{"id":107408,"date":"2024-11-17T07:30:12","date_gmt":"2024-11-17T12:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=107408"},"modified":"2024-11-17T04:59:40","modified_gmt":"2024-11-17T09:59:40","slug":"why-raptors-arent-worst-team-in-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/11\/17\/why-raptors-arent-worst-team-in-league\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Raptors Aren\u2019t The Worst Team In The League"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you look at the NBA standings, the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/11\/13\/raptors-immanuel-quickley-injury\/\" target=\"_self\">Toronto Raptors<\/a> are the worst team in the league. They\u2019ve now lost seven games in a row and cannot find a way to win. The Toronto Raptors record is 2-12, and although the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/11\/08\/this-was-not-start-the-wanted\/\" target=\"_self\">season is still young<\/a>, they will have a hard time competing for a playoff spot. Despite the horrible Toronto Raptors record, it is more due to bad luck and their inability to finish close games than them being the worst team in the league.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why The Raptors Aren\u2019t The Worst Team In The League<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong>The Toronto Raptors Injury Report is Full<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/11\/05\/scottie-barnes-injury-update\/\" target=\"_self\">Toronto Raptors injury report<\/a> is the main reason for their rough start to the season. Their two best players, <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/q\/quickim01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Immanuel Quickley<\/a> and <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/barnesc01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Scottie Barnes<\/a>, have both dealt with injury issues. They have played a combined seven games all season, and the Raptors have felt their absence in a big way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Quickley and Barnes are essential pieces to the Raptors on both the offensive and defensive ends of the floor. Quickley was supposed to be the point guard and pacesetter for a young and fast Raptors team. Of the players who spent their whole seasons with the Raptors in 2023-24, Barnes led the team in points and assists. He also was second in rebounding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the defensive end, Barnes is sorely missed as well. His length and athletic ability are essential to causing turnovers and disruption. He led the team in steals and was second in blocks last season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">TATUM CALLS GAME VS RAPTORS \ud83d\udea8 <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DWfCZ4oEMX\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/DWfCZ4oEMX<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BleacherReport\/status\/1857993511229956518?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 17, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3><strong>The Toronto Raptors Record is Deceiving<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Raptors might have had the worst end-of-game performances in the league this season. They\u2019ve played three games that have gone to overtime and even more that were extremely close toward the end. Although being able to finish close games is certainly the mark of a good team, the amount of tough game-winning or tying shots they\u2019ve fallen victim to has been downright unlucky.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of their 12 losses this season, seven of the games have been decided by six points or less. They are 1-6 in the clutch this season.\u00a0 If just three or four of those games had gone their way, they would not only be off the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings but maybe even in the mix for a Play-In Tournament spot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For having the worst record in the league, you would expect the Raptors to have some of the worst statistical metrics in the league as well. They aren\u2019t even in the bottom five as far as plus\/minus; they\u2019re ranked 19th in offensive rating and 25th in net rating. They\u2019re bad but not the worst.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>The Raptors Most Recent Heartbreak<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most recent Raptors heartbreak was in the Raptors\/Celtics game from Saturday night. The game was another where the feisty Raptors stayed competitive against one of the best teams in the league but lost on a last-second shot (they had two such games against the Nuggets earlier this season).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/t\/tatumja01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jayson Tatum<\/a>\u2019s deep game-winning three was just another dagger in the hearts of Raptors fans this season. From injuries to their key players to unlucky ends to close games, the Raptors are better than their record shows.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you look at the NBA standings, the Toronto Raptors are the worst team in the league. They\u2019ve now lost seven games in a row and cannot find a way to win. The Toronto Raptors record is 2-12, and although the season is still young, they will have a hard time competing for a playoff [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5284,"featured_media":107426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,1608,62],"tags":[3178,798,4745,3852],"class_list":["post-107408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-raptors","category-basketball","category-nba","tag-immanuel-quickley","tag-jayson-tatum","tag-nba-injuries","tag-scottie-barnes"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}