OverDrive - Rautins on the Raptors' significant losing skid, the team finding success and Barnes' large role

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

TSN Basketball Analyst Leo Rautins joined OverDrive to discuss the storylines around the NBA, the Raptors losing streak reaching 10 games with the defeat to the Hawks, Darko Rajakovic and Scottie Barnes' comments on the team's performance, Barnes' role as the number one option, LeBron James' role with the Lakers and more.

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The smarter way to book travel. Let's bring in Leo Routenstout. Leo, welcome. How are you? I'm great. How are you guys doing? Good. Trying to make sense of this.

Are the Raptors just a little weary from all the losses? How do you read this? It's called the rebuild, and it's going to be ugly you can look at it a lot of different ways but uh okay first of all the entire season the team has not been whole right uh so you've got a lot of guys that have never played the minutes they're playing right now uh so that's obviously going to that's going to wear them down it's going to be taxing uh not having key players like a Purtle a Barnes then putting them back

into the lineup all of a sudden a Brown comes in when you're doing all that all the changing and the injuries in a lineup out of the lineup it wears you down physically and mentally as a team and it's not

an excuse it's just a reality. And it's not an excuse. It's just a reality. And when you're not talented enough and deep enough to absorb it, this is what you get. And quite frankly, I was more surprised that Darko was able to keep things going as well as he did for as long as he did. The way they were competing and staying in games. I'm more surprised about that than I am this.

Well, Leo, yeah, for one thing, I don't think anybody's surprised they're near the bottom of the standings, given the injuries and given the way the season began with Masai declaring it a rebuilding situation. But we haven't seen a call fromty barnes like we saw the other night where he's saying the effort's not there we haven't seen you know this team get drilled like they're getting drilled in his by historic proportions giving up 136 to atlanta and 155 a franchise record to memphis and 139 to the knicks. Like, what's the risk here that you're building a really ugly culture if it keeps going this way, Leo?

Well, it's always a risk and a rebuild, right? I mean, you can talk all the culture you want, but if you're losing, that's a risk. And the reality is if you win, you're not going to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish in a rebuild. So, you know, it's a catch-22. You know, the best-case scenario is what we saw earlier when it's competitive, you're coming around the wire.

Yeah, you're going to lose some games because you're just not talented enough or you don't have everybody, but you can see development. You can see guys learning. You can see guys getting better, but you're not going to win. So best-case scenario, you're still going to do well hopefully in the draft and you're developing guys you know win all round but you know that's hard to do it's really hard to do and now from an evaluation standpoint uh like i said you've got a lot of guys that haven't played these kind of minutes uh some guys are new to the league. Some guys are getting a whole different look

as far as an R.J. now is a key player. Grady Dick has stepped into a whole different zone for him. Okay, how are guys going to respond? Can they sustain it? What are their downs going to be? Are they going to be able to get out of their funk quicker or longer? That's all part of your evaluation, right? I mean, you're going to be looking at guys, a lot of these guys are supposed to be two-way players.

Well, how come you're giving up 150 points, you know? So, you know, this is all part of your evaluation going forward. So, you know, this is all part of your evaluation going forward. It's not pretty, but unfortunately, anytime you mention the word rebuild, you better be prepared. Yeah, and they made that clear in the summer that it was going to be a rebuild, and maybe it slipped by the rest of us what that meant. Here are the clips that we're talking about.

It starts with Coach Darko. Right now, as a team, we hit the wall. It's very simple. We hit the wall. We look tired. We look drained. Guys are not in the rhythm. And that's reality where we are right now.

And we got to find a way how to get out of it. And the only one way to get out of it, it's always the same answer. It's back to work and staying together and watching the film and going through practice and addressing the right things and then getting better. We just got to come out with a better effort every single night. We just can't. Allowing ourselves to get down in that position. Beginning of the game, we could have made better choices.

We had some turnovers, myself included. But every single game, we just can't allow ourselves to get down to this point and keep letting teams every single game. 130 points each every single night or more for these last three games. You know, that's just unacceptable. We just got to take it upon ourselves to come out with a better effort. Well, you can't argue with that. And I'm going to go back to Leo, 31 turnovers for 30 points

in the game against Atlanta. Now, in the past, in some of those close games, they would have turnovers at the worst possible time to cost them the game. I mean, that's got to be cleaned up. Well, I think turnovers have been an issue uh throughout the season a lot of careless turnovers and i think that's the big thing that gets dark though that you know a lot of these turnovers are just you know sense of turnovers you know you're you're uh you're you're giving the other team the ball on scoring

situations uh careless passes uh you know you're not thinking what you're doing. You're just like throwing the ball. You can't do that. Right. In this league, turnovers destroy you. Uh, every time you come down to four,

you got to give yourself an opportunity to score. But if I can say something about, uh, what we heard from Scotty, um, you know, I think when you're, you know,

the hardest thing to do in this league is be a franchise player. Uh, and, you know, you heard when you're, you know, the hardest thing to do in this league is be a franchise player. And, you know, you heard a lot of we when he was talking. And my personal opinion is when you're the franchise guy, you've got to say, I've got to be better. I can't let my team start this way. Okay, I've got to be more aggressive. I can't turn the ball over. When you're winning, it's we. Hey, we did a good job.

We fought like hell to get this game. When things are going this way, if you're the franchise player, you've got to take it upon yourself to change it. And that's a big responsibility. And it's hard, especially like when you're losing and you're losing and you're losing, you got to be part of the change. And when you talk about a culture and developing a culture, well, you're also developing a franchise player. And I think these are big, big times for Scotty Barnes in his development. You know, if a team starts slow, that's partially on him. You know, he's got to get that time out, get in people's faces.

