Scottie Chasing DPOY, Quickley Player of the Week, Ingram in the Clutch and Gradey’s redemption

Samson Folk & Trevon Heath detail the latest in the Raptors realm.

From Louis’ piece:

“Just how good can these Toronto Raptors become? On a frigid Sunday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder, a winter storm constricting much of North America, the Raptors channeled that energy in their icy grip on the Thunder’s offence. Toronto played a near-perfect game and as a result topped the league’s best.

It’s hard to call a 54-50 half perfect for the Raptors, but that’s more or less what the first half was. Toronto’s defensive gameplan saw immaculate commitment from its players. The plan was to swarm the middle, help early and often, and only recover to some shooters, not all. Players like Lu Dort, Jaylin Williams, Cason Wallace, and Kenrich Williams saw half-hearted closeouts if at all. Some of those resulted in burns — Dort hit four triples in the first half — but the tactic saw the four combine to shoot 4-of-12 in total in the first half. (They shot even worse as a quartet in the second half.) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander saw a plethora of help and even early double teams on occasion, before he even put the ball on the floor, and Toronto’s backline defence forced plenty of turnovers or deflections reading his passes out of those traps.”

“And so Toronto won its game of the year. In fact, this could be Toronto’s best win since … the 2019-20 season? It’s clear that as long as the Raptors have a modicum of health, they can punch with anyone. Toronto finished with 11 more shots than Oklahoma City. Barnes may not be the world’s best scorer, but he found his way to a superstar performance anyway. He sealed the game with an enormous tap-out offensive rebound on a missed free throw. Toronto’s depth has been immaculate.”

Have a blessed day.

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