Raptors 106, Hornets 110 | Box Score | Quick Reaction | Reaction Podcast
The Toronto Raptors were not going to go undefeated for the remainder of the season. At least not without a quick return from Kyle Lowry. They’ve been playing much better defensively, but when a few cracks showed on Monday, it was a reminder that the Raptors are still in a position of needing to play low-mistake, inspired basketball. When they’re up against teams like the Charlotte Hornets fighting for their playoff lives, that’s even more the case.
On Wednesday, the Raptors ran out of that seemingly bottomless, post-players-only-meeting energy reserve. Their constitution dissipated late, their defense slipped, and a six-game winning streak is no more. Blame variance, if you have to – Charlotte shot 16-of-32 on threes on their way to the 110-106 victory – or chalk it up as one of those nights. There is not a great deal to be moved about, good or bad, right now, outside of the pre-game update that Lowry has begun shooting with his right hand. The Raptors are fairly comfortable in who they are right now, and who they are is a team that, while still good and often a difficult opponent, are imperfect. And Charlotte took advantage.
The game opened appearing to confirm some of the fear heading into this late stretch of the season. Not that the Raptors would be bad, necessarily, but that their games would be incredibly ugly. When the Hornets declined to score for over three minutes, that was a great defensive bellwether. When the Raptors kept pace and the two sides had combined for just 18 points through over six minutes, it felt less encouraging than daunting.
Charlotte would pull away some from there, at one point opening up a 10-point lead. While Cory Joseph did an admirable job chasing Kemba Walker through a forest of screens and answering at the other end, he was about the only Raptor to step up early. Some unseasonably warm shooting from Frank Kaminsky and the other Hornets’ long-range bombers gave Charlotte a nice cushion in that area, and a somewhat slow easing into the game for DeMar DeRozan kept the Raptors’ offense from keeping pace.
As has often been the case of late, an all-bench unit was culpable in Charlotte pulling away. The starting lineup didn’t exactly blow the doors off, but replacing DeMarre Carroll with P.J. Tucker late in the second helped trim the lead to three at the break. That fivesome continues to be better with Tucker, but at least until Kyle Lowry returns, head coach Dwane Casey seems to prefer Tucker off the bench to help with the second unit (it’s telling that even as a starter, he would be pulled early and then re-inserted with that group). Casey has been clear injury won’t cost Carroll his job, and there are reasons he continues to start when healthy – to be fair, his night wasn’t egregious outside of poor shooting – but he has to at least be looking over his shoulder a bit given how the respective groups have looked and how the Raptors have started games.
“It’s up to us in our disposition, the way you start the game, the way you end it,” Casey said of another slow start. “I didn’t think we started out with that same sense of urgency. We were trying to play our way into it and they came out swinging and kind of got their mojo before we did.”
The start to the second half wasn’t as much of an issue, because whatever was said to Jonas Valanciunas at the half appeared to work. After being tortured by Walker in the pick-and-roll in the first half, Valanciunas became a legitimate defensive factor to start the third quarter, and it helped pick the Raptors’ energy levels up. He turned away Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, leading to a DeRozan bucket the other way while Valanciunas finger-wagged behind the play. (No, seriously.) The next Hornets’ trip down, he turned away another shot. A third time down the floor, Marvin Williams seemed to have gotten the message and floated a miss over Valanciunas’ verticality.
It was a stretch that is within Valanciunas but one that doesn’t present itself all that often, and the Raptors rewarded him by finally getting him a little involved at the other end. A DeRozan dump-off to the big man capped the huge quarter, with the Raptors opening up an eight-point lead entering the final frame. For a few minutes there, it looked like Lucas Nogueira may not survive Valanciunas’ hot stretch, as the Brazilian had the game of his life from a bench-celebration perspective. Valanciunas finished the quarter with eight points, nine rebounds, and three blocks on his way to a 14-and-15 double-double for the night, and it was on a short list of the biggest impacts he’s made on a game all season.
