https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5U58xsQ8w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T8lJ7KDzWM
Hey @kawhileonard, we heard you couldn't find the right size gloves while you were here in Toronto. If you ever come back to Canada, we've got you covered! 😉
📸 @dszczepanek pic.twitter.com/BKjpIfAA4y— Roots (@ROOTS) January 4, 2021
Raptors Concern Index: How worried should you be about each thing going wrong? – The Athletic
Pascal Siakam
Concern level: highWe have talked about Siakam a lot even though it can feel like we haven’t done it enough. He is the highest-leverage concern; if he were to figure out things, a lot of the smaller concerns seem, well, smaller. More players are in their natural alignment around Siakam as the top option, and fewer players are overextended in their role or bench minutes. The team is built with Siakam scoring 20 in mind, and even if he’s not a superstar, simply more than this would help a lot. (Now, if that happens, some of the more debatable rotation choices actually become bigger issues since the leverage of a three-point swing in a close game is much higher than in a 10-point game.)
I spent some time over the weekend looking back at some of Siakam’s pre-hiatus performances to compare with how he’s looked since the relaunch. That’s a deeper dive for a standalone piece, but it’s remarkable just how different he looks in his attacking. He’s not getting to the front of the rim or the free throw line nearly as much, and though Monday was a nice step forward, with 22 points on 19 used possessions, there were still instances when he made things much harder on himself, rushing push shots or misreading space on post mismatches.
Not to lower the bar too much, but Siakam did show some positives against Boston. His effort level on defence and with loose balls was much improved, he threw a nice loose-ball pass-ahead to Anunoby to send him to the line, and he even had what felt like his first big dunk in some time. In the half court, he passed well out of the post and in the pick-and-roll, with his three assists missing a couple of secondary assists and free throw assists.
Had the Raptors pulled this game out, it would have been a noticeable enough step forward that it could look like a humble building block for Siakam. As it stands, finding his way to solid-not-great play in a blowout loss doesn’t do much.
10 things: Raptors must look in the mirror after brutal loss to Celtics – Yahoo!
Seven — Picking on Nurse’s rotations is scratching the surface of this problem. The bigger issue is the roster construction. Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster have never faced criticism because they never actually deserved it until now, but what is this roster? Nurse said it himself in his pregame gambit that he “cannot keep sending out another little shooting guard” which covers about half the team. Nurse has no starting options at center, no backup power forward, and he’s so desperate for a wing defender for the second unit that he’s promising minutes to Johnson. Recall that Nurse viciously tore apart Johnson in last year’s training camp before a single game was played, digging at Johnson’s defense for not being up to standard despite his title as a stopper, before proceeding to ignore his existence for the entire season up until the Orlando bubble. A year later, Nurse is now using Johnson as a shield against all-stars like Tatum, Ben Simmons, and Brandon Ingram. Maybe expectations should have been adjusted accordingly.
Raptors overmatched in another loss, still searching for traction – Sportsnet
The unravelling began in the second quarter and as they have so often this year, the Raptors stopped scoring. They coughed up a 5-of-24 period and could only watch as the Celtics took control of the half — and the game, as it turned out — with a 14-0 run late in the second quarter that saw Boston take a comfortable 15-point lead into the intermission.
Things didn’t get better after the break. By then the Celtics were flowing and smelling blood. Tatum built on his 21-point second quarter with 12 more in the third, and Jaylen Brown — the Celtics’ best player so far this season — coasted to 19 points on 16 shots. And just to rub it in, there was an impressive outing by a point guard taken late in the first round — but it wasn’t Flynn. Instead it was the Celtics’ Payton Pritchard, taken 26th overall — three spots ahead of Flynn — who looked calm and comfortable on his way to 23 points off the bench on a night when Boston was missing guards Kemba Walker (knee), Jeff Teague (ankle) and Marcus Smart (thumb).
So where are the Raptors? They are in trouble if the expectation is to compete for an Eastern Conference title and beyond.
At the very least, something has to change.
