Play-in tournament inevitable for Raptors after loss to Cleveland

Josh Lewenberg

TSN Raptors Reporter

Follow| Archive

TORONTO – Nick Nurse isn’t likely to forget about the Raptors’ last trip to Cleveland any time soon. That’s the kind of experience that tends to stick with a head coach, even one who’s seen an awful lot in his three decades around the sport.

It came on Boxing Day, just after Toronto’s roster was decimated by a team-wide COVID outbreak. With 10 regulars out of the lineup and four emergency signees joining the club ahead of the game, half of his eight available players met each other on the bus ride over to the arena.

“I do remember that, it was a lot of fun” Nurse said in jest, looking back at that night and what turned out to be a predictable 144-99 blowout loss to the Cavaliers.

With the Raptors back in Ohio for Sunday’s game – an important one in the very tight Eastern Conference standings – that loss in late December seemed relevant again. If nothing else, it brought some much-needed perspective.

This time, they only had to introduce one new teammate ahead of tip off.

They were already without a couple of key starters, Fred VanVleet and OG Anunoby, when they found out that emerging sophomore point guard Malachi Flynn would miss time due to a hamstring strain. So, with less than 24 hours to go before taking on the Cavs, they called Armoni Brooks, who was in Atlanta playing for the G League’s College Park Skyhawks, and told him to get on the first flight to Cleveland.

Toronto needed to cut the injured D.J. Wilson’s 10-day contract short to bring Brooks in, also on a 10-day. He arrived in time to go through shoot around with his new team Sunday morning, and even got in the game for five scoreless minutes to open the fourth quarter.

“We’ve been moving pieces around like crazy anyway,” Nurse said. “Might as well move another one, right?”

It could always be worse, as the Raptors know, but this was going to be a tall order. Here were two slumping teams – Toronto came in having lost six of its last nine games, while Cleveland had dropped six of seven – fighting for one guaranteed playoff spot. However, one club was faced with the unenviable task of trying to steal an unlikely win on the road with minimal shooting and no traditional point guards on the floor.

It wasn’t for a lack of effort. The guys that were out there fought hard and made a game of it in the end, cutting a deficit that was once as large as 18 points down to five in the final minutes. But it’s tough to win in this league without shooting, playmaking and depth.

The Raptors had 12 players available on Sunday. 11 of them logged at least three minutes. Ten of them took at least one shot. Only six players scored, and four of them had 83 of the team’s 96 points on the night. Overall, they hit just six of their 24 three-point attempts and were outscored 33-18 from beyond the arc. They shot 25-for-55 from inside the paint, including an abysmal 13-for-34 in the first half, and 16-for-26 from the free throw line. They went nearly seven minutes without a field goal to close the third quarter.

“We just had a couple stretches where things really didn’t go our way, but we kept fighting our way back in there,” Nurse said following his team’s 104-96 loss. “We kept battling and that’s a credit to our guys, to keep playing. I thought they gave everything they had tonight.”

In the absence of VanVleet and Flynn, the Raptors started big, with Pascal Siakam, Chris Boucher and Khem Birch in the frontcourt and Scottie Barnes as the acting point guard next to Gary Trent Jr. in the backcourt. Although Siakam handled a large share of the playmaking duties, as he usually does, Nurse wanted to get Barnes more reps as primary ball handler. It’s a role he’s filled before, mostly as a reserve in college last year and here and there throughout his rookie season, but this was his chance to do it as a starter.

They had a tough time generating offence out of the gate. It took more than eight minutes for them to record their first assist of the night – a Boucher layup from Dalano Banton late in the opening quarter – but that’s a reflection of poor shooting as much or more than the lack of ball movement. You’re not getting an assist if nobody can hit a shot. Barnes and Siakam were doing their best to push the pace and get the Raptors into their sets, but there was very little space to operate in the half court – a running theme while VanVleet and Anunoby have been out, made even worse without Flynn, who had been playing the best basketball of his young career.

In seven games since the all-star break – all of them without Anunoby and the last five without VanVleet – Toronto is hitting 9.4 threes per game (29th in the NBA over that stretch) on 33 per cent shooting (26th in the league). It was hardly a surprise to see the Cavs break out their zone defence as often as they did on Sunday. The Raptors simply couldn’t beat it.

All things considered, Siakam is doing everything he can, despite drawing more defensive attention than he is to. He followed up an admirable 34-point performance in Friday’s loss to the last-place Magic with 24 points against Cleveland, although he missed six of his 13 free-throw attempts. Barnes was solid in spite of some defensive lapses, finishing with 19 points, 12 rebounds and six assists in his 42 minutes. Trent’s shooting slump continued; he was 2-for-8 from long distance and is hitting just 22 per cent of his threes since the break, but looked better overall, scoring 19. Boucher had 21 points in his spot start and helped fuel the late-game rally with his energy.

“I think we came in and knew what was at stake [and] obviously they did too,” Boucher said. “It’s two good teams playing for good position in the playoffs. Kudos to them, we tried to make runs, and they fought back. That’s a good team too. It was a fun game. Obviously we would have liked to have the win, but there’s only so much you can do.”

Once again, the Raptors were a victim of circumstance in a loss to Cleveland, and this one feels especially costly. With a win, Toronto would have pulled within one game of sixth place. Instead, the Cavs cushion for sixth grew to three games. They’ll also win the season series (they lead 3-0, with the final meeting coming in Toronto later this month) and take the tiebreaker.

Whatever chance the Raptors had of earning a guaranteed spot in the playoffs and avoiding the play-in tournament took a major hit on Sunday. The red-hot Celtics, who beat Brooklyn in a thriller earlier in the day, have won 14 of their last 16 games. They’ve got the best point differential in the conference, the league’s top-ranked defence since January 1, and have looked like a legitimate contender atop the East, on par with Miami, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Chicago.

Of the East’s top-six, the young Cavs, who have started to look vulnerable of late, seemed like the team that could be pushed out. It’s still doable, if the Raptors can get healthy and go on a run. With a couple more days to rest his wonky knee, the hope is that VanVleet will be ready to go in San Antonio on Wednesday. Anunoby could be back when the team returns home from its six-game road trip in about 10 days, at which point the plan is for Flynn to be re-evaluated. That all-star big man Jarrett Allen is expected to miss some time for Cleveland after fracturing his finger in the first half of Sunday’s game could make things interesting. Even still, with 18 regular season games to go, it’s a long shot, at best.

After Sunday’s loss, the Raptors seem destined for the play-in tournament, and given how competitive the East has been this year, that’s not going to be an easy path. To earn their way into the playoffs, they’ll likely need to beat one of, or perhaps two of Brooklyn (a sleeping giant if they’ve got Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons on the floor at this time next month), Charlotte and Atlanta (a couple teams that they lost to by a combined 59 points last week).