How do Raptors stack among league’s best?

OKLAHOMA CITY — Canines (pronounced “dawgs”), depth and dudes.

The NBA Finals are being contested between two groups which might be equally properly represented by every of these roster building classes.

Which works a great distance in direction of explaining each why the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder and Indiana Pacers are in these Finals to start with and the way the seven-game collection is knotted at 2-2 with a pivotal Recreation 5 slated for Monday on the Paycom Heart, the place the quantity will doubtless hit a brand new degree of loud.

Every of the entrants is populated with a pack of canines — robust, aggressive position gamers who carry a number of particular abilities to the best degree of competitors the NBA has to supply and do it in a reasonably ego-less manner. With out chafing, wanting extra or resenting what others have: suppose Alex Caruso and Cason Wallace for the Thunder, or Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard for the Pacers.

After which they’ve loads of depth gamers who slot in situationally and carry out both independently of the celebrities alongside them. The notion that you could win a title with a seven-man rotation appears to have fallen to the wayside — each Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault and his Pacers counterpart Rick Carlisle have used 10 totally different gamers for significant minutes to this point this collection.

In fact, you even have your dudes — the Thunder can flip to both league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who proved his mettle (as if that was obligatory) by scoring 15 of OKC’s ultimate 16 factors in its comeback win on the highway in Recreation 4, or the rising Jalen Williams, who earned All-NBA and All-Defence honours in his third season. The Pacers, in the meantime, have All-NBA guard Tyrese Haliburton and veteran Pascal Siakam, who has been named All-NBA twice in his profession.

The “Three Ds” are doubtless price holding in thoughts, even a half-continent and one nation away, because the Toronto Raptors strive to determine what it is going to take for them to turn into a part of the playoff combine once more after watching from the surface for 4 of the previous 5 years and final three straight.

It’s why a number of stories describing Toronto as being aggressive this low season in attempting to improve its roster and contend within the Japanese Convention are each predictable and comprehensible. Raptors president Masai Ujiri telegraphed his intentions again on the commerce deadline when he acquired Brandon Ingram and doubled down when he signed him to a three-year, $120 million contract extension.

So what of that fourth D, KD, — former Oklahoma Metropolis star Kevin Durant, who’s essentially the most tradeable famous person within the league proper now because the rumours of Giannis Antetokounmpo have come off the boil for the second?

Sources suggesting the Raptors had been and could be once more all in favour of discovering a strategy to make a deal for Antetokounmpo work are credible, and in keeping with the excitement I’ve heard right here on the NBA Finals. And the identical is true for Durant, who the Raptors had been linked to — once more, credibly — previous to the 2022-23 season.

In response to league sources, the Raptors had been monitoring Durant’s availability main as much as the commerce deadline this previous February so it’s not stunning that the Raptors have been referenced as a staff that is perhaps keen to take a one-year “gamble” on Durant, who’s below contract for 54.7 million for the upcoming season at age 37.

Durant — who has some leverage on the place the Phoenix Suns may ship him relying on his willingness to signal an extension with a brand new staff —  has reportedly narrowed his checklist of most well-liked locations to San Antonio, Houston and Miami. That gained’t cease the Suns from listening to different presents, or, conceivably, groups just like the Raptors from making them — accepting that they could find yourself paying high greenback for an elite rental.

The Raptors made an identical calculation in the summertime of 2018 after they acquired Kawhi Leonard, who solely needed the Spurs to commerce him to Los Angeles, and had been rewarded with a title and an MVP-level, Finals MVP-winning season from Leonard earlier than he left in free company.

But it surely’s been attention-grabbing being round these two Finals groups in 2025, questioning if the Raptors is perhaps over-reaching a bit if certainly they’re considering of constructing a giant play for Durant.

Getting KD (a protracted shot, given his reported preferences, however humour me) could be one factor, however what concerning the different “Ds”?

A transfer like that will get you a dude — over his previous two seasons, even at age 35 and 36, Durant is all of that as he averaged 26.9 factors, 6.3 rebounds and 4.7 assists over 137 video games on nearly unfathomable effectivity, taking pictures 57 per cent on two-point discipline purpose makes an attempt and 42.1 per cent on threes in opposition to the very best defenders the NBA can supply.

