Barnes shines, Nwora and Dick show encouraging signs for shorthanded Raptors –

At shootaround on the morning of Feb. 7, 2019, Jonas Valanciunas declared that he would be returning that night from a dislocated thumb that had sidelined him for 25 games. Hours later, Valanciunas was packing his bags, as the Raptors had traded him to the Memphis Grizzlies as part of the Marc Gasol trade.

It was a whirlwind day in a whirlwind week in a whirlwind season. In the days that followed, the Raptors’ post-deadline roster was in such flux that sparsely-known CBA rules came into effect and Steve Sladkowski of the Toronto punk band PUP was able to claim — with legitimacy — that he had secured a Gasol Raptors jersey in New York that weekend before the Spanish centre himself did.

On the night of Feb. 7 in Atlanta, though, the roster was just … empty.

Valanciunas, C.J. Miles, Delon Wright, Greg Monroe and Malachi Richardson had all been traded away, Gasol wasn’t there yet, Chris Boucher, then a two-way player, was with Raptors 905, and Kawhi Leonard was sitting out with a sore knee. The Raptors blew the Hawks out regardless, because they were very good and very deep, and even 26 combined minutes for Patrick McCaw and Jordan Loyd – playing 13 percent of his career NBA minutes that night – couldn’t slow a soon-to-be champion.

On Sunday, the Raptors were once again playing thin in Atlanta near the trade deadline. It was… different than 2019.

This time, the Raptors’ lack of players was not due to trade or luxury-tax shirking roster-trimming. Three starters in Immanuel Quickley (quad contusion), RJ Barrett (knee swelling) and Jakob Poeltl (ankle sprain) were all sidelined due to injury, with two players on assignment with Raptors 905 (Javon Freeman-Liberty and Kira Lewis Jr.) and a sixth technically with the 905 and also inured (Markquis Nowell). The Raptors nominally had 12 players, but Otto Porter Jr. and Garrett Temple are firmly in emergency (or garbage-time) only roles, while Jalen McDaniels is so far out of the rotation that he may as well be Josh McDaniels.

But Sunday’s 126-125 loss to the Hawks still had a lot of charm from the Raptors’ side. It wasn’t nearly the same as in 2019, when a chaotic day and thin roster was a necessary (and amusing) checkpoint at a very fun time in the franchise. It wasn’t like similar nights in the Tampa Tank season, either, though, where Khem Birch played small forward and you had to squint at Malachi Flynn and Paul Watson Jr. to think any of it would matter at all down the line.

In this case, the Raptors got strong performances from a number of young players who could be part of their future. If nothing else, they are players who are showing they know the opportunity that…