Title: Areas the Raptors might want to address at the deadline, and some players who might fit
Date: February 3, 2020
Original Source: The Athletic
Synopsis: In my latest for The Athletic Toronto, I wrote about areas for improvement for the Raptors and whether they might be able to shore those up at the trade deadline.
Fate has given the Toronto Raptors the finger once again. A fractured one.
Norman Powell is the latest victim of what’s becoming a curious and alarming trend of injuries for the Raptors. They are, quite clearly, cursed. There is no other explanation, because Mercury isn’t even in retrograde yet. The Raptors have now lost approximately 746 man games and 82 win shares to injury so far this season, and there’s seldom been a game in which the injury report wasn’t well populated.
It is not a new story, and you know the broader takeaways: The shorter-term absences, at least the ones that aren’t soft-tissue problems, serve the purpose of lessening the season-long load on players. They also give opportunities to depth players, which are helpful for development and evaluation. That the Raptors have remained excellent despite being almost permanently thinned out is quite encouraging.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 