Raptors’ string snapped at five in playoff atmosphere in Boston | The Star
Back to normal: The Celtics got some ailing players back as they fight through a spell of injuries. Kyrie Irving returned after missing a Sunday game with a thigh injury, Aron Baynes played for the first time in four weeks after suffering a broken finger and Marcus Smart played after being sick for Sunday’s game. Raptors coach Nick Nurse was not interested in any chatter about what might be going on with the Celtics, who’d been slumping. “I don’t really put as much stock (in what others say about) their recent road trip or their chemistry issues or whatever everybody’s talking about,” Nurse said Wednesday morning. “There’s a lot of dangerous guys out there.”
Raptors left looking for late-game Plan B after loss to Celtics – Sportsnet.ca
It was tremendous to watch and the Raptors couldn’t help themselves.
“A lot of times we kind of give Kawhi the ball and get out the way,” said Raptors point guard Kyle Lowry.
When it works it’s a thing of brutish beauty, like watching an expert lumberjack fell a tree with one mighty swing of his axe after another.
But on this night, the Raptors (33-13) were eventually chopped down 117-108 by the Celtics, ending their winning streak at five games. The well finally ran dry. And as has happened more than once as the Raptors get in the grind of close games, Toronto seemed perplexed about what to do when Leonard was closed off.
“Obviously the last three minutes of the game got away from us – and I think almost blame more of it on the offence,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse.
“We had a really good rhythm and momentum there for a long stretch offensively then we kind of took a couple of quick shots and didn’t execute a couple of things exactly right, out of a timeout one time and you can’t do that.”
Hits and Flops: Toronto Raptors vs Boston Celtics
Flop – Kyle Lowry
Kyle Lowry is an All-Star point guard running the show for the Raptors. But on this occasion, he failed to live up to the expectations. In a tantalizing point guard battle with Irving, Lowry did not deliver.
Lowry ended the match with just 10 points to go along with his 6 rebounds and 7 assists. His season average is around 15 points and 9.6 assists. He is one of the leaders in assists per game and has one of the best win shares this season.
But Lowry seemed off in this match. He only shot 3-10 from the field and 1-5 from the 3PT line. The Raptors struggled when Lowry missed matches while nursing an injury and he has been critical to their success this season. In a big match like this one, Lowry was outperformed by his matchup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqLvKpjgFwY
Celtics stop skid, take down first-place Raptors – Boston Herald
Kyrie Irving, focusing as much on his playmaking as carrying the scoring load, coupled his 27 points with a career-high 18 assists, often with Al Horford (season-high 24 points) in the paint.
“Somehow people still think I can’t pass,” he said. “It’s always an interesting thing to get a career high in assists and guys were making shots and they made my job a lot easier tonight. The Raptors were doing a great job of funneling me into space and I was just trying to find open guys and Al was under there a few times, as well as our shooters, so just feeling good about the basketball and then taking over when needed.”
The bench also picked up, with Gordon Hayward almost outscoring the Toronto reserves by himself, 18-22, and Rozier playing one of his best defensive games of the season by applying fullcourt pressure.
“Terry Rozier turned the game around,” coach Brad Stevens said. “He kind of turned the environment around, to be honest. I thought that his energy lifted everyone around, from our team, to the building. I just thought we were – it was contagious. And the way he picked up the ball, a couple of the plays he made, the spirit he played with – I thought really got us going in the right direction, and everybody followed suit from there on out.”
But the Celtics still had to come back, after the Raptors took a 92-89 lead with a pulverizing 9-0 run. Baynes immediately tied the game from the top of the arc with his first 3-pointer of the new year, and though the two sides would combine for two 3-pointers and three three-point plays in the next three minutes, it was the Celtics with the closing kick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QaHOr7x8XY
Raptors zone in on playoff-ready defence | The Star
“We’ve been adding some schemes as we go,” Nurse said here on Wednesday, before the Raptors faced the Boston Celtics. “Lately — probably in the last three weeks — we’ve added a couple more coverages, just to be able to play the different teams, different personnel, different ball-handlers on different nights, so we’ve got a little bit more in our toolbox.”
