Raptors edged by Heat in heated throwback affair

They fought back, then let it slip away.

Raptors 89, Heat 90 | Box Score | Quick Reaction | Reaction Podcast

The Toronto Raptors paid the price for a Pyrrhic victory against the Brooklyn Nets on Monday. On the second night of a back-to-back, under greater fatigue than was necessary after an unimpressive overtime win, and without All-Star point guard Kyle Lowry, the Raptors had done themselves no favors. A visiting Miami Heat tema, banged up in their own right, was eager to take advantage, hanging on for a narrow 90-89 victory, only Toronto’s second loss at home all season.

The story will be the poor execution on the final play of the game. It was how the Raptors played the bulk of the night that put them in that position, though, conceding 20 offensive rebounds, failing to share the ball to the tune of 15 assists, and proving unable to take advantage of a big edge in the turnover department and an uncharacteristically cold shooting night from a 3-point heavy Heat outfit.

“I mean, the whole game is completely different without Kyle. It’s everything. Everything,” DeMar DeRozan said. “You can kinda tell with our ball movement wasn’t all the way there like it normally be when Kyle’s out there. Like I said, he’s a general on the floor. He sees things when they need to be called. That’s no excuse. We still fought hard, we still had an opportunity. We lost it by one.”

Anyone looking for a pessimistic omen got it in the opening minute. Delon Wright began his second career start with an awkward floater after he and Serge Ibaka weren’t on the same wavelength, the Raptors left Derrick Jones Jr. wide open for a missed transition three, DeRozan got blocked attacking the rim (a Josh Richardson specialty), and Jones Jr. drew a foul the other way. It was a busy minute with a lot of exactly what Dwane Casey talked about before the game, just the opposite. The Heat started out just as disjointed on offense. The Raptors got some good energy around the rim from Jonas Valanciunas and strong takes by Ibaka and OG Anunoby, but miscommunication remained common on the other side of the ball.

Hassan Whiteside took Valanciunas’ strong play personally and the two had a fun back-and-forth. Whiteside wound up with six points and eight rebounds in the quarter, playing a little longer than Valanciunas, who had six and three, respectively, and flashed some nice footwork on the short-roll against Whiteside’s drop-backs. Lucas Nogueira got the call ahead of Jakob Poeltl in support, and he immediately made an impact around the rim on defense and as a roller on offense. He even keyed a vicious Norman Powell dunk in transition with a block, a seemingly much needed ice-breaker for Powell. Were it not for a shaky 1-for-7 quarter for DeRozan, the Raptors may have been able to gain some separation. As it was, a pair of Wayne Ellington threes – to Toronto’s zero – had Miami ahead one through a quarter.

The all-bench group had their usual near-scoreless stretch with an opponent until, mercifully, aC.J. Miles hit the team’s lone three of the half. They held even over three-plus minutes until DeRozan returned, apparently frustrated at his first quarter since he immediately scored on a tough take, blocked a shot (although the Heat scored off the deflection), and found Jakob Poeltl through a trap for a dunk. Wright and Goran Dragic then had a little back-and-forth, a Wright Euro-floater and a pocket feed to Poeltl for a foul being met by a baseline jumper, a put-back jumper, and a transition push from the Slovenian.

Fatigue seemed to set in from there, with the Heat going on a highlight-laden run keyed by old friend James Johnson and Ellington, the most obvious candidate for the Gerald Henderson Award ever. With Lowry out, DeRozan not at anything close to his best, and the rotation largely devoid of knock-down shooters, the scoring just wasn’t there for extended stretches against an aggressive defense, the buckets they did manage difficult and late in the clock. To their credit, they defended initial half-court possessions well enough, only to bleed on their own glass to the tune of 13 first-half offensive rebounds. All told, it felt like a minor miracle they were only down 10 at the half, and it’s not as if they could have expected to stumble into extra energy in their fourth half in 27 hours.

“Our focus, back-to-back, it doesn’t matter,” Casey said. “Get in at three in the morning, doesn’t matter, nobody cares. I know Miami doesn’t care.”

They did, though. DeRozan and Ibaka came out cooking, Anunoby shut down Dragic on a post-up, and an 11-0 run sent the Heat to an early timeout. Any hope of Ibaka momentum died there, as he and Johnson got into a heated shoving match that resulted in both being tossed, thinning two sides already down key pieces out further. It’s a trade-off the Heat were probably fine with, given that Johnson was ineffective to that point and Ibaka figured to be an important piece down the stretch with Lowry out and DeRozan frustrated.

