Raptors 905 136, Texas Legends 80 | Box Score
“Why are the 905 so good now?”
That’s a question that friend of the site Harsh Dave slid into the DMs to ask during the third quarter of Friday’s game with the 905 up more than 40 points on the road against a team that’s above .500 and rosters several talented pieces.
The short answer is that randomness happens in single games. The slightly longer and more fitting answer is that the 905 have finally benefited from some rotation consistency and built some chemistry together. The real answer also includes the fact that they were never really as bad as their terrible early-season record suggested. This is a team with three borderline call-ups in Ronald Roberts, Axel Toupane, and Scott Suggs, an interior behemoth with NBA experience in Sim Bhullar, a near-constant assignee in Bruno Caboclo, and a few other nice pieces.
It was always expected they’d take a little while to find a groove, given their status as an expansion team, their lack of age and experience, and their abbreviated training camp. Over the first two months of the season, they lost in a variety of ways, and it seemed for a bit that the frustration may eventually threaten to allow the plot to get lost. But the lessons in losing reached a crescendo shortly after the D-League showcase, and the 905 have been the best version of themselves since. They railed off six in a row, exorcising demons from previous losses along the way. They stumbled against Erie last weekend, understandable facing the same team for a third time in 10 days, and Friday stood to be a nice test of how they’d respond with the momentum of a winning streak taken away.
And #woahboy, did the 905 ever respond and bounce back. They started strong, opening up a 39-22 lead at the end of the first quarter on the back of some hot shooting. The second quarter saw them lock down defensively and produce an array of easy buckets, reaching a franchise-record for points in a half with 78 and building a 37-point halftime lead. Any thought that the Legends may respond with a run was quickly snuffed out as the 905 built the lead to 40, and then to 50, never relenting no matter the lineup head coach Jesse Mermuys threw out there. Even down the stretch, the Legends couldn’t muster much of a face-saving run, finishing on the wrong end of a 136-80 final, a franchise record in scoring for the 905 and a season-low in scoring for Texas.
The 905 did all of this, by the way, with just eight minutes from their best player in Roberts. He’s been dealing with a hip issue, and while he was feeling good earlier in the day Friday, the guess here is that the issue flared up (there’s been no official update). He had four points, three assists, a plus-11 rating, and this awesome jam before shutting it down.
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The 905 also only had the benefit of one assignee, Caboclo, so it’s not as if they out-NBAed the Legends. They out-played them, to the point of embarrassment, on their own court. It was a 48-minute gear the 905 simply hadn’t shown before, having never won a game by 21 before Friday.
It’s fitting that on a night when the Texas broadcast crew were continuously (and hilariously) citing Drake lyrics, the Legends learned faced an endless array of “if you’re contesting this, it’s too late.”
The 905 finished shooting 61 percent from the floor, 46 percent on threes, and 23-of-32 at the free-throw line. They hammered the Legends on the glass (52-32), they finally managed to keep their turnovers to a reasonable level (12), and to a man, they played well offensively. They also limited the Legends to 33 percent from the floor and 6-of-25 on threes, getting back in transition quickly and aggressively closing out on shooters, all while forcing 18 turnovers of their own.
Caboclo’s line is the one that should stand out, and he turned in what was probably his best game with the 905 so far this season. His year’s been up and down, but it’s necessary to zoom out and compare to the start of the year, and Caboclo showed a lot of the progress we’ve mentioned. The 3-point shot is what most care about, and Caboclo’s been unseasonably warm of late. His 4-of-7 night from outside pushes him to 16 for his last 27, lifting his percentage on the season to 34.2. He finished with 22 points, 11 rebounds, two steals, and two blocks, showing off some nice pull-up moves and real confidence as a spot-up gunner.
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More encouraging, perhaps, was his post defense, sliding to the four for stretches with Roberts out. He had a terrific entry denial on a Brandon Ashley post-up and followed it up with a great help-and-recover possession (sorry for the clip being paired with another, I messed up, but shouts to Bhullar for the pass on the other half of it).
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It was a great night for Caboclo, truly. While we’re on Bhullar, he continued his recent run of strong play, scoring 13 points with 10 rebounds and three assists. Most notably, he dunked on Satnam Singh in the first ever D-League meeting between players born in India or of Indian descent.
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Pretty much everyone else had a great night, too. Scott Suggs did Scott Suggs things and dropped 24 on just 13 field-goal attempts. Shannon Scott perhaps felt the pressure of the team acquiring a new point guard, getting out to a hot start early and finishing with 11 points on perfect shooting. That guard, John Jordan, shot 4-of-5 for 11 points with six rebounds and four assists in his debut with the team. Greg Smith should probably be in the NBA and put up a 16-8-2 line with several neat post moves. Axel Toupane continues to show enormous strides as a playmaker to complement his defense, dishing seven dimes to go with 10 points in 19 minutes.
You get the idea. It was a great night for the 905, and while a single blowout doesn’t mean much and the team certainly can’t begin to get fat and happy, they continue to affirm, game after game, that their early stumbles were a necessity of growth, not a death knell.
The 905 are now 12-19, hardly a threat for the playoffs in the East but at the same time only four-and-a-half games out with 40 percent of the season remaining. That’s probably too great a stretch goal, but given where they were eight games ago, the fact that it’s even worth looking at the standings speaks worlds about how far they’ve come. They’re back in action in Oklahoma City tomorrow at 8.