The grand plan is to have myriad defensive looks that can be sprung on a playoff opponent in momentum-shifting moments in truly important games.
“I think we’re talking more on defence. Our defensive rotations have been better,” Raptor Kawhi Leonard said. “Still want to be consistent with it throughout the game, but I think our defence has gotten better.”
Getting to work with that at full speed in regular-season games has been a boon. It’s all well and good for Nurse and his staff to show schemes on video and have the players work through them at practice speed. It’s another thing entirely to see them work in games.
“I think it gives them a comfort level, because there’s nights when you come out and some guy’s giving you problems and your basic defensive package isn’t quite doing it, and sometimes you say ‘Well, we’ve got to do it harder,’ and sometimes you’ve got to say ‘Wait a minute, it’s the wrong coverage,’” Nurse said.
Raptors look to bounce back against Suns
The Toronto Raptors and the Phoenix Suns are both coming off losses they would like to put behind them when they meet Thursday night in Ontario.
The Eastern Conference-co-leading Raptors fell 117-108 to the host Boston Celtics on Wednesday night, ending a five-game winning streak. Toronto squandered the game on an 11-0 Boston run late in the fourth quarter.
Kawhi Leonard, who scored 33 points Wednesday, has yet to play both ends of a back-to-back for the Raptors. He played more than 36 minutes Wednesday.
Raptors coach Nick Nurse has indicated that Leonard soon could be playing both ends of consecutive games. Leonard has been treated carefully after missing most of last season with a quadriceps injury.
The Suns, meanwhile, opened a four-game road trip Tuesday with an uninspired performance in a 131-97 loss to the Indiana Pacers despite the return of Devin Booker.
The Suns had won two of three games without Booker, including a 102-93 victory over Denver Nuggets on Saturday. He was limited to eight points in 27 minutes Tuesday.
“There’s no excuses to it,” said Booker, who had been sidelined due to back spasms. “I just didn’t play a good game.”
The Suns will have to start better Thursday in Toronto than they did against the Pacers, who shot 58.3 percent in the first quarter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JflNA8a7CU
Part of Green’s reinvigoration is the simple fact that he’s healthy. He played through a groin injury last season and spent much of his summer rehabbing it. Dating back to training camp, though, whenever Green was asked what was different in Toronto, he used the word freedom. The Raptors’ offensive system demands improvisation, and Green told CBS Sports that this has “a ton” to do with the year he’s having.
“It gives you more confidence as a player to be able to play your game,” Green said. “I think knowing that you’re not coming out because of a mistake or because you tried to be creative or make a play or do something outside of your box, it allows you to have that freedom. It makes you more comfortable doing those things.”
This made the transition to Toronto “very easy” for the 10-year veteran, and that is no small thing given that he played 15,942 minutes in 620 games for the Spurs, including their yearly playoff runs. He sacrificed money to re-sign with the Spurs in 2015, a year after his lights-out shooting and stout defense helped them beat the Heat in the NBA Finals. Five days removed from his return to San Antonio, which featured a tribute video and many, many hugs, Green was careful to say that his current situation isn’t better or worse than his previous one. He did, however, describe it as “different.”
Toronto coach looking forward to many big games between Celts and Raptors – Boston Herald
“Obviously they’re on edge [after three straight losses], but I don’t put too much into that. I think all you need to do is look at last night’s Golden State game (142-111 win in Denver) to know that when a really good team with really good players decided, ‘All right, let’s go play,’ they showed what they can do. And that’s what I’m expecting from Boston.”
As he spoke before tipoff and was asked about which Celts he’s be seeing here, Nurse smiled and said, “If I had a formula on any of that stuff, when I knew it was going to happen, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
And the particular matchups and general competitiveness between the two teams always plays into it, as well.