That breather also settled the Heat – or riled up Dragic, however you want to look at it – and the would-be comeback stalled out from there. Dragic continued dominating, and when he left the game, the Raptors tried to ratchet up the pressure to force turnovers. That worked on occasion, with Fred VanVleet picking a pocket, but the transition scores didn’t follow and Whiteside took advantage of the extra pressure high underneath. A Nogueira block at the end of the quarter and a late Miles three kept things within single-digits entering the fourth, where Casey would have to get creative, DeRozan having played the entire third and his two normal closing certainties unavailable.

That meant Lorenzo Brown as a part of the all-bench group to start the fourth. To some surprise, the scoring didn’t dry up entirely thanks to a VanVleet impression of Lowry – he hit a three, found Nogueira for a lob, and then secured an offensive rebound that led to a great Powell take, good for a 9-4 mini-run to make it a one-possession game again. Brown did an admirable job frustrating the red-hot Dragic, only for Miami to find the mark on defense, Toronto’s outside shooting to pose a problem again, and Bam Adebayo to continue a tremendous showing.

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DeRozan returned at the six-minute mark following a two-minute drought, down seven. Richardson picked an opportune time to break an 0-fer night and Adebayo kept posing a problem, only for DeRozan and Wright to finally give the Raptors some well-timed 3-point juice and keep things within reach. Toronto went small from there with Anunoby and Siakam as the bigs, producing a pair of Powell steals, a terrific Anunoby block on an Adebayo post-up, and a chaotic couple of possessions where the refs swallowed their whistles for both sides and the Raptors took advantage, pulling ahead by one with a little over a minute to go.

Erik Spoelstra brought Whiteside back in to counter the small group, so Valanciunas checked back in with him. Whiteside managed an offensive rebound immediately, only to miss the put-back, and Casey called a timeout rather than have his team attack a scattered defense. It was likely intended to chew clock and get Miles back in the game, but it came at a cost – the Raptors couldn’t inbound and had to burn another timeout, their last one. Toronto isolated DeRozan on Richardson and when the double came, DeRozan hit Powell with a beautiful pass for an open three. Powell missed, though, then missed a cutting layup after possession was ruled to Toronto off the rebound.

That set up a gut-wrenching final few seconds. Dragic scored to put the Heat ahead and DeRozan responded with an impossible tip-in of his own miss. The Heat had one final possession, and the Raptors erased all of the progress they’d made. Casey somewhat curiously opted for no rim protection when, the team failed to execute the foul they had to give, and what looked like a pair of miscommunications saw Ellington win the game with a layup.

“We didn’t do the things, they had 20 offensive rebounds, we hold a team to 40 per cent and, again, it’s attention to detail, hitting someone before the shot’s missed, we didn’t do those things,” Casey said, though he hadn’t had a chance to rewatch the final play yet. “Then you put yourself in position where it’s down at the end of the game and you have to execute a defensive scheme and carry out things that you have to do…It wasn’t executed. Don’t know exactly who made the mistake but, again, we had a foul to give down the stretch, we wanted to make sure we executed.”

Even with all of the rebounds conceded, the Raptors held the Heat to 97.3 points per-100 possessions, a good mark. The problems here were largely on the offensive end, with poor shooting leveraged up by Miami packing the paint, the whistle playing conservative both ways, DeRozan only finding his groove late, and secondary scoring at a premium.

And because the game couldn’t end without more drama, DeRozan and Dragic then got into it after the buzzer.

It’s clear there were frustrations at play throughout and especially by the end. The Raptors did well to fight back in a game where it didn’t look like they’d have the juice to do so, and they were playing with anything but a full deck after Ibaka’s ejection. Even on a back-to-back they’ll lament the lost opportunity here, especially at the start of a very tough week. Somewhat ironically, this may be a case where the Heat pulling away in the third would have left the team feeling less remorse than a second half they played better in only to lose at the buzzer. It maybe would have felt like a schedule loss, then, the byproduct of poor play Monday rather than a true loss on merit as they took it here. If nothing else, they showed some good resolve, and a lot of uninvested fans/writers seemed to think it was one of the most entertaining games of the season.

Whatever the Raptors are feeling, there’s not much time to ruminate on it. Cleveland is already here, resting, and waiting for a meeting Thursday, and they could be without both Lowry and Ibaka depending on how a bruised tailbone and a league office cooperate.

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