Raptors blow massive lead to Timberwolves on the eve of the trade deadline
On the eve of the NBA trade deadline, the Toronto Raptors hosted Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves at home, in what would be a necessary test for Toronto against a top team in the NBA. When teams are trying to make that next step, it is important and valuable to test your mettle by punching up and seeing if you can hang with more experienced teams, even if it’s just for a night.
For a good chunk of this game, Toronto punched up and showed when things are going well, they can give any team a scare, but the second half showed that they still have some things to work out when it comes to finishing the deal. We saw them lose in a familiar fashion to the Orlando Magic recently and the hope would be that they would learn something from that defeat, but unfortunately the same thing happened last night.
For 3 quarters Toronto was in control of this game, and they were playing their way, they were eating in transition, moving the ball around like a hot potato, and really putting pressure on the rim and scoring inside. But where Toronto failed was when the offense started to falter, when the transition possessions weren’t there, when the Timberwolves interior defense began to hold up, when the jumpers stopped falling. A sign of a great team is the ability to survive adversity in a game, and be able to collect yourself and get the train back on the tracks.
Scottie Barnes took control of the offense for most of this game, with him drawing the Rudy Gobert matchup he used Gobert’s lack of footspeed against him. Gobert was forced to give Barnes a cushion and Barnes used this to comfortably walk into jumpers, but he also used this space to get a head of steam and mash his way into the paint multiple times.
Brandon Ingram was also in his element offensively early on in the game. He was running off of screens, settling into pull-up jumpers from both mid-range and behind the arc. He was isolating well, knocking down contested jumpers over the outstretched arms of Minnesota’s wings, and he was just in a groove as a scorer for most of this game.
Even Immanuel Quickley contributed immensely, knocking down 6 out of 8 threes. Just when Minnesota would get a bit of momentum he’d be there to knock down a triple and take the wind out of their sails.
So on a night where things were going so well, and the lead got as high as 18 points, how did Toronto wind up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The 4th quarter was where things began to fall apart. Minnesota had a huge third quarter but Toronto still had a double digit lead headed into the 4th quarter. Minnesota outscored Toronto 34-22 in the 4th, and they shot 54 percent from the field compared to 40 percent from the field for Toronto. Toronto’s offense simply fell apart, jumpers that were falling earlier in the game no longer went down, Minnesota was chomping away at the lead every possession. Minnesota got the lead down to just one point after Toronto went several minutes without scoring, and Edwards danced his way to the rim and finished through Barnes. Immediately after Toronto lost the lead, Barnes marched the ball down the court, put a shoulder into Gobert’s chest and finished with an emphatic dunk to reclaim the lead and reclaim some control of this game. What followed next was just brutal. RJ Barrett, who has not been the same since his injury, coughed up the ball on two consecutive possessions, leading to Minnesota extending their lead. Once this sequence happened the game was out of hand, and Toronto would eventually go on to lose with a score of 126-128.
During Minnesota’s 4th quarter run, Toronto seemed outmatched, out of sorts, just out of anything that could positively impact this game. This game can be used as another learning moment for Toronto, and hopefully we don’t see another loss like this anytime in the near future.
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