CHICAGO—In the last two years, the Raptors treated the final months of the NBA season as a time to develop players rather than pile up victories.
Winning, while nice, was not necessarily good. Testing players and enhancing the team’s lottery odds were more important. It’s why injuries that might have cost a couple of weeks of playing time ended up costing a couple of months. It’s why they perfected the “play our best players but don’t play them too much” dodge that cost the Utah Jazz a half-million dollars this month when the NBA caught up with the scam. It’s why “we’re in our rebuild” became the Raptors mantra rather than “who will we get in the first round the playoffs?”
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