“I think we need to be tougher,” Lowry said. “I think we just need to, you know, get a little bit more grittier, get a little bit more tougher, a little bit more nastier and have a little bit of a swag to us … And somehow, some way this West Coast trip, you know, has to be the start of something, because it could be a really bad trip if we don’t – look at this first game, and look at all these games and see how we can get better.”
Suddenly maybe just making the playoffs would be a more realistic goal, with nothing promised.
This is not where the Raptors thought they would be – “uncharted waters”, VanVleet said – but the first step to solving a problem is admitting there is one and to their credit, the Raptors have got that part right.
Jayson Tatum leads shorthanded Celtics past Raptors, 126-114 – CelticsBlog
Jayson Tatum put together another prolific performance to lead the way, netting 26 of his game-high 40 points — one shy of his career high — in the first half as Boston took down Toronto, X-X, to improve to 5-3. The Raptors had no answer for the All-Star forward as Tatum shot 11-for-19 from the floor, including 5-for-8 from deep, but more importantly Tatum asserted himself with aggressive drives to consistently get to the free-throw line, where he went a perfect 13-for-13.
Tatum exploded in the second quarter, scoring 21 points in the frame as Boston closed the stanza on a dominant 25-6 tear to seize control after a dismal start, in which Toronto came out scorching hot from beyond the arc and took a 17-5 lead just four minutes into the contest. Boston outscored Toronto 38-14 in the second quarter to take a 61-46 halftime lead. It wasn’t just Tatum spearheading the second-quarter tear as Payton Pritchard, who earned 32 minutes in the absence of Smart and Teague, was highly effective once again off the bench as he scored 23 points and dished out 8 assists.
The Raptors don’t look like the team Celtics faced in the playoffs – Among the themes of this season is that every game and every prolonged streak means a little bit more in the 2020-21 season because the games are closer together and there are fewer of them. So the 1-5 start for Toronto/Tampa is extra concerning.
They miss Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol. Pascal Siakam looks like he’s regressed and it can’t be easy living in a hotel all season. If things don’t start to turn around quickly, things could spiral quickly.
5 takeaways as Boston Celtics, Jayson Tatum roll over Toronto Raptors | Boston.com
Raptors coach Nick Nurse has called out players before this season. He continued after Monday’s disappointing effort when asked about Raptors guard Malachi Flynn.
“He was okay,” Nurse said. “I think my bigger thing is that, if you want to be honest about it, he didn’t really do much out there. And if you wanna be honest about it, Norm [Powell] hasn’t played very well this year, [Terrence Davis] hasn’t played well, Matt [Thomas] hasn’t played well.”
The Raptors are not trending up at the moment and, in a very competitive Eastern Conference, might be a team to watch when the trade deadline approaches.
Game Recap: Toronto Raptors trounced by Boston Celtics, 126-114 – Raptors HQ
The start was great for Toronto, as it has been through most of their games this season. Lowry, Siakam, and VanVleet all hit threes in the opening three minutes as the team stormed out to a 17-5 lead at the first stoppage. The Raptors were playing with energy, and taking advantage of an undersized Celtics lineup missing several bodies, including Kemba Walker and Marcus Smart. With 5’10” Tremont Waters thrust into the starting lineup, Toronto did the right thing and attacked from their backcourt. Fred went 4-for-4 from deep in the frame, as the Raptors went into the second up 32-23.
As soon as the bench came in, though, the good vibes evaporated. A pre-game airing of grievances by Nick Nurse included the fact that Stanley Johnson would continue to earn minutes near the top of the rotation. He did so on Monday (following a surprise burst for Malachi Flynn, who struggled in team defence) and Johnson’s minutes almost directly lined up to the Raptors’ collapse. In a series of events in the second, Johnson lost a steal out of bounds, Norman Powell attempted a floater from the free throw line, and Johnson missed a wide open three.
The Celtics capitalized and then some: Tatum had 21 of his 40 in the second quarter alone, as Boston would go on a 20-6 run while the Raptors dropped to below 50% on shots in the paint. It looked a bit like the playoff series on both ends, but the fight just wasn’t there for Toronto. The Celtics went into halftime up 15.
