Behind brilliant bench, Raptors steal game from Magic as Quickley is benched

The Toronto Raptors seemingly decided to take the game off against the Orlando Magic. It’s understandable. They finished their previous game late, with the first leg of their back-to-back going into overtime. It was an exciting win. A historic win! We can lose our purpose after achieving our short-term goals. So it’s only human to follow up big wins with letdown performances.

So the Raptors came out flatter than a stingray and appeared to be unperturbed by an early deficit. But not everyone quit on the game. Collin Murray-Boyles at the moment is Toronto’s surest jolt of energy. He is a human defibrillator, a couple thousand volts on legs. He chased every offensive rebound, even winning some. Increasingly more as the game wore on. The Magic are big and don’t give up offensive rebounds easily, but Murray-Boyles, like Thanos, is inevitable. He finished the game with seven offensive rebounds and a monstrous plus-minus of plus-18, by far the game high on either team. (It was equalled by a game-low of negative-18 from Immanuel Quickley, but more on that later.)

“Every time when he’s around the rim, he has great feel for where to go. He’s working really hard to position himself in a position where he can go and get those rebounds,” said Darko Rajakovic. “Those seven offensive boards, but also those two huge blocks.”

“He’s a really tough kid,” said Jamal Shead after the game. “He brings so much versatility… You can do a lot of things with his versatility that you can also do with Scottie.”

The problem is that a defibrillator isn’t particularly good at the dexterity components of basketball. Namely, putting the ball inside the rim. Murray-Boyles missed the only shot he attempted in the first quarter, a triple. And his teammates were bricking away, too. Brandon Ingram, Scottie Barnes, and Quickley combined to shoot 0-of-13 from the field in the first quarter. Most of the looks were good ones, especially Quickley’s. Barnes made some clever passes, but he found himself multiple times under the basketball and opted not even to look to shoot. Barnes and Ingram would eventually find ways to contribute, at least.

The Raptors looked too small, too slow, too passive to put the ball in the basket.

Mo Bamba hit the court to start the second quarter, and he slipped trying to go up for a very poorly thrown alley-oop. Two Magic played keep away on the offensive glass as Bamba tried to rebound, over and over, with one hand, failing to secure the ball. “What are you doing?” screamed a furious spectator from behind me.

Gradey Dick, however, kept plugging away. He hit his triples (!), chased offensive rebounds, and cut for layups. Early in the second quarter, his 12 points were more than half of Toronto’s total. In a move I couldn’t understand: Rajakovic basically didn’t play him again after his stint midway through the second quarter, with him only seeing a pitiful few more minutes in the game and not touching the ball.

The first make from the trio of Barnes, Quickley, and Ingram came on the 19th attempt between the three. Ingram drove and attempted a whirling, extended layup that he airballed, or perhaps saw blocked. But he grabbed the ball as it descended from 20 feet in the air and volleyed it into the basket, drawing the foul. (Murray-Boyles tipped out the offensive rebound on Ingram’s missed free throw.) 

At one point, I realized the teams hadn’t left the Raptors’ offensive side of the court for quite some time. Murray-Boyles kept on grabbing offensive rebounds, resetting possessions, and the Raptors kept on drawing free throws. Only to miss the live one, only for Murray-Boyles to grab another. When the clouds broke and the Raptors capped off their five- (?) seven- (?) four- (?) point possession, they were down just 16. A defibrillator can’t bring you back for long. The heart has to get working again all by itself at some point. 

Jamal Shead hit a layup, stole a rebound from a small scrum, then drilled a moonball triple to cut the lead to 10. The electric paddles themselves hit a triple of their own from the corner. Shead drove for a floater layup off glass. But at some point, the big guns would have to start blasting. The heart would have to start beating.

The guns came out blasting in the third quarter. Well, they came out shooting. But Barnes missed a series of close-range layups and push shots, as he increasingly spent time conversing with the refs during live play. Quickley and Ingram continued missing jumpers. The heart stayed immobile. Shead entered early and promptly threw the ball to the Magic on a simple entry pass to Barnes in the middle of a Magic zone.

But the supporting cast kept on plugging away. It simply didn’t quit. Shead hit a triple. He finished with a career-high 19 points. Mamukelashvili hit a driving and-1 that he magicked into the net.

“Our second-unit guys coming off the bench, they did an outstanding job,” said Rajakovic. “It was about character.”

Ingram scrounged a few points, but he then got swatted at the rim, followed by him and Quickley missing alternating jumpers as Barnes grabbed a series of offensive rebounds. The Magic scored in transition after each miss. Murray-Boyles blocked a Desmond Bane layup through the molten core of the earth, but Quickley missed the ensuing transition triple to end the quarter. The Raptors continued twisting the stick into the earth, hoping at some point it would spark a fire.

Eventually, it did. And it came, perhaps in a risky political move from Rajakovic, with Quickley on the bench for the closing minutes. He had been playing poorly, and the Raptors caught fire with him off.

“Immanuel wasn’t on the floor because Jamal was on instead of him,” explained Rajakovic, deadfaced, after the game. (Did I really need to ask?)

Walter hit a triple to go along with his defence. Barnes splashed one of his own. Shead drove for a game-tying layup. Ingram put them ahead moments later with a middy. And the defence remained fantastic. It had spent all game tightening, slowly clamping down and down, until in the fourth quarter it seized the Magic offence in a vice grip that didn’t relent. Walter locked all comers, including Paolo Banchero. Ingram swatted a shot as the helper. It was manic. The crowd pulsed and frothed. Murray-Boyles ate glass like Hobo with a Shotgun. Up one with six seconds left, Barnes defended a Banchero isolation and forced a miss.

So Toronto closed it out. This, finally, is momentum. Two nights in a row, the Raptors have snatched victory after a series of poor quarters to open both games. Dick, Shead, Walter, and others on the bench carried Toronto for long stretches, until the heart finally started th-thump thumping on its own once more.

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