Raptors 96, Hornets 90 | Box Score | Quick Reaction
Things are never easy when it comes to Jeremy Lin and the Toronto Raptors. And things are never pretty when it comes to the Raptors and the Charlotte Hornets. Despite the confluence of those two weird, annoying forces this season, the Raptors have managed to shake off any bad Hornets ju-ju and take the season series, 2-1, thanks to a gritty 96-90 victory at the Air Canada Centre on Tuesday.
To be clear off the top, the Hornets were playing without Nicolas Batum, which changes an awful lot for them at both ends of the floor. He’s their best defensive player with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist on the shelf for the season, he’s their primary wing ball-handler and play-maker, and his shooting helps the floor breathe for the drive-attacks of Lin and Kemba Walker, the latter of whom has benefited so much from Batum’s presence that the Hornets are promoting him as a Most Improved Player candidate. It’s a big absence for the Hornets, as he’s their most important player.
With that out of the way: You can only beat the team put in front of you. And on Tuesday, as they’ve done for the large majority of this season, the Raptors did just that.
The final score really doesn’t do the flow of the game justice. It’s a credit to the Hornets, to be sure, as they refused to say die and mounted several mini-comebacks and one nearly-big-enough comeback late in the game, cutting the lead to four with possession with 20 seconds to play. Lin was ridiculous in the first half, as he always is against the Raptors (shout out to VaLintine’s Day 2012), really the only Hornet able to keep the offense afloat. It was Walker’s turn in the second half, to try at least, but while he had a couple of clutch and-ones late, he finished the game 4-of-16 for 11 points. Other than that duo, the only consistent threat was Marvin Williams from outside, as the Raptors did a solid job on Frank Kaminsky pick-and-pops, frustrated Al Jefferson down low, and did a great job chasing shooters off the arc. That Charlotte kept fighting back wasn’t necessarily an indictment of the Raptors defense, which held the Hornets to 36.4 percent shooting and under a point per-possession, but of an inability to effectively close things out.
The Raptors shouldn’t have let themselves be played into such a tight space, not after leading from almost the opening buzzer and creating a gap as large as 19 at one point. What looked like a game in hand resulted in a tired Kyle Lowry playing 40 minutes and being tasked with some fourth-quarter heroics. DeMar DeRozan played 36 minutes, too. Both played solid, Jonas Valanciunas lent a major hand by continuing his recent string of strong two-way performances, punishing the Hornets’ stretchier bigs and providing some really sound pick-and-roll defense and rim protection (as you might expect, Bismack Biyombo brought that same rim protection off the bench.
Strangely, Lowry contributed to his own workload some. Or at least didn’t help it – the “Lowry plus reserves” unit that’s ethered opponents most of the year was outscored by six points in 11 minutes on Tuesday and has now been outscored by 10 points per-100 possessions since the All-Star break. That lineup was never going to be as big an edge in the playoffs, when rotations tighten, and there’s some variance in such a small sample (plus, the DeRozan-plus-bench group has been excellent in that same time), but if the team wants to trim Lowry’s minutes over the next week, the start of the fourth quarter is probably a good spot to trim right now.
These things are actually fine, albeit a little annoying. The schedule is light enough, the games unimportant enough, that the Raptors can get their guys rest if needed over the next nine days, and they’ve mostly shown a willingness to do so. Plus, I’d argue that getting in a game or two like this, where it comes down to the wire or you let your foot off the gas and nearly pay the price, ahead of the playoffs isn’t the worst thing. It served as a nice reminder that leads can disappear in a hurry, and that in less than two weeks, every opponent is going to be excruciatingly hungry – the Hornets may have clinched a playoff spot, but they’re fighting for home court that could be pretty important to their chances of winning a series (or a playoff game, for the first time ever). There aren’t many tests in the season’s final week, so this difficult Charlotte-Atlanta-Indiana stretch is Toronto’s last real tune-up.
Through that lens, Toronto’s stumbles aren’t that big a deal. They beat up on a quality opponent, got a little “fat and sassy,” nearly paid the price, but buckled in to hang on. The minutes for the stars isn’t ideal, nor were the struggles to execute offensively in the fourth, but from a more broad perspective, this win was a decent one.
Speaking of beating up on a quality opponent, don’t get it twisted: The Hornets are that. Less so without Batum, but still really solid. The Raptors win the season series, as they’ve done against every other team currently in the Eastern Conference playoff picture, save for Indiana, who they can win it against on Friday (and yeah, Chicago lurks, but they’re two games back with five to play, and even further from the seven-seed). The Raptors have spent the season beating good teams, going 28-15 against teams above .500, and they could own the season-series edge with their entire playoff field right now. That should instill a good deal of confidence heading into the postseason, a solid reminder that this isn’t last year’s team or the team before it, and that this edition is a little more matchup proof, a little more resilient, and far less likely to simply bow out when they take a punch to the mouth.
Dwane Casey: "That was an old Eastern Conference knockdown, drag it out, knock ‘em, rock ‘em, sock ‘em game."
— Holly MacKenzie (@stackmack) April 6, 2016
It’s been a good year. I’m ready for the playoffs.
