Margin for error shrinking as undermanned Raptors suffer another loss

TORONTO – Nick Nurse was searching for answers to begin the second half of Friday’s game against Orlando, a running theme all night and over the course of what must have felt like a very long week.
 
Looking up and down his shortened bench, he tried to find a unit, any unit that could keep pace offensively. Chris Boucher replaced the struggling Khem Birch to start the third quarter. Yuta Watanabe got a look in the fourth. Where could they find some scoring punch? Who was going to hit a shot?
 
“It was pretty tough tonight,” Toronto’s head coach said after his team’s 103-97 loss to the Magic. “It was tough spacing-wise out there, for sure, but I thought we missed a ton of opportunities at the basketball too, and it’s not like there weren’t shot opportunities out there.”
 
If the Raptors learned anything from a busy and disappointing first week back to work, it’s that their margin for error is even smaller than they had thought.
 
They played six games in the span of eight days coming off the all-star break, all of them without one of their three-best players and most of them without another, and the results ran the gamut. In the middle, were a pair of spirited wins over Brooklyn, sandwiched between two blowout losses to teams directly behind them in the East standings and a couple of ugly defeats at the hands of the conference’s two-worst clubs.
 
The common denominator throughout: their defensive effort and focus had to be at the highest of levels to make up for a glaring lack of shooting on the floor. When it wasn’t, they were in trouble, regardless of opponent.
 
On Thursday, they used some late-game pressure defence to outscore Detroit 34-18 over the final 14 minutes, but couldn’t overcome an 18-point hole, losing their sixth straight meeting with the lowly Pistons and their former coach, Dwane Casey. They nearly engineered another comeback the following night, but once again, they came up just short. Between them, the Pistons and Magic have a combined record of 33-95 and rank 29th and 28th, respectively, in offensive efficiency.
 
On the surface, these seem like inexplicable losses for a Raptors team that, at 34-29, intends to make a playoff push over the final 19 games of the season. Less so when you consider what they currently have to work with.
 
At or close to full strength, and when they lean heavily on their best players, they’ve shown they can compete with anybody – they’re 12-6 with all five of their regular starters available, and 12-3 since January 1. Remove a piece or two, and they’ve looked ordinary, at best.
 
This is not a team that’s built to withstand the absence of a key offensive player, let alone two. So, naturally, with Fred VanVleet nursing a nagging knee injury that’s cost him the last four games and OG Anunoby’s fractured finger keeping him out of the last six contests, they’ve struggled to score. Ideal floor spacing has been hard to come by for most of the campaign, with only three reliable three-point shooting threats on the roster. Now, subtract two of them while the third, Gary Trent Jr., is mired in a brutal slump, and the result has been predictable.
 
The Raptors shot 19-for-63 from beyond the arc on this recent back-to-back. If you exclude Monday’s 36-point win over Brooklyn, in which they got hot and hit 47 per cent of their threes, they’ve shot 30 per cent.
 
Trent missed all nine of his three-point attempts on Friday, and shot 3-for-24 in the back-to-back losses. Since the break, he’s 10-for-46 (22 per cent) from long range. As helpful as some mid-season time off can be for players who need the rest, this might be the other side of that equation. Prior to all-star, Trent seemingly couldn’t miss, hitting 46 per cent of his threes over a 13-game stretch. Many of the shots he’s missed this week were good looks, looks that he was hitting last month. It’s taking a little while to get his rhythm back, but with VanVleet and Anunoby sidelined, and without much shooting depth behind them, this is an inopportune time for a slump.
 
“We just didn't seem to come out that good out of the all-star break and I don't know what to attribute that to,” Nurse said. “Maybe too much rest? What's that old saying? Body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest?”
 
Pascal Siakam and Malachi Flynn, one of the lone bright spots this week, carried Toronto offensively against the Magic. Combined, the two scored 54 points on 20-for-34 shooting, including 6-for-10 from long range. Everyone else totalled 43 points on 17-of-59 from the field and 6-for-27 from three.
 
Nobody could get it going. Birch scored one point in nine first-half minutes before being benched in the second half, and could be in danger of losing his starting job, or at least he should be. Scottie Barnes, who’s been playing well of late, was quiet and went 4-for-15 from the floor. Watanabe shot an air ball from the corner on his first attempt and was limited to just three points in 12 minutes, but he did give the team a much-needed jolt of energy and ended up playing the entire fourth quarter.
 
By then, it was too late. It’s not like Orlando was shooting the lights out either. The Magic went 38 per cent from the field and 11-for-37 from distance, but credit to them, they took the Raptors far enough out of their comfort zone. Toronto didn’t generate enough turnovers or transition opportunities to capitalize on Orlando’s poor shooting. Their defence wasn’t good enough to make up for the obvious offensive shortcomings. Recently, that’s been the case more often than not.
 
The schedule eases up a bit, just in terms of the sheer volume of games they’ve faced of late. Still, eight of their next nine contests come on the road. The plan is for VanVleet and Anunoby to travel with the team on the upcoming six-game trip, but it’s not entirely clear when either of them will be back on the floor.
 
Tests have revealed no structural damage to VanVleet’s knee, according to the club, but it’s a lingering thing that he’s been dealing with since before the break, so they’re hoping it’ll heal with some rest. They’re also opting for caution with Anunoby. The small fracture in the ring finger on his shooting hand is trending in the right direction, according to the hand specialist he saw in Los Angeles earlier this week, and should be fully healed in a couple weeks. Theoretically, he could play through the pain, like he was doing ahead of the all-star break and before they diagnosed the fracture, but that would prolong the healing process, so they’ve shut him down, likely until after they get back from the trip in mid-March.
 
If the Raptors are going to make a push for a guaranteed playoff spot – they’re two games behind sixth-place Cleveland, who they’ll visit on Sunday – or even hold off Brooklyn, Atlanta and Charlotte for the top seed in the play-in tournament, they’ll have to find a way to tread water until they’re back to full strength. As this past week has shown, that’s not going to be easy.