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Kelly Olynyk has seen a lot of things over his 11 seasons in the NBA, but nothing like what is currently going on with the Toronto Raptors.
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Toronto won three straight games coming out of the NBA’s all-star break to ignite hopes of reaching the play-in and potentially the playoffs beyond that, only to then see most of the team’s key players get forced out of the lineup either due to injuries or personal matters.
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Franchise player Scottie Barnes broke his hand at the beginning of March and then had surgery. Starting centre Jakob Poeltl underwent surgery on his hand nearly three weeks ago. Backup spark plug Chris Boucher partially tore his MCL in his right knee days later. More recently, tragedy befell the Barrett family and leading scorer RJ Barrett has understandably been away from the team. Then the run continued with starting point guard Immanuel Quickley, who had been playing the best basketball of his career, also getting sidelined due to personal reasons
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Which is why Olynyk could only shake his head when asked if he could recall a similar situation when he was with Boston, Miami, Houston, Detroit or Utah.
“Probably not to this extent, obviously,” Olynyk told Postmedia in the Raptors locker room after the team fell to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday.
“It’s almost comical at some points where you’re just like, ‘What do we have like seven rotation players out?’ It’s really, really tough,” Olynyk said.
Making it all more difficult is the fact that the full strength Raptors barely got a chance to learn how to play with each other, with so many arriving via three significant trades this season.
“After all the moves and stuff, now we have a group of guys who have never played together and now you have no continuity,” Olynyk said.
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