Raptors add another unusual chapter to hard-luck season
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TORONTO – It was one of those games you had to see to believe, and because it aired nationally in the United States on ESPN, a lot of people saw it.
It took the Raptors more than half of the opening quarter to score a single point – the home crowd erupted when Pascal Siakam finally put them on the board at the free-throw line nearly seven minutes into Wednesday’s contest. They missed their first 15 shots and, at one point, were shooting 2-for-30.
The visiting Milwaukee Bucks weren’t much better to start. Despite hitting a mere 8.7 per cent of its first-quarter attempts, Toronto only trailed 13-12 after 12 minutes. With NBA offences soaring to new heights this season, these two clubs were setting basketball back decades, one bricked jumper at a time.
The game seemed all but over late in the fourth quarter, with Milwaukee starting to pull away and Toronto still threatening to set records for offensive ineptitude. Then, the Raptors nearly made a different kind of history. They closed regulation on a 28-7 run, erasing a 21-point deficit in just over three minutes – and a 16-point deficit in 1:14 – to force overtime.
Even Nick Nurse, whose experienced just about everything in his decades of coaching around the world, had never been a part of anything like it.
“I don’t think I’ve seen one that weird,” Toronto’s head coach said afterwards. “You guys are probably thinking the same thing: How are we anywhere within shouting distance for the first three quarters of that game with the shooting percentages? So, they really did a good job fighting on defence.”
As unusual as that game was, the end result felt familiar: another disappointing loss, their 13th over the last 18 games. In a lot of ways, those 53 minutes of basketball were an extreme encapsulation of a 2022-23 campaign that is gradually slipping away from them, another strange chapter to add to their hard-luck season.
Wednesday night had it all: the poor shooting, the unforced errors (like when Chris Boucher got crushed on a Brook Lopez screen that his teammates failed to call out), a lack of contribution from the bench (which was limited to seven points for the second straight game), and ultimately, a light at the end of the tunnel that the Raptors just couldn’t reach.
As it turned out, their incredible push to close the fourth quarter was unsustainable, especially with the starters logging major minutes. The Raptors missed nine of their 11 shots, including all four of their three-point attempts, and scored just four points in the extra period.
Once again, their defence gave them a chance. But after Grayson Allen hit the go-ahead bucket off an impressive pass from Giannis Antetokounmpo, Fred VanVleet’s last second 30-foot heave hit front rim.
“I was tired as s**t,” VanVleet said following his team’s 104-101 loss.
The veteran point guard was excellent for most of the night, finishing with 28 points, eight rebounds and 12 assists, but his game-high 47 minutes took their toll. Four of Toronto’s five starters eclipsed 40 minutes, the by-product of an underperforming bench that has been outscored 88-14 over the past two games.
There were bright spots, to be sure. Fresh off a career-best 55-point performance the night before, the Raptors held Antetokounmpo to just 30 points on 7-of-18 shooting. He also had 12 turnovers, the most that he’s ever committed. Gary Trent Jr., who scored 20 or more points for the fifth straight game, caught fire late and hit the game-tying three with less than a second left in regulation. Scottie Barnes, who went scoreless in his first 23 minutes, was also a late-game catalyst, going off for 19 points in the second half of the fourth quarter and overtime.
The Raptors did a few things really well, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the things they didn’t do well – the story of their season so far.
They’re 3-10 over the past month; only the Charlotte Hornets (3-11) have a worse record over that span. However, half of those 10 losses have come by four points or less. On the season, Toronto is a league-worst 1-7 in games decided by three points or fewer.
The 2022-23 Raptors are quickly becoming the NBA’s Charlie Brown. Each time they’re about to kick the football, something always seems to pull it away. When it’s not their shooting woes it’s their ailing and inconsistent defence. When it’s not the defence it’s a series of inopportune injuries and their lack of depth. When they’re not coughing up a late-game lead they’re expending all their energy trying to overcome a slow start and erase a big deficit, only to come up just short.
What if they got the stop or two that they needed in the waning moments of their narrow losses? What if they could find a way to get some of those would-be daggers to fall?
VanVleet has hit plenty of clutch shots over the course of his basketball career, most notably during the 2019 championship run. This year? There are 53 players with at least 25 attempts in clutch situations (in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime with the score plus or minus five points) and none of them are shooting worse than VanVleet’s 26 per cent (10-for-38).
“Sometimes, basketball is a little bit of luck too,” Siakam said earlier this week. “That luck comes with being together and being a unit and having great energy. I do believe in that, for sure.”
Effort can be the great equalizer in this game. It can help you overcome a talent disparity, lack of shooting, or any number of other deficiencies, as it often did for Toronto last season and nearly did against Milwaukee on Wednesday. Playing hard is an important part of this team’s identity, and apart from a few recent exceptions, effort hasn’t really been the issue.
“I think everybody’s well aware we’re going through a really difficult patch, maybe the most difficult path we’ve been through,” Nurse said. “They’re fighting, they’re trying to execute the game plan, and they’re hanging in there.”
The Raptors aren’t without their flaws. With the halfway point of the season approaching, the things they don’t do well or don’t have enough of have been well-documented. They’re not a great team. They might not even be a good team. But they’re also not this bad.
Their point differential (-0.2) ranks seventh in the Eastern Conference and is better than five of the 11 teams that currently sit ahead of them in the standings, including the 21-18 Indiana Pacers and the 20-19 Miami Heat. In other words, they’ve performed like a .500 team. Instead, they’re 16-22 and sit 12th in the East, a game back of the final play-in spot.
They’re also just 4.5 games behind the sixth-place New York Knicks, who they’ll host on Friday. Their hope is that they’re a win or two, or three, away from turning their luck around. At some point, they just need to catch a break.
“It’s one of those things where it’s not really one person’s fault,” VanVleet said. “Sometimes you’re a casualty of war. It’s very situational. We certainly have all got to play better as a unit, as a team, try to find ways to do that. But there’s not much finger-pointing or blaming each other because we’re all out there together and fighting together, just trying to find ways to get it done.”