"In basketball, to win at the highest level you need the top talent, you need players that can do things no one else can, players that seem to rise above the sport itself. But that's not enough, even the very best players can't single-handedly win games. There's so much focus on stars and starting lineups in basketball that often the impact a bench can have is overlooked."
"Toronto has high end talent in the starting lineup, but if the Raptors want to compete this season, their bench has to be up to the task. The best teams have benches that don't just stay afloat, but can tear the game wide open with their play. Look at the top ten teams in bench net rating last year, every single one of them was a playoff team,"
"In the 2017-18 season, the best bench net rating belonged to the Toronto Raptors. It was a bench that was thrown into the fire after a summer of roster reconstruction. They were not supposed to be good; it was a group of unproven players that had little NBA experience. It was the season after the Toronto Raptors were swept by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the second straight year that Toronto had been bounced out of the playoffs by LeBron James."
Top-level success requires elite talent and a bench that can change games. Bench net rating correlates with team success: every top-ten bench net rating team last year made the playoffs, and the 2025 champions had the league's best bench. The 2017-18 Toronto bench posted the league's best bench net rating after a summer of roster reconstruction and unexpected minutes for inexperienced players. Toronto lost over a hundred combined rotation minutes that offseason, drafted OG Anunoby, lost P.J. Tucker and Patrick Patterson, and traded Cory Joseph and DeMarre Carroll to shed salary. Those moves enabled signings and new contracts for C.J. Miles, Kyle Lowry, and Serge Ibaka, reshaping roles and emphasizing bench impact.
Read at Raptors Republic
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