Raptors’ continued shooting woes result in another tough loss

TORONTO – Fred VanVleet couldn’t have asked for a better look to tie the game, and while the Raptors’ point guard was excellent on the night, his missed three-pointer was a fitting end to another tough loss.

After splitting a pair of free throws to open the door for Toronto, Kings’ star De’Aaron Fox collided with VanVleet on an inbounds play in the dying seconds of Wednesday’s game. With Sacramento leading by three points and his defender hitting the deck, VanVleet’s wide-open turnaround jumper clanked off the back of the rim and bounced out.

Overall, the Raptors did a number of things well. They got off to a great start. They got into the paint and attacked the rim, seemingly at will. They got big, bounce-back performances from VanVleet and Scottie Barnes, who have both struggled of late. But, on a night in which they hit just six three-pointers and were outscored by 33 points from beyond the arc, their continued shooting woes did them in again.

“That’s pretty much the game right there,” VanVleet said following the 124-123 defeat. “It could have went either way. Obviously, if I make the shot then we go to overtime and it’s a coin flip, but there are ways to take care of your business. We had multiple double-digit leads throughout the game and we just didn’t capitalize and didn’t finish. So we’ve gotta be better, for sure.”

The Raptors came in as the league’s worst three-point shooting team over the past month. With VanVleet at the forefront of their team-wide slump – he’s shooting 22 per cent over the last eight games – they made a concerted effort to find other ways of putting the ball in the basket.

While Pascal Siakam drained the club’s first attempt from long range, the bulk of their scoring came inside of the arc. It worked for a while. Toronto scored on its first seven possessions and led 31-23 after the opening quarter. They were up by as many as 16 points in the first half.

But as well as they played through stretches, this wasn’t one of those nights where you shrug and simply say, “the other team got hot.” This was a deserved loss. The Kings shot a good, but not great 37 per cent from deep. However, most of their 17 made threes were wide open. More and more as the night went on, the Raptors struggled to rotate and close out on Sacramento’s shooters. As their defence fell apart and they began trading twos for threes, it was only a matter of time until the pendulum swung. It’s simple math.

Even on the second night of a back-to-back, the Kings – one of the league’s best early-season surprises – chipped away at their deficit and, by the fourth quarter, it was the Raptors who were playing catch-up.

On a rare off night for Siakam, who finished with 19 points on 7-for-19 shooting and missed consecutive layups late in the fourth, VanVleet and Barnes kept them in it. VanVleet is still searching for his jumper – he was 2-for-8 from three – but shot 11-for-17 inside of the arc and a perfect 11-for-11 at the line, finishing with a season-high 39 points.

Despite three fourth quarter turnovers that he lamented afterwards, this was Barnes’ best game in weeks. He was aggressive and, mostly, made the right reads. He even knocked down a couple threes, including a contested corner jumper to pull within one point with three minutes remaining.

“I feel like we should have won this one tonight,” said Barnes, who recorded 27 points, seven rebounds and 10 assists. “We’re just trying to stay positive.”

Having dropped three games in a row – their longest skid of the season – and six of their last eight, the Raptors are now 13-15 on the campaign. They’re confident that they can turn their fortunes around, but that’s easier said than done.

They’ve now hit fewer than 30 per cent of their three-pointers in six of their last eight games, including four straight, and have been outscored by 78 points from long range over that stretch. This isn’t ‘90s basketball, where you could grind out low-scoring contests. Shooting is paramount in today’s game. In 2022, it’s tough to win without it.

Wednesday’s loss was the second straight game in which the Raptors hit just six three-pointers. Teams that make six or fewer threes have gone 74-197 over the past three seasons.

With VanVleet mired in a prolonged slump, Gary Trent Jr. navigating and up and down season, and O.G. Anunoby out of the lineup – he’ll miss at least another week with a hip injury – the Raptors don’t have enough shooting on the floor, and they know it. Their 21 attempts against Sacramento were a season low.

“There's only so much you can do if you got [Thaddeus Young] and Chris [Boucher] and Christian [Koloko] and some of those funky lineups [out there],” VanVleet said. “Those guys aren’t really hunting the threes. So there's times when there’s not going to be as many threes generated and there’s lineups where we can find other ways to create those shots. But it certainly helps when they go in, it makes it easier to generate them. So we gotta shoot better. We gotta keep creating them and keep attempting them. It’s hard to win in this league every night if you’re not making threes.”