That was a good run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOc0RMRFqAE
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Throughout the streak, the Raptors won several games they had little business winning. They were favorites in 13 of 15, sure, but they were also often injured, engaging in a schedule light on elite competition yet heavy on travel. They got down big and came back. They got up big and held on. Players stepped up in a meaningful fashion each night, raising the level of play as the team around them required. It seemed as if the number of obstacles that would have to get in Toronto’s way to add a loss to its ledger was beyond imagination, or at least beyond imagination outside of Wisconsin.
And so when the Raptors got down by double digits to the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday, it was simply assumed they’d find a way back. Kyle Lowry would take over. If he couldn’t, Pascal Siakam would step up. Failing that, Serge Ibaka would catch fire. And if none of those things clicked, a role player would overperform his role, or Nick Nurse’s defensive experimentation would pay dividends, or the sheer will and momentum of all of those pieces would nudge less dramatically in the same direction, all simultaneously, giving them just enough.
It’s very difficult to win 16 games in a row. The Raptors had never won 15 consecutive games before, and the odds of them pulling off a stretch of 16 in a row was something like 1-in-275, based on the money line for each game. Lowry struggled with foul trouble. Siakam at times looked tired or passive or both. The Nets were prepared for Toronto’s comeback trap. Caris LeVert was very good. Again. The result was a 101-91 loss in Brooklyn, capping the streak at 15.
A game like that is bound to happen. A month is a lot of basketball. A streak is improbable and tests fatigue, both physical and emotional.
The understandable nature of eventually having a holistic enough off night to lose one doesn’t help when the loss finally comes. It calls to mind the 1998 film “Pleasantville,” where the team that’s never lost before finally experiences the cliches that every opponent has operated under.
The Raptors Weren’t Supposed To Be This Good This Year | FiveThirtyEight
But on some level, what sets this team apart is its balance. Similar to last season, when the Raptors went 17-5 in the regular-season games Leonard sat out, the Toronto offense has shown an ability to stay on track without certain players on the floor.
Siakam’s efficiency has understandably fallen some with the increased volume he’s had to carry as a No. 1 scoring option — especially as a pick-and-roll ball-handler and a pull-up jump shooter.3 But between his counting stats and his two-way ability, he’s a more-than-deserving starter in this weekend’s All-Star Game. When he hasn’t been able to play, guys like Lowry and Ibaka, who is in the midst of perhaps the best season of his career, have filled the void.
Anunoby, coming off a career-high 25 points earlier in the week, has bounced back from the time he missed last year to essentially replace Green’s production. And the Raptors, who develop young talent like sharks develop new teeth, seem to have found something good in a couple of players. Terence Davis is almost lapping all NBA rookies in our RAPTOR metric, and forward Chris Boucher already has one of the 10 best per-minute shot-block rates in the league.
At times, because of the circumstances — no consistently healthy bodies, no Kawhi and no one truly expecting them to repeat as NBA champions — it almost feels like the Raptors are playing with house money. Zone defenses aside, Nurse sometimes coaches that way, too. So far, he’s requested an NBA-high 30 coach’s challenges — six more than the next-closest coach, per ESPN Stats & Information Group. After losing each of his first six challenges of the season, Nurse has since won 14 of his last 24, a 58 percent mark that would rank near the top of the league.
If there’s a given with this team, it’s that the Raptors almost never lose games to teams they’re not supposed to. They own a ridiculous 31-2 mark against sub-.500 clubs this season. Only the league-best Bucks have a better record against weak competition.
Recap: Toronto Raptors’ streak ends as they lose to Brooklyn Nets, 101-91 – Raptors HQ
It just never came together. The Raptors made shots in fits and spurts all night in Brooklyn, as the Nets were able to keep them at bay throughout. The home team won in all the categories you expect “hustle” to win for you — points in the paint (50-38), second chance opportunities (12-6 OREB), and getting to the foul line (25-13 FTA). Toronto, meanwhile, shot 37.8% as a team and just 30.2% from three, while committing 13 turnovers.
It seemed like the Raptors were content to take jump shots on a lot of possessions, and even though that run felt like it was always going to come — it never did. The Nets wrapped up a 101-91 win and ended Toronto’s 15-game win streak, just before All-Star Weekend takes centre stage in the NBA landscape.
Struggles were apparent everywhere, but most notably with Siakam. Missing his first four shots well short, it was clear early on that fatigue might be setting in for the Raptors’ defending MIP. He would end up making just 6-for-17 from the field and 1-for-6 from three, hitching up more outside jumpers than you’d like to see against a Nets team that generally plays four out with a centre in the middle.
To give Pascal the benefit of the doubt, his load has been much heavier since Marc Gasol left for a second stretch of games with a hamstring injury, and the Nets had the personnel to wear him down. Serge Ibaka wrassled with DeAndre Jordan, leaving Siakam to fend off weak side action that never slowed down for Brooklyn. The Nets were attacking the paint at any time possible, led by Caris LeVert, who had 20 points on 20 shots, adding seven rebounds, four assists, and four steals.
