The Toronto Raptors had the best bench in the NBA last season. Toronto relied on the all-bench unit of Fred VanVleet, Delon Wright, C.J. Miles, Pascal Siakam, and Jakob Poeltl for large fractions of the game. Of five-man lineups (all lineups not bench lineups) which played greater than 300 minutes, Toronto’s BENCH ranked second in the NBA in Net Rating.
This year, the bench is not finding the same success. Although the lineup data is not as clean, due to Nick Nurse’s traditional substitution patterns, Toronto’s lack of bench success is glaringly obvious.