Two magnificent aces lead the 2023 awards after putting on an amazing show in their prior encounters.

Until the Raptors’ front office picks a lane, all eyes will be on Scottie Barnes and Pascal Siakam and whether their talent (and timelines) can cohere or just coexist

Darko Rajakovic, the new head coach of the Toronto Raptors, couldn’t have asked for a better proof of concept than what he got midway through the fourth quarter in a 127-116 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night. Pascal Siakam, the All-NBA talent who has been the team’s best player in Toronto’s post-Kawhi era—and one of the five best Raptors in history—shadowed Luka Doncic interminably on a possession, like an embarrassing core memory from childhood. Unable either to bully Siakam down closer to the basket or to outspin the spin master, Doncic was forced to launch a faithless 15-foot fallaway jumper.

Scottie Barnes—the Raptors’ irrepressible heir apparent who has experienced a true star ascension this season—secured the rebound and, in a matter of four seconds, blasted his way past all five Mavs defenders for an and-1 layup. The sequence encapsulated the very best of Raptors basketball over the past five seasons, but usually a proof of concept instills belief in something new. Just eight games into Toronto’s Rajakovic era, the team needs to prove an old, familiar dynamic still has legs.

Because for as much as the Raptors would prefer the focus be on the intricacies of Rajakovic’s “0.5” system of quick decisions, the team will be forced to make history-shifting long-term decisions soon, even if it’s not in a great place to. The team sits at 4-4, but what happens this season feels almost immaterial compared to what’s to come. The unrestricted free agencies of Siakam and OG Anunoby loom. Until the front office picks a lane, all eyes will be on Barnes and Siakam—two versions of the same Raptors archetype, and perhaps two visions of the future for Toronto—and whether their talent (and timelines) can cohere or just coexist.

The relief lies in knowing that the team has its franchise player, no matter what happens. Barnes is making a considerable third-year leap, just as Siakam did in the Raptors’ championship season. And his biggest impact, true to Raptors form, has been on defense. For the first time in Barnes’s career, his impact on that end is actually aligning with the tools he has at his disposal, and he’s finally becoming the event-creating defender that the NBA has come to expect from an elite prospect coming out of Leonard Hamilton’s Florida State system. While nominally a 2 in the starting lineup, Barnes is effectively a 4-5 on defense, often operating as a Draymond Green–esque low man, wreaking havoc from a help position. With Barnes’s defensive mind catching up to his body, the Raptors are making good on the promise of a stifling and supremely versatile defense built around Barnes, Siakam, and Defensive Player of the Year candidate Anunoby.

One of the delights of Barnes’s breakout has been the blossoming of his reaction speed and timing. The Raptors have long used an absurdly aggressive defensive scheme, with full-speed scrambles and closeouts that relied on (or even abused) the team’s length and mobility. Things have calmed down a bit under Rajakovic’s watch, and against that backdrop, Barnes has posted ridiculous defensive counting stats. Blocked 3-pointers are a Raptors calling card—a testament to condor wingspans, instincts, and closing speed—and no one’s doing it better than Barnes. Scottie has 16 blocked 3s in his career; six of them have come in the Raptors’ first eight games of this season, a league high. (For reference, Victor Wembanyama has blocked three.)

Just as stunning is Barnes’s evolution on offense. A refined jump shot—smoother, on-balance, and without hesitation—has unlocked new dimensions for the third-year rising star. Barnes is shooting 38.1 percent from 3 on 5.3 attempts per game. No, it’s probably not sustainable. (Barnes shot 39.5 percent from behind the arc on 4.2 attempts per game in the first nine games of his 2022-23 campaign before dipping to 28.1 percent for the entire season.) But it’s less about the numbers and more about the intent. The man is confidently firing with momentum as the trailer, launching 30-footers immediately out of a pick-and-roll, and doing wild shenanigans like this:

Yes, that’s a career 30 percent 3-point shooter toying with the defense off a pindown from Jakob Poeltl, evading Kelly Oubre Jr.’s instinctive contest by jump-and-dumping the ball back to Poeltl before relocating for an even cleaner look above the break. Why was it cleaner? Well, why the hell would Kelly Oubre expect Barnes to try any of that given Scottie’s reputation as a shooter in his first two seasons?

Whether or not the percentages keep up, Barnes is playing with the aura of someone who believes he can shoot. That has enhanced the efficacy of what was always there. Even as Scottie has needed to work out the kinks in his game, his passing chops have always been evident. There are few players more adept at tossing an entry or hit-ahead pass with touch over the tops of defenders right into the hands of a teammate. And if teams have to respect both your shot and your court vision, that opens up the feints, hesitation dribbles, and sudden shifts in tempo and power on drives. It’s what allowed Barnes to blow right past Wembanyama on a pivotal dunk late in the fourth quarter in Sunday’s win over the Spurs. “If you’re closing out on Scottie Barnes, like, God help you,” Rajakovic said during the preseason. “You’re dealing with him going downhill and finishing at the rim or connecting with his teammates. And that’s gonna really help his game, and it’s gonna really help our game.”