Nets snap Raptors’ 15-game win streak, enter All-Star Break with momentum: 101-91 – NetsDaily
The Nets couldn’t have asked for a better way to enter the All-Star break, winning their second straight game and sixth in the last eight, all while snapping Toronto’s 15-game win streak, 101-91, Wednesday night at Barclays Center. The Nets (25-28) and the Raptors (40-15) might be a first-round match in the playoffs with Toronto owning the two seed and the Nets owning the seven seed.
If that’s the case, the Nets need to play they did on Wednesday.
They came out of the gates with extra prowess on the defensive end. They held Toronto to 19 points in the opening quarter and kept it steady throughout the night, giving up just 91 points while containing the Raptors to 38 percent from the field and 30 percent from three. The Raptors had averaged 121 points during their winning streak.
The Nets went up double digits in the second quarter and never fell off after that. They didn’t shoot particularly well — 40.9 percent from the field and 25.7 percent from three, but they made enough stops and got the balanced attack they needed.
In the fourth, DeAndre Jordan and Garrett Temple put home consecutive and-one’s to give Brooklyn an 80-65 lead. Toronto chipped away a bit, trimming the deficit down to 10, but Spencer Dinwiddie scored five straight points to go back up 15 with a little over five minutes remaining.
Of course, Nets killer Fred VanVleet (16 points) brought it within nine, but Caris LeVert put things to rest with two consecutive baskets. At that point, it was a 13 point Nets’ lead with 3:40 left.
The dagger: Joe Harris 3-pointer with 1:55 left, 13-point Nets lead. Harris finished the night with 19 points and 5 rebounds, continuing his stellar play of late where he’s scored 15+ points in five out of the last six games.
Nets snap Raptors’ 15-game win streak before All-Star break – The Brooklyn Game
Brooklyn jumped out to an early lead, but not in a fashion that most would expect. This team is known for its reliance on three-point shooting, but the long ball was simply not falling. The Nets shot 9-for-35 from beyond-the-arc, good for 25.7 percent. Despite this, they never let the Raptors storm back into the lead with outstanding defensive effort.
Toronto failed to find an offensive identity in this game and were held to 38.2 percent shooting from the floor. Couple their struggles with the fact that the Nets outrebounded the Raptors 55-42, and the picture becomes clear.
The Nets outhustled and outworked Toronto.
Takeaways: Raptors get needed break after streak-ending loss to Nets – Sportsnet.ca
The Raptors shot an abysmal 37.8 per cent from the field and 30.2 per cent from three-point range. When compared to the 50.4 per cent from the floor and 40.6 per cent from deep the team was shooting during the 15-game streak, it really puts into perspective why the Raptors finally lost.
Over the course of Toronto’s previous 15 games, it was customary that when one or two guys had an off night, others would seamlessly step up and fill the void. That didn’t happen Wednesday, as Pascal Siakam (6-for-17 from the field), Kyle Lowry (4-for-13), Terence Davis (0-for-6) and Patrick McCaw (1-for-6) were all dreadful shooting the ball.
Specifically, the two Raptors who will be playing in the big game this Sunday, Siakam and Lowry, were quite bad. Siakam left a number of shots short and went 1-for-6 from deep. Lowry, who did impact the game in other ways by dropping a game-high 12 assists and collecting a team-high 11 rebounds, got himself into foul trouble and seemingly tried to goad and irk the officials – who had established a whistle that wasn’t apparently favourable to him – every trip down the floor, like that was going to help matters more.
But as poorly as the Raptors shot the ball, and as tilted as the officials’ calls against the team may have seemed to Lowry, the Raptors were always in the game Wednesday, just barely knocking on the door before Brooklyn would then pull away and create temporary separation.
This was because if there’s one thing that’s defined the Raptors this season – streak or no streak – it’s been their commitment to the defensive end of the floor.
The Nets only shot 40.9 per cent from the field and 25.7 per cent from outside themselves, and that’s a credit to the Raptors’ defence.
Raptors win streak ends at 15 as Nets exact a little revenge | Toronto Sun
VanVleet said it was just one of those nights.
“It is what it is,” he said. “I just think we didn’t have enough juice to overcome some of the things that were going on tonight. I thought we were a little flat early and just couldn’t really get it going after that. We weren’t going to win them all. The break has come at a good time. We’ll take some time and then come back and get another one started again.”
Joe Harris hit the for-sure dagger with just under two minutes left when he drained his second three pointer of the night to put the Nets up by 13.
The Raptors have come back from bigger deficits but not with the clock and the score so much against them.
It was a pretty tough shooting night for everyone on the Raptors not named Serge Ibaka.
Ibaka, who returned from a flu-like virus to put up a Raptors-best 27, didn’t really get any help until Fred VanVleet got on a role in the fourth and bumped his contributions for the night up to 22.
Other than that it was slim pickings. Lowry had a rough night going just 4-for-13 from the field while the bench contributed a total of just nine points , the only time this year they have been in single digits as a group.
“I was emailing and calling and knocking on the door because I wanted that opportunity to coach pro players,” Bjorkgren remembered.
