For much of the regular season the Toronto Raptors have relied on the mantra of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts in order to finagle victories whilst undermanned. Nick Nurse and co. have summoned every bit of chicanery imaginable to squeeze out memorable victories against playoff contenders in Dallas and Los Angeles, to name a few. It was a period that could have ended in dire fashion yet Toronto’s motley crew scrounged out wins, bookmarking a surprisingly fun chapter of the season.
Want to know an even easier way to win regular season games? Be more talented than your opponent.
Monday afternoon’s 122-117 win was an example of just how talented the healthy version of the Toronto Raptors are. Sure they faced a team in Atlanta that boasts a league-worst 10-34 record and played lethargically, even trailing throughout most of the mid-portion of the game, but that is sort of the point. Toronto shot an icy 41.4 per cent from the floor, including a torrid 31 per cent clip from deep. Despite this, the Raptors woke from their slumber just in time to flick the switch as the third quarter neared completion, and then blew the game open during winning time, cruising to a semi-convincing win.
The Raptors do still rely on the proverbial whole in order to overcome the sum of their opponent’s parts… it just so happens that Toronto’s own parts are also pretty, pretty, pretty good.
In recent games there has been one particular part that is contributing a significant amount during the Raptor’s current four-game winning streak. Norman Powell has been a monster over the past five games, averaging 23.6 points with a 71.8 effective field goal percentage since returning from a shoulder injury. On Monday afternoon Powell poured in a team-high 27 points and single-handedly offset the team’s outside shooting woes, accounting for six of the team’s 13 triples on the night.
“Everything just feels like it’s going in. Everything feels like it’s in a rhythm, like it’s gonna fall. He’s in that rhythm,” Kyle Lowry said of Powell’s scorching stretch.
Two different stints in the second half drove Powell’s performance. During the third quarter Toronto’s starters tumbled to an eight point deficit. The unit clanked open threes, failed to contain the uber impressive Trae Young, and looked devoid of life. Enter Powell, who at that moment in time only had two points to his name. However, upon checking in he instead looked like a man who is going through the hottest streak of his life, letting shots fly at a rate that would make Jordan Clarkson shy. Powell caught a Lowry pass near his ankles and immediately launched, narrowly missing. Still undeterred, Powell bombed back-to-back pure catch-and-shoot looks, shrinking the deficit to two. It was a necessary shot in the arm for a Toronto team that spent much of the third quarter sluggishly scoring at the free throw line.
Although it was Powell’s entrance the regained the Raptors’ foothold in the game, it was his ever-presence during the fourth quarter that sealed the win. Nurse opted to keep Powell on the floor for the final 18 minutes of the game, sensing that his sixth man would remain the only reliable source of offence. Powell repaid his coaches’ faith, scoring 12 consecutive points for Toronto which enabled them to take a stranglehold on the game. It was a momentum-changing passage of play that is often sparked by the team’s engine, Kyle Lowry.
Fittingly, Powell punctuated his dominant stretch with a Lowry-esque relocation triple.
Powell ended the night as a plus-10, a number that still undersold his importance in the win.
“We tried to run a couple things for him [Powell]… he pulled a couple isos there once he really was feeling it,” said Nurse. “It was a big time performance.”
Powell’s performances have come at the perfect time for the Raptors as they extended their winning streak to four games and jump up to the third seed in the Eastern Conference, all while slowly lifting the minutes restrictions on returnees. And yes, Powell’s unconscious shooting may regress slightly as his Kyle Korver impersonation wears off, but Toronto have plenty of other parts waiting to contribute to the whole.
