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.
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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.
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Last year, Agbaji, the 14th pick in the 2022 draft, who Toronto acquired midway through the 2023-24 season, averaged a career-best 10.4 points per game and connected on 39.9 per cent of his threes while showing the willingness to fill the role as a primary wing defender.
This year, a season-long shooting slump has him converting just 17.1 per cent of his threes – a crucial swing skill for an off-ball wing. No level of defence can compensate for that kind of shooting at his position.
There’s a chicken-and-egg element to the whole thing: is Agbaji’s shooting off because his playing time is down (15.8 minutes per game compared to 27.2 minutes per game last season), or his playing time being dialled back because of his on-court performance?
In his 10 starts, Agbaji shot 25 per cent from three, although the Raptors did go 5-5 over the same stretch.
And then there’s his contract status.
At certain stages of a player’s career arc in the NBA, a player’s contract can define them as much as anything else they do on the court.
Because the Raptors didn’t offer him an extension this past summer, he’s a pending free agent in the final year of his rookie contract, which pays him $6.3 million this season.
Because of the Raptors’ current pay structure, with five players – their ideal starters – earning between $19.5 and $38.6 million and nearly everyone else on rookie deals or minimum contracts, Agbaji’s contract is the one that gets rolled into almost any hypothetical trade that requires salary matching.
But the hypothetical could turn real any time now.
The Raptors are actively scanning the market for potential centre depth – something that could take on added urgency if Poeltl’s back woes continue to linger.
He’s missed all but six minutes of the Raptors’ last 12 games, and although he’s been cleared to ramp up his conditioning with an eye toward returning to the lineup sometime this week, momentum on that front has stalled.
Poeltl told me his workout in Boston on Thursday was just “so-so” and – per sources – it wasn’t much more encouraging on Friday. That can turn around quickly, but the unpredictability of it all underlines the need for another big man on the roster.
Where Agbaji comes into the picture is that it will be difficult to acquire virtually any player making more than a minimum salary without including his contract in a deal.
Just by way of example, one option the sources say Toronto has considered is Orlando Magic centre Gogo Bitadze, who might be available when Mo Wagner returns from his knee injury. The Magic will likely be looking to shed some salary as they will project to be well into the luxury tax next season when Paolo Banchero’s max deal hits their books.
But Bitadze makes $8.3 million this season. Including Agjaji’s contract, and another minimum deal, is the most realistic way to meet the salary-matching requirement for a trade.
Agbaji doesn’t spend his free time with his laptop open, going through salary cap minutiae, but he understands the realities of the league’s business side.
“That chaos is going to be here every year,” he said. “Trade talks, whatever it is around this time that chaos happens, but really I’m just trying to stay focused on my craft, staying focused on trying to get better … just trying to make those improvements game by game.
“At the end of the day, it’s sort of out of your control, what you can say and do about that,” he said. “There’s that business aspect that’s part of this profession, that we’re all aware of, that’s how it is. Everyone knows it’s going to be weird or different around this time when moves are being made, if changes are being made at all.”
Helping him as he navigates what has been a challenging season on the floor, and one that could get more uncertain in the coming weeks, is his off-court support network, which now includes Valley.
“My friends, my family, my wife, really, everyone that’s kind in my support system,” he said. “It’s not like they’re coming to me and feeding me lies or feeding me bulls— or anything like that. It’s been straight up and straightforward and consistent and real. So having those people in place is just definitely a big help in (dealing with) the day-in and day-out in the NBA.”