“He just called me up. He wouldn’t leave me alone, said he wanted to be an assistant,” Nurse said. “So he didn’t have any money and he’s a volunteer and he wouldn’t go away. And I was like, ‘It’s the D-League, I guess I got one assistant, I’ll take another one if the price is right.’ So he hung in there, he volunteered. I think in year two we paid him $500, I think, and year three $2,500. And the other guy finally left and he made $25,000 (in) year four, so he was beside himself. Hard to control at that level.”
It might have been sarcasm on Nurse’s part, although sarcasm laced with truth. Bjorkgren was Nurse’s assistant for four years in Iowa, and then one of Nurse’s first hires when he got the head job with the Raptors. After coaching in three D-League All-Star Games together, Bjorkgren will be at Nurse’s side when the Raptors staff handles the duties for Team Giannis during Sunday night’s All-Star Game.
While Nurse is hardly surly, especially when it comes to the typical never-satisfied disposition of head coaches, Bjorkgren is a check on Nurse’s occasional bouts with realism. It is easy to picture Bjorkgren smiling, no matter the size of his salary.
“The biggest thing is he’s a super-positive guy,” Nurse said. “He’s the guy sitting next to me when I’m sensing disaster going on in a game and he’s saying, ‘We’re gonna win, we’re gonna come back.’ Constantly, ‘We’re gonna do it, we’re gonna come back.’ And that helps me out quite a bit.”
“Nate is the…,” Kyle Lowry said before restarting his sentence. “Yeah, I would say he is the fucking man.”
VanVleet is gritty and all but for the Raptors, it starts with Lowry | Toronto Sun
COMING UP
Nurse admitted before the final game of the unofficial first half of the NBA season that he has in fact shown a lot of his hand defensively to this point in the season, but that’s not to say he hasn’t held some things back as well.
“We have busted out a lot of the defensive stuff that we wouldn’t have done last year at this point,” Nurse said. “But we learned a lot of that during the playoffs so we figured we had it on our menu of stuff to use so we use it”
What has not been seen much of to this point are the offensive twists he has up his sleeve.
“We still hold back a lot of the offensive stuff until after the break,” Nurse said. “It just becomes a different game. Right now we just like to let them play with a lot of freedom because we think it helps their decision making down the line and it makes them better players. Obviously when you get to the grind of the playoffs you have to have some set plays to help them get some buckets.”
Swingin’ Wings Toronto Raptors wing rotation: Who’s even a wing anymore, anyway? – Raptors HQ
Who did What?
The Raptors went 4-0 last week, and Fred VanVleet started all four games, one of them at PG for the injured Kyle Lowry. All he did was average 18.8 points, 6.8 assists and 2.5 boards with 45/39/100 shooting splits, while knocking down his usual timely buckets.
Terence Davis started in VanVleet’s spot for that Brooklyn game; he had 20 points and eight boards. Overall he averaged 12 and five for the week Including 52% shooting from downtown on 5.8 attempts per game), and forced the broadcast to make approximately 8,356 subtle (and so many more not-so-subtle) references to the (completely irrelevant!) Rising Stars game.
When he wasn’t playing centre, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson was kind of erratic this week — a consequence, no doubt, of shaking off injury rust.
You know who wasn’t bad this week? Patrick McCaw! Sure, he was mostly invisible. But, he wasn’t completely exposed on D and he only had one total turnover. Going from “disaster” to “completely invisible” is a definite improvement.
Matt Thomas came in like the cavalry against Brooklyn, what with Lowry on the bench and Fred VanVleet in foul trouble. He threw in a career-highs in points (15) and steals (3) and tied career-highs in rebounds (6) and shots (9).
Speaking of career highs, how about OG Anunoby? He looked like he broke out of his scoring slump against Indiana last Friday, but then he really broke out of it against Minnesota, with 25 points on 13 shots. OG did struggle offensively in the other two games — five total points — but he brought his usual undeniable effort on defense.
Oshae Brisset played about eight energetic minutes in Brooklyn. Stanley Johnson and Malcolm Miller didn’t play, and neither did the injured Norman Powell.
NBA All-Star Game: Why Pascal Siakam’s rise in Toronto is remarkable – USA Today
Siakam and those closest to him saw the evolution first-hand.
Rico Hines, a player development specialist known for running competitive summer pickup games at UCLA, saw something special before the draft.
“I saw it coming,” Hines said, “because he worked at it.”
Siakam’s agent, Todd Ramasar, knew it was possible. “From my perspective, it’s not a fluke. From the moment he walked in the gym and finished his first workout, Rico walked over to me and … goes, ‘Todd, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘He has the potential to be a max player and perennial All-Star.’ ”
Raptors general manager Bobby Webster offered a look that embodies the franchise’s philosophy on players.
“Whatever improbable story you have and this is what’s inspiring about it, if you don’t put limits on whatever you’re working on – with certain character, certain work ethic, who you are as a person – there is no limit on what you can do,” Webster said. “ … We’re definitely not going to put a limit on him now.”
Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images
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