Jamal Shead has emerged as Rajakovic's first choice off the bench at point guard when Quickley comes out, his minutes coming ahead of fourth-year guard Davion Mitchell. In the end, their minutes ended up being equal as both Shead and Mitchell clocked in just over 13 minutes, but that was only because Mitchell played 8:34 in the fourth quarter and Shead didn't play at all. Shead finished with one field goal and six assists against two turnovers but was minus-11. Mitchell hit one three and was a plus-3. "I think Davion, when he came there, I think that he provided us good ball pressure. I think he got he got us a little bit going, gave us some energy there and allowed us to make a change on the defensive end," said Rajakovic. "That was the main thing there."