Raptors 75, Warriors 69, Box Score
Coaches say that Las Vegas Summer League is about more than just wins and losses. Player development is quite obviously at the forefront, and putting players in new, unique, unfamiliar situations is almost welcomed, even if it makes the path to victory a little more difficult. You want to win, ultimately, but so long as a game readies the players for those same new situations later in their careers, it’s tough to “lose” in the bigger picture. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson, and all that.
Well, the Toronto Raptors found themselves in some unfamiliar water in the first half against the Golden State Warriors on Thursday.
Coach Jama: "I told the team that it was an ugly one but we found a way to squeak through."
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) July 15, 2016
With two days off in a row thanks to a bye for earning the top seed in the championship portion of the tournament, the Raptors came out looking a little sluggish and disorganized. That Norman Powell, their clear-cut MVP through a 3-0 start, came out looking unlike himself made the challenge even greater. Powell got into foul trouble, too, forcing tough decisions on the staff now that the foul limit is down to six. Not only was Powell not on his game early and not on the court, the Raptors got to have a turn facing, well, a Powell type. Patrick McCaw was unstoppable across two quarters, dropping 19 of his 28 points in the first half to keep an otherwise disinterested Warriors team afloat through the break.
Toronto’s defense continued to carry them, as it has all tournament, they just didn’t have an answer for Raptors Republic’s pet draft prospect. Still, thanks to a buzzer-beater from Bruno Caboclo – and hey, if you want to talk about the unfamiliar… – the Raptors managed to enter the break up 39-35.
Powell came out looking to reassert his dominance in the third quarter but quickly suffered a left thigh bruise fighting through a screen, temporarily paralyzing Raptors Twitter with fear. Immediately upon returning, he got back to scoring, and the Raptors began to pick up a modicum of momentum in the back half of the quarter. The Warriors hung around on the back of some fine defense of their own, and then the Raptors used another buzzer-beater, a three-quarter-court heave from Fred VanVleet, to head into the fourth still up four.
Sensing a window for an upset, the Warriors opened on an 8-0 run before Powell was able to get to the line, swinging control to their side. That control hung in the balance for most of the quarter, with the game going through 10 lead changes overall. With Delon Wright, Powell, and Jakob Poeltl in the game, the Raptors took the lead back, locked in on defense, caused a near shot-clock violation, and then forced a turnover ICEing a side pick-and-roll. When Drew Crawford made a heady steal, ran the floor for a layup, and drew a foul, the Raptors bench exploded, the momentum swelling as the 9-0 run forced the Warriors to call a timeout and figure things out.
"He still talks too much from the sideline." – Drew Crawford jokingly about his dad, @NBA referee Danny Crawford.
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) July 15, 2016
The way this Raptors team is playing in the tournament, allowing a late lead-changing run is ill-advised. The defense continued to lock in, and while the grind-it-out offense produced some low-quality looks, Wright helped push things in transition and Caboclo came up huge with a ridiculous block at the rim off of a backcourt turnover. That led to a Crawford triple, and the game was more or less sealed. (But not before Ognjen Kuzmic, who had a good time opposite Poeltl in this one, scored on a second-chance opportunity and the Warriors terrified the Raptors with a late backcourt steal.)
And so for the third game in a row, the Raptors faced adversity on their way to yet another victory. They’re 4-0, and they now move to the single-elimination quarterfinals, where they’ll meet the Minnesota Timberwolves, whom they’ve already beaten at 4 p.m. ET on Saturday.
There’s no longer much room for error, and this Raptors team is showing they can win imperfect. Despite the cool start and injury, Powell still managed 17 points on just nine field-goal attempts. Crawford was huge with eight of his 13 points in the fourth quarter. Poeltl didn’t have the greatest of defensive nights but managed seven points and seven rebounds and was a robust plus-14. And Wright, who missed a few shots early at the rim, shot 3-of-10 overall, and had four turnovers, made up for a lot of that defensively and with some heady plays down the stretch.
More importantly than those individual points, the Raptors shot 33.9 percent and were able to secure a victory against a quality team with a red-hot scorer (the 40 free-throw attempts surely helped). Their defense is on another plane as far as Summer League teams go, and they held the Warriors to sub-40 shooting with just 12 free-throw attempts and an uncanny 6-of-29 mark that came on a diet of late-clock heaves. It was impressive once again, and the Wolves know all too well how the Raptors can lock things down when they need to.
Saturday should be fun. Three more wins to go.
Note: Pascal Siakam sat with knee soreness. He’s rejoined the team and might be good to go for Saturday.
(Photo Courtesy IG:Raptors)