The second half didn’t provide any answers for the Raptors. Siakam had a nice stretch in the third, blocking a shot and finishing a dunk, but it never materialized into momentum for the team. Again, production just wasn’t there. OG Anunoby went 3-for-8, scoring ten points. Aron Baynes and Alex Len were scoreless in 23 combined minutes at centre. Powell was 1-for-6 and marked a -15.
Luckily, the Raptors’ third unit made the score a little more friendly in the fourth. Yuta Watanabe provided some energy, making a three and playing some frenetic defense. With the lead down to ten, though, the Celtics brought their starters back and closed the door in the final 2:30.
When so much is going wrong at the same time, it’s hard to prescribe a fix that’ll turn things around in the short-term. For now, the Raptors just have to work on one thing at a time. Their next game is against Phoenix on Wednesday.
Toronto Raptors reach breaking point in collapse to Boston Celtics – TSN.ca
The final score was flattering considering how most of the evening played out. For the sixth time in six games, the Raptors went up by double digits in the first half, and for the fifth time to open the young season, they squandered that lead and went on to lose. This one cut the deepest.
It’s hard to overstate just how important this game was to them. It was a chance to alleviate some of the tension that’s been building and pick up a much-needed signature win against a rival team, ahead of a tough stretch of the schedule. Instead, it served as a reminder – there’s no quick or easy fix.
“It’s a fine line between being good and bad,” said Kyle Lowry, who was asked what he’s learned about this team over the past couple weeks. “There are things that have to be adjusted in the way we play and how we think. It’s about playing basketball harder and wanting to win.”
The loss highlighted many of the Raptors’ deficiencies.
Their unimaginative and streaky offence continues to result in lengthy scoring droughts, like the one that sparked Boston’s 38-14 second-quarter run, which turned the game. Their defence continues to show flashes but isn’t anywhere close to where they want and need it to be – the Celtics shot 52 per cent from three-point range and got 40 points from all-star forward Jayson Tatum.
Without Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka, they’re still searching for answers in the front court (starting centre Aron Baynes was benched in the second half) and on the boards (they were out-rebounded 56-37). They’ve had to rely on the two point guards, Lowry and VanVleet (who combined to score 53 points) to carry the load, while Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby remain quiet, and Norman Powell and the bench (who were out-scored 60-29) continue to struggle.
Then there was their lack of fight – another alarming early-season trend.
Boston came in on the second night of a back-to-back, having barely escaped Detroit with a win 24 hours earlier. They’ve looked vulnerable so far, though not to the extent Toronto has, and they were without their three veteran point guards – Kemba Walker, Marcus Smart and Jeff Teague, who missed the game with various ailments.
The Raptors started the game on fire, hitting seven of their first nine three-point attempts to give them an early 13-point cushion. They got, and wasted, one of the best games of VanVleet’s career – he scored 35 points on 13-of-20 shooting and 6-of-9 from long distance. But it wasn’t enough.
Once the Celtics took control midway through the second quarter they never relinquished it, leading by as many as 26 points in the fourth.
Amid 1-5 start, Kyle Lowry says reeling Toronto Raptors need to regain their ‘swagger’ – ESPN
Toronto has now led by double digits in each of its five losses this season. By comparison, the Raptors were 48-4 all of last season when they had a double-digit lead in a game.
It’s yet another thing that adds salt to the wounds of a team that finished second in the Eastern Conference each of the past two seasons under coach Nick Nurse, and won the title in 2019.
“This is probably uncharted territory for most of us,” said Fred VanVleet, who led Toronto with 31 points and was the team’s only effective offensive player. “Just speaking for myself, I’ve never been a part of something like this. But we can’t hang our heads. No one’s feeling sorry for us.
“There’s no secret recipe. There’s a boatload of problems and we gotta find ways to solve them.”
Most of those problems for Toronto — despite Boston’s offensive explosion in Monday’s game — are a byproduct of the Raptors’ own offensive woes.
The Raptors entered Monday with the league’s lowest free throw attempt rate and the 29th-ranked offense. The loss to Boston highlighted the team’s season-long issues, as the Raptors got to the rim time and again — only to, more often than not, fail to convert the layups those drives created.
