TORONTO – There’s an old Italian saying that Darko Rajakovic referenced ahead of the first half of a crucial two-game set against the Miami Heat on Tuesday, and it’s fitting with the situation his team finds itself in going into the final days of the regular season.
Roughly, it translates to “You wanted a bicycle, now you’ve got to ride it.” The sentiment is similar to the more commonly used expression, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.” This is what you asked for, so what are you going to do with it?
The Raptors have had their eyes set on a return to the playoffs since the start of the campaign or, in some cases, even earlier. Speaking to the Toronto media in a Las Vegas hotel ballroom-turned-summertime practice facility all the way back in July, Brandon Ingram made an unprompted guarantee.
“We’re making the playoffs,” said the star forward, who still hadn’t played a game with his new club. “For sure.”
Publicly, team officials – from Rajakovic all the way up to general manager Bobby Webster – have wisely tempered expectations, but there’s never been any doubt as to where the organization was setting its bar. After trading for and extending Ingram last winter, adding him to an expensive core group and then unveiling him this season, the goal has always been to play playoff basketball for the first time since 2022.
“I think everybody, since the day we went to Madrid [for a team-wide mini-camp in August], had the same goal: to make the playoffs, to take that step forward and get better as a team,” said Sandro Mamukelashvili. “It’s amazing to be where we’re at because I don’t think anybody saw us being here. So, now, we’ve just gotta lock in and finish strong. It’s not done until it’s done.”
They’ll know their fate soon enough, but for now, the Raptors have no idea where they’ll be or what they’ll be doing a week from now. Perhaps they’ll be prepping for their first-round opponent and getting set to hit the road for the start of a playoff series. Maybe they’ll be in the process of fighting for their postseason lives in the play-in tournament. There’s always some level of uncertainty to this time of year, but the playoff picture looks especially murky given how tight the standings are in the middle of the Eastern Conference.
Even with just four days and three games left in their regular season, the number of different postseason scenarios that are still in play could make most people’s heads spin. Technically, Toronto can still finish anywhere from fifth to ninth in the East.
Here’s what we know. The Detroit Pistons will finish at the top of the conference, with the Boston Celtics almost certainly slotted second. The New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers round out the top-four, likely in that order, though third and fourth are not locked in.
Only 2.5 games separate the five teams between fifth and ninth: the Atlanta Hawks, Raptors, Philadelphia 76ers, Orlando Magic and Charlotte Hornets. Two of them will earn a fast pass to the playoffs, while the other three will join the Heat in the play-in.
The Hawks are one win away from clinching a top-six seed. Their remaining schedule is tricky (at Cleveland, home to Cleveland, and at Miami), but it’s hard to see them losing out, being that they’ve won 18 of their last 21 games. The final guaranteed playoff spot could very well come down to whether Toronto can finish the season with a better record than Philadelphia. The Raptors have a one-game cushion but the Sixers own the tiebreaker and have a couple of winnable games against lottery-bound teams (at the Indiana Pacers and home to the Milwaukee Bucks) after a tough one at the Houston Rockets on Thursday. Assuming they get two out of the three, the Raptors would need to do the same.
Then there’s the possibility of a dreaded three-way tie with the Hawks and Sixers, where Atlanta would take the higher seed as a division winner and Philly would slot in next, pushing Toronto to the play-in. Again, lots of scenarios. But the Raptors can simplify things by taking care of their own business. They’ve put themselves in the position to control their own playoff destiny. Win and they’re in.
It’s easier said than done, especially for a young and relatively inexperienced team that has been wildly inconsistent over the stretch run. Sure, go ahead and pencil in a victory against a Brooklyn Nets team that may show up to Sunday’s season finale wearing vacation attire under their jerseys. However, they’ll still need to quell Miami’s revenge tour on Thursday and then go to New York and beat the Knicks (who they’ve lost 12-straight games against) on the second night of a back-to-back. There is work to be done, but the teams below them – who need assistance from others with their fate out of their own hands – would gladly switch places.
“We haven’t done anything just yet,” said Immanuel Quickley. “You’ve gotta take it one day at a time. But it’s definitely good to be playing winning basketball, just to have a chance to compete. It’s something you work all season for, you work all summer for, getting up early, staying late… It’s something that we wanted to put ourselves in position to do, which is control our own destiny.”
The reward, after going 44-35 through the first 79 games, is this chance to show that they are in fact a playoff team. They seemed to understand the assignment on Tuesday, laying waste to the Heat in a game they absolutely had to win. Their best players, Ingram (23 points) and Scottie Barnes (25 points), showed up. Jakob Poeltl (17 points) and RJ Barrett (16 points) contributed in complementary roles. Mamukelashvili (11 points), Jamal Shead (11 assists), rookie Collin-Murray Boyles (6 points, 8 rebounds), and red-hot sophomore Ja’Kobe Walter (9 points) continued to roll off the bench. Quickley returned from an eight-game absence and played through his nagging foot injury. Now, they’ve got to do it again on Thursday, and then again after that.
“This is the beauty of the job,” Rajakovic said the day after his team’s big 121-95 win over Miami. “This is what we signed up for. I think this is very exciting for our coaching staff, for our team, for the city of Toronto, for our fans. The path that we had the last two years, just being in the position to fight for something, to fight for the playoffs, to fight for seeding and all of that, is very, very meaningful.”
Enough red flags have emerged to at least give you pause. Of the six teams in that East playoff/play-in race, they’re the only one that doesn’t have a winning record since the All-Star break – they’re 12-12, good for the 18th-best record in the NBA and 10th in the conference. They’re 1-10 against the East’s top-three teams, which doesn’t exactly bode well for their chances if they do qualify for the playoffs. Barnes and Ingram are both banged up and have seen their scoring drop in recent weeks. Quickley isn’t expected to be anywhere close to 100 per cent until his plantar fasciitis has time to completely heal over the offseason. There are warts, to be sure.
But the Raptors wanted the playoffs. The finish line is near and the training wheels are off. It’s time to go ride the bike.
