TORONTO – It’s been a whirlwind 48 hours for the newest member of the Toronto Raptors, Mo Bamba.
Talks between Toronto and the journeyman centre started to take shape at the G League showcase in Orlando earlier this month. The eight-year veteran and the sixth-overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft has spent the season playing for the Salt Lake City Stars, who defeated Raptors 905 at the showcase, spoiling its undefeated start to the campaign.
He’s been waiting for the call, any call, to get back in the NBA and prove that he belongs. It finally came over the weekend.
The Raptors simply couldn’t wait any longer to address their biggest and most glaring area of need.
That fact that they’ve been in the market for a big man is no secret.
Jakob Poeltl, the lone seven-footer on the roster, is still dealing with a nagging back injury that’s plagued him since training camp and has played just seven minutes over the past seven games.
On the season, the team ranks 24th in rebounding and only four clubs allow opponents to shoot a higher percentage at the rim.
Naturally, they’ve been linked to star players on teams that could ultimately become sellers at the Feb. 5 trade deadline, namely Dallas Mavericks’ centre Anthony Davis and Sacramento Kings’ all-star Domantas Sabonis.
Internally, they’ve also explored the likelier possibility of making a move for a complimentary big. They’ve already checked in on Mavericks centre Daniel Gafford, according to league sources. Another name that comes up as a potential fit is Goga Bitadze of the Orlando Magic.
But even if general manager Bobby Webster was ready and willing to pull the trigger on something now, it takes two to tango. With the deadline five weeks away, most teams are still in evaluation mode. The OG Anunoby trade to the New York Knicks was consummated on Dec. 30 a couple seasons ago, so it does happen occasionally, but we rarely see deals get done on this side of the New Year.
And so, the Raptors looked to the free agent market for reinforcements and found Bamba, the enigmatic seven-footer and former top prospect. Given that they’re currently $772,000 over the league’s luxury tax line, their plan was to keep their final roster spot open until after the deadline, when they’ll presumably look to offload salary.
But desperate times.
TSN can confirm that Bamba’s new deal doesn’t become fully guaranteed until Jan. 10, essentially making this an extended tryout. Players aren’t permitted to sign 10-day contracts until Jan. 5, so this is a clever way of plugging a hole without making a long-term commitment while also continuing to explore a more permanent solution at the position.
Toronto gets a closer look at a player that has always intrigued with his unique mix of skill and size, and Bamba gets another chance to resurrect his once promising career.
When he got the news on Sunday, he took the first flight out of Austin, Texas, where he was enjoying some downtime after the showcase. He didn’t land in Toronto until around 7:00 P.M. and, of course, the airline had lost his bag.
“Something told me to take sneakers out,” Bamba said. “Got lucky.”
Roughly 24 hours later, he debuted for his new club, who – as fate would have it – was facing his old club, the one that drafted him back in 2018. Bamba was limited to one short first-half shift against the Magic, but it didn’t take long for him to make his presence felt.
While Bamba may have been a bit overeager, picking up two quick fouls, he also swatted a Desmond Bane layup attempt off the backboard.
The Raptors were outscored by nine points in his four minutes. In fairness, they didn’t give him much help. The rim protection is nice, and something that they’ve desperately needed, but it’s not going to matter much if the other four players on the court aren’t boxing out or chasing down loose balls. At the time, they were getting out-rebounded 30-16 and trailing by 20 points.
But for the second night in a row, they engineered an unlikely late-game comeback.
They outscored the Warriors and Magic 68-39 in the fourth quarter and overtime to steal a couple of wins at home. By the end of it, Bamba’s four minutes were merely a footnote. In both games, the Raptors closed with a small lineup, allowing them to wreak havoc on the defensive end.
But at some point in the not-so-distant future, they could probably use some size – it just so happens they host three-time MVP and human battering ram Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets on New Year’s Eve (although Jokic went down with a leg injury of unknown severity on Monday). It’s not hard to see Bamba’s role expanding as he gets more comfortable with his new surroundings.
On paper, he checks off a lot of boxes. Over his seven NBA seasons, he’s averaged 11.7 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per 36 minutes. His enormous seven-foot-10 wingspan makes him an imposing presence at the rim, but he can also run the court and space the floor; he’s a career 36 per cent three-point shooter.