“We’re having a tough time,” Nurse said. “Like, we missed so many layups. And we cannot make an and-1, either. Some of those fouls real early, and you’re continuing on to a wide-open layup, and they’re rolling off, so just finishing in general really hurt us.
“We did get there a lot tonight. We got to the free throw line a lot tonight. But we just didn’t make enough. We’ve got to get tougher, man. Got to play through some slaps and hits. Got to play through some bumps. Got to make those when you get that deep in there. That’s it.”
No one was great — VanVleet did have 35 points, and Lowry added 18 — but more significant, no one else was particularly good.
“We’ve got to get these guys playing to their capabilities,” coach Nick Nurse said. “I think they’re better players than that so we as coaches, and our leaders of our team, need to … get these guys together and get them playing.”
The 1-5 start is the worst to a Raptors season since they opened the 2005-06 season with nine straight losses. It’s a different and mystifying feeling for the veterans on the team.
“We just need to get a little bit grittier, get a little bit tougher and a little bit nastier, and have a little bit of a swagger to us,” Lowry said. “Right now we have no swagger to us. We have nothing. There’s nothing to us. Teams are looking at us like, ‘All right, let’s go eat.’”
A truly wretched second quarter — outscored 38-14, just 5-for-24 from the field while the Celtics shot 52 per cent — doomed the Raptors, who now head out on a four-game western road trip starting Wednesday night in Phoenix.
“I mean, tonight I didn’t learn anything,” Nurse said. “I didn’t learn anything other than we’ve got to compete harder.
“Hopefully this is not who we’re going to be. We had fought really hard in four of the first five (games). But we just didn’t fight hard enough tonight, really, in the middle of the game.”
The Celtics, playing their third game in four days and missing their injured backcourt of Jeff Teague and Marcus Smart, got 40 points from Jayson Tatum in rolling to the win.
NBA Power Rankings – Where all 30 teams are starting the new year – ESPN
This week: 18
2020-21 record: 1-4
Previous ranking: 15Toronto could reasonably be 5-0. Instead, the Raptors are 1-4 after losing another close game in New Orleans on Saturday night. The poise and veteran know-how that came to define the Raptors the past couple of seasons is nowhere to be seen, and Pascal Siakam’s substandard play in the bubble has returned at the start of this season. Toronto has played a difficult schedule, and presumably will get itself righted, but it has been a troubling start. Monday’s game against Boston will be critical. — Bontemps
NBA Power Rankings: Poise or panic for all 30 teams – The Athletic
This week: 23
(↓Previously 22nd), 1-4, -2.5 net rating
Weekly slate: Loss at Sixers, Win over Knicks, Loss at PelicansPoise or Panic? Panic. It’s not like this season is a lost cause for the Raptors, but fans have to be concerned with the start of this season. As the No. 1 guy, Pascal Siakam trended in the wrong direction last season. He was a disaster in the bubble before the Raptors got knocked out of the playoffs. The wear-and-tear and attention of being the top guy every night is a lot. I don’t doubt Siakam can figure it out, but his start to this season is rough. Nick Nurse needs to figure out how to get him some easy buckets. Once he starts scoring, one of the worst offenses in the league will get a big boost.
Why rank them here? One win over the Knicks won’t save their power rankings positioning. They’re ranked behind that Knicks team because they haven’t found success in any other game this season. The Raptors can’t score right now, and they simply don’t have the comfort of real home games this season.
This week: 20
Last week: 21Toronto picked up its first win of the season over the Knicks, a game in which it benched Pascal Siakam for disciplinary reasons. The Raptors bookended that with losses to the 76ers and Pelicans as the slow start continues for Nick Nurse’s bunch. The Raptors are dead-last in transition offense, according to Synergy, after finishing third in that department last season, so there’s reason to believe things will deviate to the mean pretty soon to help bolster the struggling offense. Norman Powell broke out of his slump in the final two games of the week, hitting 4-of-6 3-pointers in the loss to the Pelicans, which could be a sign of better things ahead.