Before the five-game win streak the Raptors carried into the Garden for this one, they were smoked in San Antonio, 125-107 (in DeMar DeRozan’s revenge game), but he expects things will always be different for them against the Celts.
“This is a little bit closer to home. This is a team we see a lot and we’re going to see a lot [in meaningful games], probably for years to come. So we know every time we play these guys that it means something.”
Two weeks ago when the Celts were in Texas to play the Spurs, San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich chalked up the strange results around the league and general inconsistency to greater emphasis by teams on 3-point shooting. Nurse is a believer.
Game Recap: Boston Celtics down the Toronto Raptors with game-closing run, 117-108 – Raptors HQ
The starters for the Raptors were consistently great. Kawhi Leonard led the way with 33 points on just 19 shots, adding four rebounds and four steals. Serge Ibaka also had a great game, with 22 points and 10 rebounds (five on the offensive glass). Kyle Lowry, despite going 3-for-10 for just 10 points, had an aggressive mindset early on and racked up seven assists.
What’s more, Toronto’s starters were engaged and opportunistic on defence. When all five guys were out there, especially with Ibaka at the five, they were able to collapse the lane and get back to shooters relatively efficiently. The Celtics made 46.7% of their threes on the night, but quite a few were under duress.
That percentage, on the flip side, was also propped up by the Raptors’ poor bench play. In the second quarter, Toronto was soundly beaten by the Celtics’ bench unit — led by 18 points from Gordon Hayward — as they were beaten 34-17 in the frame. That stretch stung, even though the Raptors made quite a rally in the second half.
In the opening quarter, Kawhi got off to a frantic start. He had five of the first seven Raptors points, including a steal and score, to help Toronto jump out to an 18-7 lead. The starters kept the good times going until the media timeout, when they were up 27-19.
Rozier, Baynes lead bench charge vs. Raptors – CelticsBlog
In two roughly ten-minute stints, Rozier also pushed the ball in transition and attacked the basket when he could. He didn’t force anything on offense and instead, used his athleticism on the defensive end. After the game, Rozier seemed to brush off the accolades, saying that it was “nothing special” and “something he just told himself, so get used to seeing that.”
“I definitely felt the spirit go up a little bit. I’m just trying to be active on the ball, picking up full, and picking up everybody’s energy. You could just tell that when I started doing it that everybody started being more active and it changed the game a little bit.”
In the front court, it was the return of Aron Baynes that provided the solid backbone on both sides of the floor. His presence was probably felt the most by the guy that he never shared the floor with: Al Horford.
“I’m very happy that (Aron Baynes) is back. He felt great. He takes so much pressure off of us as a group. His presence defensively, his activity, energy, he hit a big 3 in the 4th when we were hurting. I’m just happy that he’s back,” Horford said.
Chance encounter with NBA coach changed Winthrop offense | The Herald
It was very early in the 2014 college basketball season and Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey was in his office working when a man walked in.
He asked if he could watch Winthrop’s practice, which was about to start, and Kelsey said, absolutely, our practices are open. Then he asked if the man was a basketball coach and where did he coach?
“Toronto,” he said.
“Toronto… Raptors?” Kelsey asked, his interest piqued.
“Yeah, the Raptors,” the man said.
Nick Nurse, an assistant coach for the NBA’s Toronto Raptors in 2014, and now the Raptors’ head coach, had just ambled into Kelsey’s office. Nurse’s wife, the former Roberta Santos, was an assistant volleyball coach at Winthrop and Nurse was in town for some quality family time before the NBA season started.
That fortuitous event changed the offensive style of the Winthrop basketball program. Kelsey always liked to play fast and downhill offense. But meeting Nurse added an emphasis on 3-pointers and the development of the Eagles’ shot spectrum, which determined whether certain field goal attempts were efficient and valuable, or not, and thus not worth shooting.
During one of their many interactions over the ensuing years, Nurse asked Kelsey what kind of shots his team wanted.
“Good shots?” Kelsey said, unsure of his answer.