“He was just being aggressive,” DeRozan said. “He was being up on screens, being aggressive, trying to attack the ball. He was calling for the ball as well offensively. He hit some big shots. He was aggressive going to the basket. It was big for us.”
Those contributions are needed right now, from someone each night. It’s an old story by now, and with DeRozan facing plenty of attention from some quality Hornets defenders, the help was welcome. DeRozan, meanwhile, continued his growth outside of just scoring, dishing eight assists and pulling in six rebounds to go with his 28 points. His defense was really solid once again, too, especially when lined up opposite Kidd-Gilchrist.
Casey went away from the all-bench group on the fourth, tasking Serge Ibaka with propping that unit up. The pains remained, with Delon Wright committing a pair of errors early to turn the game back into a one-possession affair. Things got interesting when Ibaka picked up his fifth foul, as the Raptors went mega-small opposite a Williams-Kaminsky frontcourt, sliding Patrick Patterson to center. Patterson canned a trailing three and Wright responded with a pair of nifty offensive plays, but the Marco Belinelli Gunning Death Machine trudged on (I’m pretty sure he shot from 2010 at one point), keeping things interesting and tying the game back up midway through the quarter.
If you’re wondering, Norman Powell steal-and-dunks are still very exciting and very fun. And helpful!
Heading down the stretch, Casey returned to Valanciunas and, in a bit of an interesting gamble, left Ibaka and Tucker both on the bench for a few minutes. DeRozan hit Valanciunas with just a terrific pass to keep him rolling, but the Raptor defense started to get a little shaky. Walker started to get hot, Williams was left unattended outside, and a pick-and-roll breakdown left Williams open for a Cody Zeller dump-off. Things had turned tenuous quickly. Tied at 98 with 2:22 to go, Casey went to something resembling the closing lineup he favored immediately after the deadline, with Powell in Carroll’s place (a somewhat curious decision with Patterson playing well). Valanciunas played great and earned the fourth-quarter minutes, but with only one big on the floor for Charlotte and Walker threatening to cook, Ibaka’s defense was a necessity.
Sometimes, shot-makers just make shots, even after 0-of-7 starts to the night, and Walker sandwiched a shot-clock violation with a pair of massive threes, the second of which came late in the clock. All the attention paid Walker then freed Williams for an open three, of the dagger variety. The shooting would not relent, even on Toronto’s better defensive possessions.
“They were hot as fire during the fourth quarter. We go from one of our best defensive quarters, 16 points in the third to 44 in the fourth, that was the difference in the game,” Casey said. “I thought we had done a good job of containing their three-point shooters and then Belinelli saw one go in and it was contagious. I thought our guys were working, we had a couple of mistakes, a couple of breakdowns in coverages that were mistakes we don’t usually make.
“But, again, they made every shot, you have to shake their hands in that situation.”
It is true that Toronto’s defense fell apart some late, and that’s of some concern. It’s back-to-back games in which their defense hasn’t been up to its recent standard, and the thought of bad habits or malaise setting in just seven games from the playoffs is at least a moderate concern. But it is also true that Charlotte shot a ludicrous 8-of-10 from threes in the fourth and 16-of-32 for the game, marks that are beyond reason but sometimes happen, and that Walker and Belinelli hit some obscene shots late. It can be true that the Raptors slipped defensively and the Hornets outperformed the expected value of their late possessions.
After the game, Casey talked about the need for a chip to be on the team’s shoulder over the final two weeks. Consider Tucker to be Ms. Vickie, then.
“I can’t see how we lost this game,” an incensed Tucker said. “Especially when you consider the last few games, how the season is coming to an end, how close the race is. We can’t come out like that. There’s no excuse for us coming out and playing like that. We got to be better.”
The Raptors remain imperfect, and they can’t afford lapses in attention or aggression. This isn’t news, and the impermanence of their success during the six-game streak hung over some of the victories. If it helps, they’ve been reminded how quickly a winning-despite-faults approach can go south, and how much closer to perfect they’ll need to be two weeks and change from now.