Power Rankings, Week 3: Sixers, Suns and Jazz climb into the Top 5 | NBA.com
This week: 21
Last Week: 17 ↓Toronto Raptors
Record: 1-4
Pace: 102.6 (10) OffRtg: 101.8 (29) DefRtg: 104.3 (5) NetRtg: -2.5 (20)The Pascal Siakam Struggle Story now includes a team suspension for disciplinary reasons, presumably because he went straight to the locker room after fouling out on Tuesday. Beyond the 8-for-28 from 3-point range, Siakam’s shooting numbers from any particular area aren’t that bad. But only 17% (11/66) of his shots have come in the restricted area. That rate is down from 34% last season and 49% through his first three years. With that, his free throw rate is down from 27.4 attempts per 100 shots from the field last season to just 12.1 per 100 this season. His name isn’t Curry or Redick; He needs layups and free throws.
Despite Siakam’s struggles and though depth remains a serious issue, the Raptors aren’t that far away from where they want to be. They’ve led all five of their games by double-digits. Their defense is there, though its proclivity for swarming to the ball gave up huge 3s in Philadelphia on Tuesday (when Fred VanVleet left Seth Curry to help on a Joel Embiid drive) and in New Orleans on Saturday (when they doubled Brandon Ingram 22 feet from the basket).
Has the clock finally struck midnight on the Raptors? It certainly looks like it. Years of turning pumpkins into point guards whenever they’ve lost a major piece have taken their toll, and the collapse makes more sense through the prism of their 2019 championship roster. Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green, Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka — four of their eight best players — are all gone. Toronto overperforms almost every year, but at a certain point, attrition becomes overwhelming. The 2019-20 Raptors avoided it by getting peak performances out of almost every rotation player.
But two of the seven players that actually played regularly in the postseason are gone. Kyle Lowry’s age is finally starting to show as a ball-handler. He’s down to 0.64 points per possession in the pick-and-roll, good for only the 13th percentile leaguewide. OG Anunoby has seemingly forgotten how to shoot. So has Pascal Siakam, who still hasn’t shaken free of the slump that doomed Toronto’s postseason run in Orlando. The Raptors are ranked No. 29 in offense. Shooting regression will help them. They can at least point to a solid net rating as proof that things aren’t as bad as they seem. But close losses are more encouraging for some teams than others. Toronto losing its 14 clutch minutes so far by 12 total points is more of a continuation of last season’s problems. The Raptors don’t have a closer. Right now, they don’t have an above-average generator of half-court offense.
Harden is the league’s best generator of half-court offense, and with each passing game, Toronto’s package becomes less appealing. Siakam is older than Caris LeVert, and the production gap between the two is shrinking. How much of the offensive gains would be lost in replacing Siakam with Harden defensively on Toronto’s end? Is this season even worth saving?
That’s the fundamental question at play here. The Raptors could have credibly considered themselves one James Harden away from championship contention entering this season. But given Lowry’s age (turns 35 in March), the fit issues, the defensive cost and their lack of depth, is that still even true? If anything, the Raptors might have zoomed past desperation into the serenity of acceptance. Maybe this is just going to be a lost season. Maybe the strain of playing in Tampa Bay limits their ambition. Maybe Masai Ujiri needs time to reshape his roster around the current core and he’ll have near-max cap space to do it with this offseason.
But what has become clear in this slow start is that, for the moment, the Raptors are rudderless. They no longer have a contention-worthy roster or a chance to sign Giannis Antetokounmpo. There isn’t a clear path to any other franchise player in free agency either. They aren’t good enough to win right now, but their young talent is running out of room to grow. The last time the Raptors were in this situation, they swung for the fences on Kawhi and won a championship. Maybe Harden is the solution now. Maybe he isn’t.
But the era of automatic Toronto contention appears to be over. The Raptors will get better. They’ll probably even top out as pretty good. But for years, Toronto’s infrastructure was enough to guarantee competitiveness. The Raptors hit the over on their projected win total nine years in a row. But years of duct-taping the back end of the roster have finally taken their toll, and a core that was built to support an existing star is struggling without one to revolve around now. If any team could be described as desperate so early in the season, it would probably be the Raptors.
Send me anything I may have missed as my depression sets it: rapsfan@raptorsrepublic.com