“He was always inquisitive, asking the right questions, and trying to figure out how to get better,” Bamba’s former coach Jamahl Mosley said ahead of Toronto’s thrilling 107-106 win over the Magic on Monday. “When he plays with that level of tenacity and energy, he’s hard to guard, but he’s also tough to get to the rim and finish on.”
So, how was a player like that available on the open market a third of the way into the season and willing to sign a non-guaranteed deal, you ask?
Then you remember that Orlando discarded him in a four-team trade midway through his fifth season. Since then, he’s played for four teams in three years, getting waived three times and signing a 10-day contract that wasn’t renewed.
There’s a reason why he was a highly touted prospect out of the University of Texas, but there’s also a reason why his stock has plummeted in the ensuing years. The word on Bamba is that his motor and attention to detail on the court haven’t come close to matching his immense physical tools, making him one of basketball’s most frustrating what-ifs.
That’s not to say that they never will, but the odds aren’t in his favour. Most people would argue that intangibles like heart and hustle aren’t learnable skills, you either have them or you don’t. But the lightbulb goes on at different times for different players. Some take longer to figure it out.
Development isn’t linear, as we know. Still just 27 years of age, perhaps Bamba has been humbled enough to understand and appreciate the level one needs to play at to have sustainable success in the league. The fact that he was willing to pay his dues in the G League – where he averaged 16.5 points, 11.9 rebounds and 2.7 blocks in 28.7 minutes over 14 games this season – suggests it’s possible.
“It just shows you how hard it is to make it in this sport, how dialled in you need to be, and how talented these 450 guys are,” Bamba said of his journey back to the NBA. “It’s also a sense of watching and knowing that I belong \[here\].”
Now, he’ll get another chance to show it. And for a team that desperately needs what he can bring when he’s locked in and at his best, it’s well worth the flier.
“I think this is a good opportunity for him to prove to everybody that he belongs in this league,” Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic said. “We’re going to have a very clear plan for him. We’re going to give him an opportunity to show what he can do and hopefully it works for both sides.”
Off-season signee Sandro Mamukelashvili is having a breakout campaign and Collin Murray-Boyles hasn’t looked out of place as a rookie, but the former is more of a stretch big than a traditional centre and the latter is undersized for the position.
Scottie Barnes is more than capable of shifting to the five when the team goes small, as he did on Sunday, with a monster 23-point, 25-rebound and 10-assist triple-double – a stat line matched only by Jokic over the past 30 years. But that came against a small Warriors team.
The league’s bigger and more physical teams present a different challenge, one you probably don’t want your best player inheriting on a nightly basis. Prior to the Bamba signing, Poeltl was Toronto’s only player taller than six-foot-nine.
With the lack of size and depth behind him, as well as all the little things that he does on both ends of the court, Poeltl remains one of the team’s most irreplaceable players. It’s no surprise that the Raptors’ best stretch of the season, a nine-game winning streak in November, coincided with Poeltl’s healthiest stretch. They are 7-6 without their starting centre in the lineup, a considerable improvement from last season (when they went 9-16 without him) or the year before (when they were 4-28).
The difference, in addition to a better supporting cast, is that Poeltl has barely looked like himself, even when he’s been able to play – clearly limited by an ailment that both he and Rajakovic have called “unpredictable.” Such is the nature of back injuries.
“Let’s not confuse the problem, we need Jak,” Rajakovic said. “When Jak is right physically, he’s so important for us.”
The Raptors believe that this won’t be a long-term issue, that with their treatment plan and some extra rest he’ll be ready to return to his typically high level of play sometime in January. He’ll be reevaluated again in a week.
After signing the now 30-year-old to a contract extension – one that will pay him north of $100 million until he’s in his mid-30s – over the summer, they better hope that’s the case. Lingering back issues don’t tend to age well in seven-footers.
Whether Poeltl is healthy or not, and whether they’re looking for an upgrade at the position or merely some added depth, you can expect the Raptors to be active ahead of the Feb. 5 trade deadline. The Bamba signing isn’t likely to change that. He’s probably not the answer, though anything is possible, but he could be a nice and much-needed stopgap.