And presuming Toronto hangs on to Scottie Barnes — and why else would you make a commerce for Durant if to not create a contending-level duo with the Raptors still-developing fifth-year star — there’s a cheap expectation that Barnes might present the help Durant would wish to make his influence felt.

However the place would the Raptors stand when it comes to canines and depth?

If the usual is what the Pacers and Thunder can placed on the ground, you’d must say not significantly properly.

Among the many Raptors’ children, there’s motive to be optimistic that the likes of Jamal Shead, Gradey Dick, Jonathan Mogbo, Ja’Kobe Walters and Jamison Battle  (we’re presuming the Raptors ninth general decide within the upcoming draft could be a part of any commerce) displaying indicators of being the sort of gamers who might populate the underside half of a playoff rotation, however solely sooner or later sooner or later. Individually and collectively, they every have holes of their video games that would wish filling for that to occur, and there’s no assure of that occuring, and positively not by subsequent season.

The Raptors had been definitely deeper final season and mission to be once more this coming yr, however that’s earlier than excluding anybody who will get wrapped up in no matter commerce package deal it might take to hypothetically land Durant.

Per league sources, the Suns need each good gamers and a package deal of picks as the interior expectation is that they are going to be aggressive subsequent season.

Think about too that the Orlando Magic — a significantly higher staff than the Raptors the previous two seasons — made a big transfer Sunday to accumulate 26-year-old taking pictures guard Desmond Bane from the Memphis Grizzlies. A deal that required the Magic to surrender a two-time NBA champion and high-end 3-and-D participant in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a rotation-level guard in Cole Anthony and rights to 4 future first-round draft picks.

The Japanese Convention presents a path to being aggressive sooner reasonably than later – the upstart Pacers, who gained simply 35 video games two seasons in the past, are immediately everybody’s hope and instance. But it surely’s not so simple as including a single star.

And even when the Raptors did it with Leonard, they had been already a 59-win staff and nonetheless needed to make one other deal for Marc Gasol. These Raptors are usually not that.

The Thunder, with a mean age of 24.15, are the youngest staff within the NBA and could be the youngest staff to win the Finals because the 1977 Portland Path Blazers gained with a roster that averaged 25.03.  The Pacers are usually not far off, with a mean age of 25.02.

And but every crew has some miles on it, and most significantly, miles travelled collectively.

Gilgeous-Alexander was speaking particularly about his third-year teammates Williams and Chet Holmgren when he was requested concerning the strides they’d remodeled the previous two playoff funs, however his phrases ring true for the Thunder as a complete as they attempt to translate phenomenal regular-season success (an NBA-best 125 wins the previous two seasons mixed) right into a championship.

“I feel what they’ve achieved a very good job of is simply getting higher. I feel via the 2 collection final yr, via the entire season after which the three collection main as much as this one, they simply used each alternative to get higher,” Gilgeous-Alexander mentioned on Sunday.

“As a result of they centered on that and since that is what they’ve taken care of, they’ve been prepared for the chance (and) the second. So I feel that above all, they’ve actually hammered dwelling so long as you — you are going to undergo experiences and you are going to fail and you are going to reach some, however determining be taught and get higher via them is what’s actually going that can assist you finally get to the place you need to get to.”

Haliburton, the Pacers’ still-growing fifth-year star, voiced an identical sentiment about his teammates, having ridden with them to the Japanese Convention Finals final season and now two wins away from a championship this yr.

“There isn’t any surprises, to be trustworthy with you,” he mentioned after I requested him about how he thought his younger staff was dealing with the warmth of their first Finals collectively and coming off a tricky loss in Recreation 4 at dwelling. “I do know our group very properly. I am happy with our resilience. We have needed to discover alternative ways to win for the final two, three months. So, happy with that. We’ll simply proceed to reply … It is the very best half about playoff collection, is once you get the possibility to reply.

“I sit up for doing that with this group, popping out and competing.”

Each groups can come into the largest recreation of their seasons – in lots of circumstances, their careers — with the boldness earned via shared expertise and the information that they’ve the “Three Ds” properly lined.

It’s price contemplating if certainly the Raptors had been to pursue KD — are they actually one ageing, albeit nonetheless nice, star away from being a staff that contends with both of the groups enjoying in Recreation 5 (on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+) Monday evening?

Championships are usually not gained by dudes alone. These Finals are proving that, no matter which staff comes out on high.