Barnes leads Raptors, but Pistons win ugly, sloppy brickfest

Some days, my children wake up and decide to cause havoc. To yell (at each other), to refuse to eat, to fail to listen. To hit and throw and splash the dog’s water all over themselves. And some days they wake up and say things so kind and beautiful that my heart and soul melt into a puddle at the bottom of my chest. (Well, only one can talk, so he is the only one saying profound and lovely things.). Very often it will be the same day. 

Some days something can be hard, and some days the same thing can be easy. Very often, if something is important, it will toggle between the two from hour to hour, moment to moment. 

So, too, with basketball. 

The Toronto Raptors opened their game against the Detroit Pistons riding the struggle bus. Without Gradey Dick, who is out with a calf strain, the team toggled too slowly between actions. There was little cutting and even less of anything else. The ball stuck, and bodies were glued to the spot. 

The offence crawled to static pick and rolls, which worked sometimes, but is not playing to Toronto’s strengths. Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl did yeoman’s work, and Barnes threw some nifty pocket passes to his big, but without movement, without energy, the Pistons and their early triples ran up the score. Toronto spent a lot of time missing 3s that weren’t entirely open. 

Then things smoothed out like Darko Rajakovic drove over them with a steamroller. Not for long. But for a stretch.

RJ Barrett’s downhill driving kept Toronto alive in the first quarter. He drove left for a scoop, then drove left for a lay down to Bruno Fernando for a dunk, then drove left for a push shot. Then when Toronto’s bench entered the game, things really began to turn. 

Jamison Battle forced Malik Beasley — who had been on fire — into a weird gather on his pullup 3-pointer, which he missed, then he helped early at the rim to force a kickout after Toronto’s perimeter defence fell apart. Then Battle stripped the ball under the rim in transition. Not to be outdone, Jamal Shead entered the game and jumped on his former college teammate Marcus Sasser at halfcourt to force a jump ball, which he won. Then Shead ran a pick and roll with Fernando, snaked it, and threw a lob to Fernando for a power dunk. Mogbo caught the ball above the break in transition, jab-stepped one way, crossed the other, and exploded to the rim for a layup.

All of a sudden, energy flowed into Toronto’s veins like Zapdos was jimmying up the power plant. 

Enter Barnes.

Apparently, he was feeling his jumper. He started by dancing around above the break, spinning, then side-stepping into a pull-up triple. Which he missed. Perhaps chastened, he later passed to Davion Mitchell as he wiggled around a flare screen rather than trying to do too much, and the rock found him later in the possession for a triple. He canned it. Then another. Then another. Then he ran a pick and stepped beat his man, stepping into the big to hit a pull-up 2. 

By the time last call was announced on the half, Barnes had 20 points, including 17 in the second quarter, which is tied for the highest-scoring quarter of his career. Sure, triples are fun. More fun? A running, one-legged, fading jumper he unleashed late in the half just to show off his immaculate touch.

It wasn’t going to be a historic night, though. Not in the least. If anything, a relatively staid (read: ugly, outside of Barnes’ jumpers and the rookies’ energy) first half devolved further in the second half. Toronto’s offensive process chunked and grumbled back to its earlier stasis, and points more or less came from offensive rebounds. And then more offensive rebounds on the misses that came after those offensive rebounds. And then more offensive rebounds on the misses that came after those offensive rebounds. Rinse, repeat, until points. Or, until the Pistons finally managed to grab a rebound. At one point midway through the third, Toronto managed five offensive rebounds on one possession before Chris Boucher finally managed to dunk home a miss.

Barnes managed two points in the third quarter, coming — surprise, surprise — on a tip-in after a weirdo, clunky, Poeltl step-through sweeping lefty hook as he attacked Jalen Duren. Duren was sagging deep off of Poeltl in delay action, which can really gum up Toronto’s offensive process. (Poeltl really needs to improve on attacking that space with the intention of creating his own points.) And eventually, that mud allowed Detroit to crawl back into the game.

Slop defined the game more than anything else. Toronto managed 20 points in the fourth quarter, virtually all of them from Barnes and Barrett. Players clogged the paint. Fouls were called, many many fouls. Mogbo picked up his dribble frequently when trying to toggle through handoff actions. Ochai Agbaji fumbled the ball away on easy passes. Players missed layups, and others picked up offensive fouls trying to chase the rebounds. Poeltl tried to throw away an inbound pass after a Pistons’ tip-in. There was a double foul called, then a double technical. Barrett and Barrett scored late, but mostly with brute force rather than guile, and Barrett also threw a layup attempt over the top of the backboard. And slowly, slowly Detroit crept into the front. Until the Pistons won on a Jaden Ivey buzzer-beating floater.

Barnes was the best player in the game, and the biggest, non-Duren category. He snatched offensive rebounds like a madman (Duren was the only Piston to have more defensive rebounds than Barnes had offensive) and kept Toronto’s beater in the lead against Detroit’s … equally junked up vehicle. Until the very end. But the flare and the flash from his three quick successive triples vanished early, and all that remained was grinding effort. That was not enough.

Look: Sometimes basketball games will be ugly. When neither team can shoot a lick, and guys are dribbling off their feet, and both teams are missing starters, sometimes the team with more scoring guards (by a score of 1-0, Ivey all by his lonesome) wins. Such games aren’t so much a step forward as they are a step … somewhere … one preceded by steps, and followed by steps. The NBA season is a marathon, and this was one leg. No more, no less. Basketball, like parenting, is full of such events. Unremarkable ones. Those are the building blocks of so much of our lives.

Perhaps the most important component was that Barnes was the best player. That’s a small victory encased in an ugly, forgettable loss, but it’s something. In a game like this, a mud fight, sometimes small victories are the only thing you can take home.

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