It was enough of a disaster to cause a players-only meeting, called by Kyle Lowry, who declined to get into the details of the meeting. “We had a long talk,” James Johnson said. “It’s going to stay internal. But we just got a little over-confident and we started taking to heart that we’re a good team and we haven’t accomplished nothing yet. “It was what we needed to hear.” Moments later, Johnson pointed out that the Raptors are still, halfway through the season, in a perfectly fine spot. He is right. The Hawks are running away with the conference, five games up on the pack. The Raptors are still jumbled up with the Wizards and Bulls, with a nice cushion on the rest of the field. Toronto has also clinched the Atlantic Division, spiritually speaking.
The day before the Atlanta Hawks arrived, head coach Dwane Casey was already downplaying a potential blow to the Raptors’ psyche. If it was a premonition, it was a spot-on one. “It’s one of 82,” Casey said. “(This) game isn’t gong to make or break our season. It’s a big game because they are one of the best teams in the league right now. But we’re not going to judge who we are and who we are not by one game.”
The Raptors seem content lately to just launch three-pointers or go one-on-one and it is not working. Whereas once they spread out the offensive load, for a while, they’ve been intent on taking silly shots, especially ones from way out. The return of DeRozan has encouraged them to pass the ball even less frequently. Sure, the Hawks looked every bit the team that has gone 25-2 for the past couple of months, but they got help from the foibles of the home side. It has become clear that something needs to be done to give the moribund Raptors a jolt. Whether its replacing the invisible Terrence Ross (just three points on 1-for-8 shooting and a number of defensive errors) in the starting lineup, a trade by Masai Ujiri or something else, the status quo is not working. Something needs to be done, and soon.
Either the Hawks are really good -– like NBA champion good, which they may be — or the Raptors have sprung some leaks that are badly in need of patching. Both explanations are absolutely in play. The Hawks looked every inch a Finals contender in a game that was a blowout midway through the first quarter and never deviated. The Hawks may represent a new(ish) model for NBA team building. Head coach Mike Budenholzer has based his program on the San Antonio Spurs where he was an assistant coach for 17 years and has, at the very least, proven that good basketball can travel. The Hawks/Spurs approach -– where a deep team of good if not great players (we’re talking late career Tim Duncan here) completely committed to ball movement and team play has proven to be incredibly effective and now transportable. It might be the ultimate antidote to teams operating under the increasingly restrictive NBA salary cap. Teams built around a ‘Big Three’ have been the ideal in the NBA since the days of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish, but now it’s harder than ever to keep elite threesomes together (Miami) and even more difficult to surround them with the necessary depth (Cleveland).
“That team is a well-oiled machine,” Casey said after the game. “They are hitting on all cylinders and we shake their hand because they are playing the game the right way on both ends of the floor.” The loss, which was Raptors sixth in their last eight games, led to a long postgame discussion amongst the players, and though he wouldn’t reveal the details of that conversation, James Johnson did give his opinion on what he feels has gone wrong the last few weeks. “We just started to get a little overconfident,” Johnson said. “We started taking it to heart that we were a good team and we haven’t accomplished nothing yet.”
Raptors awestruck in bad loss to first-place Hawks | TSN
On Friday, they were overmatched against a very good team that played nearly flawless basketball – an excusable loss in and of itself. But that storyline is sounding all too familiar. While the Hawks have been victorious in 11 of their last 12 contests against teams at or above the .500 mark, Toronto has dropped eight of nine to winning competition. Though the Hawks are beginning to separate themselves in the conference – now five games up on second-place Washington, five and a half ahead of Toronto – the East is still very much up for grabs. The Raptors may not be the team that many hoped they could be after that hot start to the season, but they’re right to believe they are better than this. At some point, if they are to contend in the conference and take another step as an organization, they have to start hitting back against the league’s heavy weights. They have to find themselves again.
The Hawks should be in disarray. Their off-season was roiled by a racial row involving GM Danny Ferry. The club’s up for sale. Instead, they are a multi-layered behemoth. Al Horford is such a nightmare around the basket, Jonas Valanciunas essentially gave up trying to guard him five minutes in. Then Toronto coach Dwane Casey gave up on Valanciunas. It didn’t get any beter. Shootist Kyle Korver could throw a ball from the International Space Station and it would land in a cup on top of the Empire State Building two days later. As you roll down their bench, it just gets deeper and deeper. Casey suggested as many as four Hawks could be all-stars. By the half, they’d run Toronto ragged with their relentless commitment to passing the ball no fewer than ten thousand times between shots. The Raptors did not lead at any point in the game, and were hammered 110-89. The East may not be any good, but the Hawks are very, very good.
Raptors defence, Kyle Lowry’s all-star hopes slipping: Griffin | Toronto Star
For what he accomplished while DeMar DeRozan was out, Lowry — if you see him every day — deserves it. But consider that since Chris Bosh in 2010, only one Raptor, DeRozan last year, has made it onto a mid-season all-star team. Here are some of Lowry’s statistical arguments in terms of per-game production. Among the nine listed above as point guard candidates in the East, Lowry ranked second to Irving in points (20.3), fifth in minutes (34.6), second to Wall in assists (7.8), second to Carter-Williams in rebounds (4.9) and first in trips to the foul line (5.4). In the entire NBA, Lowry was 18th in scoring and sixth in assists. But ultimately it’s a team game, and on Friday night Teague and his Hawks had their way with the Raptors defence. There is no panic in Raptors camp, but with DeRozan back and healthy — albeit not at game speed — they are 1-1, and overall have lost six of the last eight since Dec. 30.