Unfortunately, the Raptors are not exempt from Newton’s third law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Excepting Wednesday, Siakam’s early struggles seemed inseparable from Barnes’s rise. Siakam’s raw numbers are down across the board, the lowest they’ve been since his breakout in Toronto’s championship season as the team’s surprise third option. More than any other player on the team, Siakam is being asked to play a completely different role than what’s gotten him to the verge of eligibility for a supermax extension. Less initiating, more 3s than ever. Part of it is addressing the logistics of floor spacing: Poeltl’s mere presence, while a godsend given how many seasons the post–Marc Gasol Raptors went without a functional center, intrinsically eliminates driving lanes. As does Dennis Schröder’s, who has absorbed all of Fred VanVleet’s touches from last year, and unlike VanVleet, who possessed tremendous gravity as a shooter, Schröder requires his own dedicated driving lanes to slither around. That isn’t to say Siakam can’t find his way while playing in cramped quarters. One of the most aesthetically pleasing possessions of the young season was an empty-side pitch play involving all three of Siakam, Schröder, and Poeltl early in the first quarter against the Bucks:

It often hasn’t been that easy for Siakam, which is a shame. Siakam has been one of the most prolific drivers of the past half decade: among non–point guards, he’s been consistently up there among Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Jimmy Butler in terms of opportunities and scoring efficiency. It’s hard not to view the plan for Siakam as counterintuitive: Why push him away from what he excels at and steer him toward the things he’s below average at? Siakam is essentially living the plight of the model employee: Sometimes, doing your job really well without complaint means being put in unideal scenarios because management would rather not deal with the alternatives. It’s an ongoing process, but Wednesday presented a much-needed reprieve and confidence boost. With rim-protecting behemoth Dereck Lively II out with an illness, Siakam made 13 of 15 shots from within 6 feet (and missed all seven of his shots from beyond 15 feet—yikes).

After weeks of doubt, it was good to see Siakam’s smile again in Dallas. There is a lightness to Siakam’s game. At his best, it can appear as if he’s floating. His patented spin-cycle drives look less like basketball plays and more like the protagonist in a parkour chase scene: He’s off-kilter; he’s eluding his captors, teetering on the edge of peril; he somehow makes it out unscathed. It’s thrilling. It’s a mastery of one’s proprioception. It’s uniquely Pascal. But the problem with lightness is how obvious it can be when he’s weighed down, burdened. Off-kilter becomes off-balance. Siakam is clearly trying to adapt to suit the team’s new designs; all the blown layups he’d left around the rim in the first seven games felt like they had something to do with his instincts wavering amid change. If Wednesday was any indication, it will get easier for Siakam—he’s too good for the drought to last—but that’s when it gets hard.

The trade calls will only grow in volume as the season progresses. From front offices, and from the team’s own fan base. There is no conceivable way the Raptors can come away with all three of Barnes, Siakam, and Anunoby without serious cap ramifications. And it’s hard to envision a path in which that would make sense from the perspective of the front office. (If the Raptors trade OG, I will cry.) For the past three years, the Raptors, despite having some of the most coveted players on the trade market, have consistently amounted to less than the sum of their parts, with one first-round exit and two seasons on the outside looking in. That isn’t a dynamic you commit to for any longer than you have to—unless Rajakovic’s radical love and 0.5 system work miracles in short order. Teams circling around contention, looking for the final piece, will come knocking, just as they have been for years. Golden State and Philadelphia are obvious suitors, as are the Lakers, who have become masters of the deadline facelift. In the meantime, the vibes have been restored after two important wins in Texas. If the comeback in San Antonio signaled an imperative motion toward a Barnes-led future, the decisive team win led by Siakam in Dallas momentarily corralled expectations back toward the present. It was a push and pull that felt inevitable as soon as they hired Rajakovic, a renowned player development coach tasked with leading a team that ostensibly still has postseason aspirations. It’s a push and pull that Ujiri seems to have built a cottage upon—scoffing at packages of multiple first-round picks, leaving the negotiating table on several possible trades for Damian Lillard or the no. 3 pick—biding his time while he waits for a perfect move that is looking less and less likely to come.

Time is a slippery thing, but it keeps a pattern. Vince Carter’s indelible reign in Toronto lasted just over six seasons. The partnership of DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, which felt like a lifetime of regular-season highs immediately followed by humiliating postseason lows, lasted no longer. And while it might not feel like it—for global-pandemic-related reasons we’ll all need therapy in the coming decades to truly reconcile—this is the fifth season since Toronto’s championship. In one form or another, a new epoch in the franchise’s history is approaching. In the meantime, these Raptors will continue to adapt and conform to a new system. They will delight in the small victories and despair in the growing pains, building toward a future that won’t be promised to them all.