The Raptors have to get shameless to avoid the East play-in

If the Toronto Raptors remain committed to maximizing their lottery odds for the 2025 NBA Draft, they'll have to keep the league's easiest remaining schedule and the sad state of the Eastern Conference's bottom half from getting in their way.

It says something about that conference's pathetic play-in race that neither an 8-31 start nor an 18-42 record through 60 games could bury the Raptors. Now the organization's decision-makers will have to spend the final 20 games of the season finding creative ways to avoid victory while the players they employ fight for their postseason lives.

Tuesday's fourth quarter in Orlando might as well have been a preview of the Raptors' final quarter-season. Already missing starter Gradey Dick due to a knee injury, the Raptors benched fellow starters Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley, and Jakob Poeltl down the stretch of a close game against the eighth-place Magic.

Quickley was replaced by rookie Jamal Shead with 9:43 remaining and the Raptors leading 87-78. With Toronto up 10 at the 8:07 mark, Poeltl was replaced by Orlando Robinson, who joined the team via a 10-day contract in January and only had his contract converted to a standard deal this week. (The Raptors say Poeltl is on a minutes restriction after returning from a hip injury last week.) Barnes, the cornerstone of the Raptors' rebuild and the team's biggest two-way force, exited the game for good with 7:49 remaining and Toronto up nine.

When the sputtering Magic proved incapable of grabbing the game being handed to them, Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic doubled down by replacing RJ Barrett with recent two-way signee Jared Rhoden. That left Toronto to close out the final 1:37 of what had become a one-possession game with Rhoden, Robinson, Shead, rookie guard Ja'Kobe Walter, and two-way player (and Toronto native) A.J. Lawson.

Yet the Raptors still left Orlando with their 20th win of the season and a road sweep of the Magic after a couple of timely jumpers from Lawson and a miraculous 3-pointer from Walter. The unlikely victory moved Toronto within four games of the 10th-place Bulls.

If you thought that fourth-quarter lineup tinkering was a shameless display of tanking, then, to quote a 50-year-old Canadian classic, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

The Raptors will have to be even more intentional in the pursuit of defeat down the stretch, consequences and ridicule be damned. Their next four games - all at home - come against the 15-46 Jazz, the league-worst 11-49 Wizards (twice), and the 21-40 76ers, who opened the season as championship hopefuls but have since shifted to lottery-focused tankers. Philadelphia, which only keeps its 2025 first-round pick if it falls in the top six, has shut down former MVP Joel Embiid for the remainder of the season. Meanwhile, Sixers star guard Tyrese Maxey is currently sidelined by a back injury.

The Raptors' next road game comes in Utah against the aforementioned Jazz. That kicks off a tough four-game trip, but if the Raptors steal an unexpected victory or two, they may very well find themselves in the driver's seat for the last Eastern Conference play-in spot no one actually wants. Five of the club's final 20 games come against the three teams standing between them and 10th place, and neither Philadelphia, Brooklyn, nor Chicago is any more inclined to chase a postseason berth than Toronto is (though the Bulls can always be enticed by the lure of extra revenue).

It's an incredibly awkward spot for the organization to find itself in. Though team president Masai Ujiri once famously asked, "Play-in for what?" there's a difference between making the postseason's pre-playoff tournament as a team of over-the-hill veterans and an upstart squad like this year's Raptors. Still, Ujiri and Co. surely understand that Toronto needs another impact talent, like the prospective stars who'll headline this year's draft class.

Between the growth of the team's youngsters, the addition of Brandon Ingram, and some offseason tinkering, the Raptors could soar up the Eastern Conference standings next season. But lottery luck could take them to another stratosphere, somewhere no amount of play-in or first-round playoff experience could catapult them. And banking on a play-in loser to win the lottery two years in a row seems like a fool's errand.

Rajakovic's decisions down the stretch in Orlando showed the team's brain trust understands that. Whether a feisty crop of youngsters, a soft schedule, and the rest of their sorry conference cooperate is another matter.

Joseph Casciaro is theScore's lead Raptors and NBA reporter.