Hawks Swipe Raptors Aside, Win Blowout 110-89 | Raptors HQ
Many in Toronto were hoping tonight things would go differently. Instead, the narrative stayed flipped: the Hawks are now the Raptors of November and December. They are the underrated surprise of the Eastern Conference, and possibly, the entire NBA. They are, in short, for real. Led by the definitely all-the-way-healthy All-Star Al Horford and his perfect 8-for-8, 22 point performance, the Hawks exhibited a balanced and disciplined attack from start to finish. All five starters scored in double figures, all of them save Horford (who had a toe-on-the-line two go down) hit at least one three-pointer. The team as a whole shot 61 percent.
We the South: Hawks drub Raptors | AJC
Atlanta went to Canada Friday night and turned Toronto’s ‘We the North’ slogan upside down.
Atlanta Hawks pummel Toronto Raptors, 110-89 | Soaring Down South
When the Raptors switched on defense, Jeff Teague and Dennis Schroder backed up nearly to midcourt, got a head of steam, and drove hard to the rim against the Raps bigs. And unlike the last Toronto game, Dennis didn’t get into foul trouble trying to guard the Raptors sizable point guards, Kyle Lowry and Greivis Vasquez.
The Hawks used another run to end the first half to do in an opponent. They ended the second quarter on a 14-6 run for a 52-38 advantage at intermission. The rout was on.
Hawks vs Raptors final score: Al Horford leads Atlanta to blowout win in Toronto | Peachtree Hoops
Atlanta used a balanced attack offensively led by Al Horford who led six different Hawks players in double figures with 22 points. Horford was a perfect 8-8 from the field and was 6-7 from the free throw line. Paul Millsap added 16 points and eight rebounds while Jeff Teague and DeMarre Carroll logged 13 points each. Teague handed out a game-high nine assists and turned the ball over just once. The Hawks recorded 30 assists on 42 made baskets while making 61 percent of their field goal attempts including 12-23 shooting from three-point range. Atlanta held the Raptors to 43 percent shooting from the field and turned 19 turnovers into 24 points.
Atlanta Hawks Look Unstoppable in the East and Other Friday NBA Takeaways | Bleacher Report
As it happens, it was against these Raptors that the Hawks last looked truly mortal. On Nov. 26, Toronto stopped into Atlanta for a 126-115 win, which turned out to be the finale of a six-game streak. Back then, the Raptors were the beasts of the East—a 13-2 juggernaut that shot 51.2 percent against the Hawks defense in a contest that put Toronto a full five games up on Atlanta in the standings. Check the standings now, and you’ll find the Hawks right where the Raptors used to be, five-and-a-half games ahead of the NBA’s neighbors to the north. Their win in Toronto was their 11th in a row, their 24th in their last 26 outings overall and their 13th in 14 road games. It was also, arguably, their most impressive result yet in what’s been an unbelievable six weeks for the Hawks.
Observations From Toronto’s Locker Room After Losing 110-89 To Atlanta | Hoops Addict
James Johnson on what’s missing right now with the team: “Our mental aspect of the game… we’ve got to get there. We can’t go out there and think we’ll out-athletic anybody or out-shoot anybody. People are scouting us and they are scouting us pretty well. We need to change things up and get back to where we were.”
Toronto Raptors get embarrassed by Hawks at home | Raptors Cage
he Raptors allowed Atlanta to shoot 60.9% – not for a quarter, but for the game. Toronto gave up 30 assists to Atlanta while letting them drop 12 three-pointers on over 50% shooting. There was absolutely no resistance on the defensive end from anyone in a purple jersey tonight. Dwane Casey and his team need to do some serious soul searching before their next tilt against the New Orleans Pelicans.
Raptors Hammered By Hawks, 110-89 | Raptors Watch
When a team who’s red-hot can slip past outer defenders, sneak into the paint and then create easy looks off of kick-outs every single trip down also gets help from the opposing team by watching them shoot themselves in the foot via turnovers, it’s pretty hard for them to lose. Not to mention that after all of this we didn’t even get to see Bruno get any action. Instead, we were gifted with the sight of Elton Brand playing garbage minutes.
Toronto gets smoked by A-T-L style – Raps @ Hawks | Mediocre No More
It feels like the Raptors played too good too early in the season, while the other contending east teams were just slightly behind, but are just now hitting their stride. The good news is, it is almost the midway point – it would be a true crisis if this was just before the playoffs.
Patrick Patterson’s production (or lack thereof) | RealGM
0-2 FG tonight, 27.8% FG and 5.8 ppg for the past 5 games while averaging 25.8 mins. Significantly below where his numbers were before. What is going on with this dude? When we’re flaming GV, Ross, and (sometimes) JV and Lou, I can’t see how this guy should be let off the hook especially when you can make an argument that his numbers and production could be the lowest out of anybody else.
The Unassuming, Unknown Superstar Status of Al Horford | Grantland
Lowry’s going to make the team, either as a starter or a backup. He deserves it. Everyone knows that by now. He got screwed last year. Everyone knows that, too. The world realizes the Raptors are a very, very good NBA team. At some point the inferiority complex loses its charm.
I can haz yo linkz??! rapsfan@raptorsrepublic.com
