A lot can change game to game in an NBA season. For the Toronto Raptors, there was a bit of a pattern over the weekend. It started when they played the LA Lakers on Thursday night, losing by a buzzer-beater shot assisted by LeBron James. It wasn’t necessarily a bad loss, but after the game, Darko Rajakovic was adamant that exhaustion from a busy schedule cannot be an excuse for not giving 100% effort.
Then came Friday night’s game, less than 24 hours after Darko’s comments about effort and exhaustion.
The Raptors looked truly gassed on the court, losing a rough game to the Charlotte Hornets. After that game, Darko was a little less lenient in his stance on being tired. He said after the game that he was proud of his guys for truly trying, but that they were tired. Maybe not an excuse for losing that badly to Charlotte, but definitely a factor in their performance.
The Raptors then had just one day off before they were back for an early afternoon game on Sunday. Darko was asked about exhaustion again, this time as it pertained to Brandon Ingram’s sudden decrease in output. Again, Darko’s stance lightened, saying he was feeling the fatigue, it looked like we were feeling the fatigue (funny but true), and clearly, the team was too. They had to push past it, though.
The team’s philosophy is all about being 1% better every day. When Darko was asked what 1% better looks like today, especially after a game like Friday’s, he talked about the conversations the team had today. There was no time for practice or even a shootaround between games, given that the NBA calls for a mandatory day off after back-to-backs and today’s game was so early. Darko did say that the team had a productive film session on Sunday morning, focusing on the little improvements they could make to improve from their performance on Friday night. What else can you do when RJ Barrett is still out, and there isn’t really time to make other adjustments?
Tired or not, the Raptors’ start against the Celtics was not good. They were not taking care of the basketball, racking up turnovers and not making the shots they were getting. Three of those early turnovers were on Ingram alone, and the Raptors were lucky that those only resulted in 4 points for Boston. It got uglier fast, though, with the Celtics shooting the Raptors out of the building and the Raptors themselves not doing much defensively to stop them.
“I think we got back to ourselves in the second half,” Jamal Shead said after the game”. “That wasn’t us in the first half, no excuses for that.”
Toronto was not able to match the physicality of the Celtics, unable to keep up with their 56.6% shooting from the field in the first half (compared to the Raptors’ 46.7% shooting), and had double the amount of turnovers in the first half as well. Gradey Dick played 7.5 minutes in the first half, making zero shooting attempts in that time despite the Celtics cooking the Raptors on perimeter shooting.
In the third quarter, the Raptors came back with a little more intensity, bringing the game back within 6 points by the end of the quarter. There was more effort being put into defence, Ingram had recovered from his rough scoring drought from this week, and both Agbaji and Mamukelashvili were providing good contributions off the bench.
Suddenly, it was a game, and the Raptors were switching leads with the Celtics. As usual, Scottie Barnes came alive in the fourth quarter. He’s been playing at an All-Star, hell, even All-NBA level this season, but he just hit another level in the fourth quarter. As Darko put it earlier this year, “Scottie turns into a monster in the fourth quarter.”
Ingram got going in this game as well, better than he has all week. He scored 30 points on 11-for-20 shooting and didn’t get any additional turnovers in the second half.
Ultimately, it wasn’t enough. Some really frustrating no-calls on the Celtics mixed with some really bad offensive decisions from the Raptors led Boston to extend the lead yet again. Toronto did a good job on defence down the stretch, though, and overall, the game didn’t end as badly as it started. Hard to recover from playing so poorly in the first half. It was nice, however, to see them be able to turn things around midgame instead of giving up. They need to work on making that something that doesn’t have to be done, though.
Boston took this game 121-113, their fifth consecutive win and the Raptors’ third consecutive loss.
“They were not the same guys [from the first to the second half],” Darko said after the game. “I demanded more urgency from this team.”
“We need every single player on this team to step on the floor and contribute,” he continued, when asked about how they are managing with injuries and absences, but also with fatigue and varying output from players in this stretch.
The more we see this team play 1) without RJ Barrett and 2) without a solid backup big man who is 7-feet tall, the more you see the cracks. They aren’t bad overall, but without a backup big (especially with Poeltl still recovering/struggling with his back), you can’t compete with bigs like Boston’s Queta. Then, with Barrett, you don’t have a guy who can get physical and get a few quick buckets when you need them.
“Barrett is incredibly important to this team, but he’s not here; we need to figure it out without him,” Darko said about missing Barrett’s output on the court.
Darko did say we would get an update on Barrett tomorrow. He’s been around and walking, so hopefully the update isn’t terrible. He’s been, funny enough, poking his head into the media room after games to say hello, but knows he can’t say anything about his condition. That’s how you know a guy really misses playing: he wants to come say hi to the media.
I really don’t think this team is bad. Maybe they aren’t 2nd in the East good, either, but it’s not the time to catastrophize. It’s time to make a plan to improve these subtle missing pieces. Get a backup 7-footer, get Barrett healthy, maybe try to figure out the shooting situation — but that doesn’t feel like a pressing matter if the real problem is missing Barrett. Wait until he gets back, see if his absence is truly the problem it seems to be, and go from there.
“Never get too high, never get too low,” Shead said after the game about how the team stays positive through these stretches of ups and downs.
They’ll need that mindset as they look ahead to the NBA Cup QFs game against the Knicks on Tuesday. When asked how you look forward to that game after some losses, Ingram said he’d tell the team to remember how they performed against the Knicks the last time. If you remember, they lost (pretty badly), and Ingram thinks that keeping that in mind will motivate them to do better on Tuesday.
Shead says they need to go into the game with a chip on their shoulder, with something to prove. They know they have what it takes to get some good wins (that win streak was good for confidence as much as it was for their record). It won’t be easy, especially if Barrett is ruled out again.
The Raptors aren’t counting themselves out yet, though.
