At 10:30 AM on Saturday, the Toronto Raptors will kick off the 2016 NBA Playoffs at home against the Indiana Pacers after earning the two-seed in the Eastern Conference this year. This era of Raptors basketball, which ripples outward from Masai Ujiri off the court and Kyle Lowry on it, has been built largely from the team’s ability to craft its corps of young players into a scrum greater than the sum of its parts.
The Raptors are a fitting antithesis to the New Orleans Pelicans in this way. This iteration of Pelicans basketball, lacking a true leader on or off the court, has struggled in its rebuild because of the coaching staff’s inability to develop the roster’s younger members.