After playing six of their first eight games of the season at the newly rebranded Scotiabank Arena, the Raptors began a four-game road trip to the west coast on Friday with a visit to Arizona to face the Suns. The Suns, one of the perennial bottom dwellers of the league, had come into this season looking for signs of things to build on around Devin Booker and first overall pick DeAndre Ayton, but had struggled to start the season, coming into last night’s game at 1-6.
For the first time so far this season, the Raptors had their full complement of players available for this game as well, with OG Anunoby returning to the team and Delon Wright and Fred VanVleet returning to the lineup for the road trip. Although the starting lineup had been scorching opponents to start the season, the Raptors bench had struggled without their lead guards. At the same time, the Suns had Booker returning from a hamstring injury in this game, after missing the previous three.
The Raptors came out sluggish in this one, with the players not bringing any defensive intensity in the first half, and just having enough offense, lead by Leonard’s 12 and six assists from Kyle Lowry, to keep the game in reach but not quite manage to take control of it. The Suns had Ayton out to a quick start with a double-double in the first half alone, but it felt like it wouldn’t take much for the Raptors to bust this game open heading into half-time, and that proved correct in short order as the second half began.
The Raptors rushed out to a quick 10-2 run as the third quarter began, buoyed by the return of their defensive intensity and using their defense to generate easy buckets at the other end, and the game simply felt at hand from there. Toronto’s defense remained solid throughout the second half, and the bench found their footing lead by VanVleet looking like himself again, and some timely buckets from CJ Miles. A Phoenix run towards the end of the fourth quarter would make the score look close at the end, but this wasn’t a close game for most of the second half, with the Suns coming through with some huge shots to keep the margin from getting away from them, but the Raptors clearly the better team, punctuated by several nutmegs of Ayton by various Raptors ballhandlers.
With the Raptors having a back-to-back coming up on Sunday and Monday nights in Los Angeles and Utah, though, the story coming out of this game will once again be one of health, as Danny Green took an accidental hit to the head from Serge Ibaka in the second half that had him briefly leave the game before returning, and Kawhi Leonard in the closing minutes leaving the game after looking like he tweaked something in his leg, which the team is referring to as a “jammed foot” at this point. It remains to be seen whether the Leonard injury is one that keeps him out of further games, but the fact that he had to be playing in those late minutes of this game against a team that the Raptors could’ve put away much earlier if they’d played with intensity in the first half could be a cautionary tale for the rest of this Raptors season.
While the bench did find themselves late in this one, the rotation for that group was a curious one with Delon Wright logging just 7 minutes in the game, and all of them in the place of VanVleet, and the team not playing the two lead guards side by side at all. A lot of the problems the group has had thus far this season seemed to potentially go back to not having enough shot creation, and against better defenses that might continue to be an issue without VanVleet and Wright playing together, which will be something for fans to keep an eye on as the season goes on.
