Raptors' Agbaji lifted by off-court support amid turbulent season
Eric Smith joins Blake Murphy on The Raptors Show to discuss Ochai Agbaji's stellar performance in the Toronto Raptors' win against the New Orleans Pelicans following some criticisms by Head Coach Darko Rajaković earlier this week.
It’s been a great year off the court for Ochai Agbaji.
He and his longtime girlfriend got married in June, and they spent their honeymoon in the Swiss Alps, a trip they timed around the Raptors' retreat in Spain in early August. And then in December, the big news, as they welcomed the birth of their daughter, Valley.
In conversation, the 25-year-old lights up at the thought of his baby girl.
But on the court has been a struggle. He missed time with a back injury in November and – like all of the Raptors over-flowing collection of young wings – he’s seen his role fluctuate: In the span of four weeks he’s gone from starting 10 straight games in December while RJ Barrett was injured, a stretch in which he averaged 21 minutes per game, to seeing his playing time drop to seven minutes per game in the next three.
And then finally on Friday in Boston, Agbaji’s box score line featured the dreaded DNP-CD – did not play, coach’s decision – as he didn’t leave the bench in the Raptors' loss to the Celtics, even though Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes each missed the game with injury and Barrett left the game in the fourth quarter with a sprained ankle.
The hope was that the competition for minutes among Agbaji, Gradey Dick, Ja’Kobe Walter, Jamison Battle and even the wings on two-way contracts – Alijah Martin and AJ Lawson – would elevate the group, or at least some of them, but it hasn’t really happened.
Instead, none have really separated themselves, with concern as the season reaches the midway point that the roster overlap has hurt rather than helped the young core’s development, while creating a nightly headache for Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković to find lineup combinations that work.
“It's obviously been tough. Some guys are trying to fall into that role and find their rhythm too,” Agbaji said when we spoke in Boston. “… We kind of see that and everyone in the room sees that too, and how valuable we are to the team and what we can bring to the team, so it's just a matter of knowing your role and trying to be the best at it.
“(But) I feel like our bench – our total team – yes, we play our good basketball, but I feel like there's so much more to us, individually and as a team collectively, that we just haven't shown in one game or over a span of, like, a week, or anything like that.”
It gets harder when you don’t play at all.
Agbaji not taking the floor at all on Friday night in the Raptors' loss to the Celtics amplified the speculation that is beginning to waft around the team with the Feb. 5 trade deadline approaching.
Was he being held out because a deal was in the works and the Raptors didn’t want to risk him being injured?
Per sources, that wasn’t the case, and it was a matter of Rajaković wanting to create more runway to evaluate some of the other wings that have struggled to find playing time, such as Martin, Lawson, and Battle, the second-year sharpshooter who has been further down on the depth chart than Agbaji most of the year.
Dealing with shifting roles is part of the job description in the NBA.
