The Raptors look slow, lost, disinterested against Wizards
It was a little bit awkward when, in university, my boss and my friend (and roommate) broke up. I worked at the campus radio station running a daily talk show. I was at the station every day storyboarding, chasing interviews, recording, working, hanging out. Radio life.
So it was something of a surprise when, on Valentine’s Day, my boss started her show that day with a tirade about my friend. I didn’t know they had broken up. But she went into some detail about the event and his emotional failings, and she had topical breakup songs to go with it.
All I could think was, ‘what a pro.’
It was great radio. But she didn’t want to be there, especially on Valentine’s Day. She didn’t want to be anywhere but at home in bed, crying. But she trooped her way down to work, picked up the mic, and churned out a pretty fantastic show.
The Toronto Raptors could have learned something from my old boss. In a game against the Washington Wizards that clearly didn’t have the full attention of those Raptors that were available, the team couldn’t hunker down and churn out a pretty fantastic show. In fact, it couldn’t do much of anything other than placidly watch the worst team in the league splatter Toronto’s dignity all over the hardwood.
The Raptors can’t win by out-talenting anyone, especially down RJ Barrett and Jakob Poeltl. They have to win on the glass, in the possession battle, by deciding the tempo battle in transition and especially the half court.
None of that happened. The Raptors didn’t force enough turnovers, or clean their own glass, or take care of the ball well enough, or hit the offensive glass. As a result, they attempted the same number of shots as the Wizards in the first half, 50 apiece. That’s more or less fine, until you realize that Washington is the worst team in the league by point differential per 100 possessions, and it is particularly bad at winning the possession battle.
Failing to get more shooting possessions than your opponent opens you up to the whims of variance. And variance was a real kick in the pants for Toronto in that first half. Kyshawn George and CJ McCollum cooked Toronto in isolation, splashing jumpers in midrange, hitting step-backs and pull-ups, and generally hitting very, very tough looks. And that’s life! But a good team wouldn’t have let the Wizards’ hot shooting decide the game. Instead the Raptors went the opposite way and simply decide to replace Washington’s hard (but converted) shots with easy ones in the second half. They died on screens and didn’t rotate. They didn’t help at the rim and got lost in transition. It got ugly.
In the third quarter, Ochai Agbaji seemed to .. fall (?) as he was inbounding the ball and simply gave the ball away to Bilal Coulibaly. Agbaji allowed a completely uncontested blowby on the next defensive possession, and nobody stepped in to help at the rim. When Toronto did force a turnover, it wasn’t able to use such possessions to its advantage. Brandon Ingram airballed a triple in transition on one such look.
Ja’Kobe Walter drove for a layup then gave up a blowby for a Washington layup on the next possession. Back cuts decimated Toronto’s defensive shell. Barnes left late in the third quarter to head back to the locker room after appearing to injure himself, though he returned in the fourth quarter to play. He immediately missed on a drive then got lost as the screener defender in pick and roll, giving up an uncontested dunk to Marvin Bagley.
The offence really was fine, though. At least until late when everything stopped working. For most of the game, Ingram scored with relative ease whenever he so desired. Sandro Mamukelashvili was fantastic, hitting everything. Immanuel Quickley got red-hot from deep for a stretch. Gradey Dick wasn’t hitting, but he threw multiple impressive passes behind him on the drive to strong-corner shooters. (How far has the bar fallen that ‘he made a nice pass!’ is now worth mentioning for Dick?) Jamal Shead and Ja’Kobe Walter each hit multiple triples off the bench. But Toronto couldn’t string together stops, and it was not nearly consistent enough at grabbing the rebound on those rare occasions it did force a miss. It didn’t make a point of running in transition to catalyze runs.
And so there weren’t enough runs. It was a completely unprofessional output, one in which Toronto consistently seemed to shrug during each quarter, saying, ‘meh, we’ll make our run next quarter.’ Next shift. Next half. The Raptors aren’t good enough to defer success. They aren’t good enough to expect a switch to flip at some point, no matter who their opponent is. And instead of the switch flipping in the fourth quarter, the wheels fell off the vehicle, as Washington stretched its lead enough to make the final minutes academic.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Raptors were hungover on the day after Christmas. That’s pretty normal, and certainly nothing to criticize anyone for, but it’s no excuse. My boss was probably hungover on her Valentine’s Day radio show. Plenty of us have to live our lives with hangovers, with nagging injuries, with frustrations. We still do our jobs. The Raptors did their jobs by the letter of the law, in that they physically were present at Capitol One Arena playing a game of basketball in exchange for money. But they did not do their jobs in the spiritual sense, in that they lost to the worst team in the NBA. Without ever really putting up much of a fight.
In a season full of roller coaster highs and lows, the Raptors failed to build on what seemed to be truly positive momentum in their last outing. Now that step forward looks like something of a mirage, and Toronto simply can’t get traction on the season right now. The Raptors need to find a way to keep rolling that boulder up the hill. Now after a dreadful loss, far from the team’s only one of the season, the Raptors will start again at the bottom.
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