He's got to be, you know, diving on the floor. He's got to be going after the ball. He's got to be going after the ball. That's a part of being a franchise guy. And so I think it's really important if you want to develop a team and go through this that everybody's accountable from the franchise guy down. And there's got to be, you know, you have to step up in those situations. Hey, Scotty Barnes as a franchise guy can't expect Jacoby Walter to be the leader. He can't expect, you know, Mobo to come in and be the leader

and be the guy that's setting the example. He's got to set the example, and that's hard. It's really hard. Leo, what do you make of the idea that Darko put forward today, that you got to give Scottie some slack here because, you know, he's playing without a point guard. Like the Raptors are intentionally putting him and RJ Barrett into situations where they're handling the ball an awful lot,

maybe more than they ever would on a really good contending team, you know, in the name of developing them into point forwards or, you know, five position guys, whatever you want to call it. How do you see that? Well, again, that's been the talk of Scottie since he got to Toronto, that he can handle the ball, right? He's got to handle the ball, handle the ball more, handle the ball more. So right now, this is a rebuild.

So you want to find out, are you going to put the ball in his hands? Okay, is this what's going to happen? Are you going to let him be the ball handler? Are you going to let RJ handle the ball in larger sections of the game? And you're going to find out if they can do it or not. It's pretty simple. You know, obviously, otherwise, you can start the other guys. You can start the traditional

point guards and go with it. But the fact that they're not doing that, they want to find out. So you can say, hey, give him some slack. Well, yeah, you're going to give him some slack because that's not his position. But at the same time, you're trying to find out

if he can handle that role. And again, it's different when you're just spotting, you know, I get a rebound, I dribble the ball down the court and make a play. But if I'm consistently the guy that's got to bring that ball up and make plays, again, that's a difficult position to be in for a guy that's really never done it. And there's going to be mistakes. I think he had eight turnovers yesterday. And Scottie sees the poor extremely well.

But, you know, when you're the point guard or you're the guy handling the ball, you've got a lot of decisions to make. The most important decision can be who not to give the ball to, when not to make the pass, when to take that shot yourself, when to put the ball on the floor. It's not just handling the ball. Those are the decisions you've got to make. So if you're going to have a player go through that learning process and see for yourself if he's capable of eventually having a larger role

in that area, this is what you've got to do. And, unfortunately, you're going to take some lumps. We just have a note here that R.J. Barrett missed practice. We don't know why, but won't travel with the team to Boston where they play tomorrow at 3 in the afternoon. I mean, that's a tough chore to play Boston anywhere, let alone in Boston. And, well, there's another guy that won't be playing. That's going to be a tough day.

Yeah, and we see a lot of that, right? I believe he has an illness. And, okay, let's be frank, and I'm not going to say this is what anybody's doing, but if you're going to talk about how do you do a rebuild, when a guy gets sick or a guy may be banged up a little bit, okay, you rest a little longer. You don't need to rush anybody back. Make sure you're good.

Because the reality is, you know, when you're winning games, it's going to, okay, from the idea of the rebuild, you want a draft, right? You want a great pick. You'd like to have the number one pick. You'd like to have the best shot at having that number one pick. So the more you win, the more you jeopardize that. And then remember when the Raptors were playing a little bit better

and winning a few games, the East was bad, right? You had a lot of teams. It was hard to lose because other teams were losing more than you. So, you know, when you've got a lot of bad teams in a league, in the bottom of the West, the bottom of the East, there's some bad teams. So you may have to make sure you lose. If you're going to do this, you're going to have to make sure you lose. And if that means sitting guys out and resting them a little bit more

or taking time on injuries, that's what you do. Yeah, just to be clear on that. So RJ has been battling an illness, and it's that. That's why he didn't make practice today. So either way, he's not playing in Boston tomorrow. Dave? Leo, I just wanted to wrap up here with a question about the birthday boy in the NBA today.

It's LeBron James turning 40 today. And, of course, he's been asked about his future and will he remain a Laker for the duration of his career. He was quoted today as saying that's the plan. He didn't exactly say, I want to be a Laker, period. He's saying hopefully he won't have to go anywhere else, but what do you make of the Lakers' chances of making this guy happy to stay there until his career is over?

They're 18-13 in fifth place, just made a trade. Do you think they can squeeze something meaningful out of the waning days of LeBron's career? Well, you hope they can, but they haven't shown that yet, right? First of all, what LeBron has done

throughout his career is incredible, and his body is incredible. I think he said today that he really thinks he could play the game at a pretty high level for another five to six years or whatever, and I believe him. It's not necessarily what he's going to do, but I think he could too. But, you know, and players also have to realize when they don't have, you know, the top tier of their game, and they have to be able to adjust to that,

and that's where you need your personnel around you. And, you know my big thing when i look at the lakers and and i said this when i got this guy anthony davis um you know everything was geared to get him out of that out of out of new orleans and to to the lakers and you know the amount you had to give up to get him and he's never shown that he can be that guy you know you look at him some days you go oh my god this guy is unbelievable when he has one of to give up to get him, and he's never shown that he can be that guy. You know, you look at him some days, you go, oh, my God, this guy is unbelievable. When he has one of these 10-game streaks of 30 and 15,

and everybody's going, wow, look at this, this is Anthony Davis. Okay, but where is he the rest of the time? And I think LeBron needs that guy that you can count on every single night. And he hasn't had that guy. You know, Anthony Davis is not that guy that you can count on every single night and he hasn't had that guy right he hasn't you know Anthony Davis is not that guy Anthony Davis is very talented um but you know he's just not there night in and night out uh his durability is not great uh you know his intensity lapses um and I think that's a big problem because there that that was a big investment and you know it really challenged

other moves they were able to make once they got them. Leo, thanks very much. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you guys too. Thanks. Take care. That's Leo Routens,

our NBA insider.