My eyes still hurt from staring into the flames of burning garbage for two hours as the Raptors were spanked like naughty school boys in front of 20,000 fans last night at the Air Canada Center.
The game started off with a ferocious James Johnson block and then fell off a cliff immediately thereafter. The Raps had the worst first quarter in franchise history, shooting an abysmal 1 for 19 from the field. Instead of working the ball inside after a rough start from the field, Lowry and DeRozan continued to fire away, missing 12 of the Raptors first 15 shots before being pulled from the game. Jonas had one shot attempt in the quarter. On top of the terrible shooting, the team also turned the ball over 6 times. Despite only shooting 34.8 percent on the quarter themselves, the Warriors were up 27-11 after one.
The second quarter was actually pretty okay for a fleeting moment in time, as the second unit brought the game within ten. Vasquez made a concerted effort to move the ball, Terrence Ross was aggressive and hitting his shots, and for a second there it looked like the Raps might make a game of things. But, alas, Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes checked back in and the smack down continued as Golden State went on a 27-14 run to close out the quarter. T. Ross led the way for the Raptors in the quarter with 7 points.
Things went from tragedy to farce in the third as the Warriors absolutely toyed with their hapless opponents. The Raptors gave up 44 points in the quarter, allowing the Warriors to shoot a ridiculous 18 of 22 from the field.
Dwane Casey was so disgusted with the team’s energy that he pulled his entire starting unit with 8:45 to play, after they were outscored 13-2 to open the quarter. There were, however, a couple of entertaining nuggets from the quarter. For example with 3:05 to go in the quarter the Raptors had 48 points, Curry and Thompson had 47. The most exciting moment came courtesy of Festus Ezeli and Tyler Hansbrough, who got a little salty with each other after Festus gave Hansbrough a throat chop.
Strangely enough Terrence Ross continued to go ham, dropping 10 in the quarter.
The Raptors actually played pretty well in the fourth quarter, but it didn’t matter because they were down 41 to start the period and no one cared. All of the starters returned to open the final period except for Lowry. Jonas played really hard and did this.
The real highlight was watching Chuck Hayes and Greg Stiemsma man the court together for the final six and a half minutes. It was as wonderful as you’d expect.
Things got super strange to close out the quarter, as everyone was basically waiting for the game to end and Jack Armstrong started cracking jokes about newspaper obituaries.
Other Stuff:
- This was embarrassing. The Raptors didn’t lead once the entire game and frankly they didn’t even put up a fight. DeRozan and Lowry are in some kind of funk and they’re trying to hammer their way out of it by taking turns forcing the issue, rather than moving the ball and letting the offense work for them.
- If it took a huge loss to help Ross get some of his mojo back moving forward, then it’s a win in the long run.
- We’re in a rut. We’re tired. Our stars need to regain their confidence. A couple of bounce back opportunities against New York and Philly will give them a chance to do that before another big test at home against Cleveland. How we respond to this embarrassing loss will say a lot about our team.
