To suggest that Yuta Watanabe and Stanley Johnson were unknown commodities when the NBA season began is an overstatement.
There were very much “other” guys at the end of the Raptors roster, the former a guy on a two-way contract whose biggest contribution was expected to be with the G League Raptors 905 and the latter someone who barely got off the bench a year ago, someone who was expected to be kept around mainly for the salary-cap ballast he might provide at the trade deadline.
But here they are, two key contributors off the bench — Watanabe as a frontcourt backup despite size limitations and Johnson as a multi-faceted swingman who plays all over the court.