Raptors lose in spite of Kyle Lowry’s scorching return – Yahoo!
Eight — Explanation: Even with Siakam struggling, it’s still strange to see a max player outright benched. The camera panned to the Raptors bench during timeouts in the fourth quarter, and all of the substitutes would be huddled around Nurse’s clipboard with the exception of Siakam who stayed seated in the back. Nurse says it was just an instance of giving Siakam some rest on a night where he clearly didn’t have much to give, which might be a more common sight in the second half of the season with the schedule being compressed. Siakam had played over 40 minutes in both games against the Sixers.
Lowry leads the charge in return from injury, but Raptors can’t catch Heat – Sportsnet
Lowry was at his best from the jump and Fred VanVleet was good too as he finished with 24 points and seven assists. But missing in action was Pascal Siakam, who got into early foul trouble and limped to just five points on 1-of-6 shooting with Nurse pulling him back to just 24 minutes.
The first quarter proved nothing, as the two teams played it even, save for a triple at the buzzer by Powell that gave the Raptors a 35-32 lead. By that point, Lowry had already made his presence felt as he burst out of the gate with eight points on 4-of-5 shooting, proving decisive off the catch when attacking the paint, creating havoc as he went and knocking down a pair of threes as well. That was an early trend, as the Raptors shot 5-of-9 from deep in the first 12 minutes.
But the Heat began to gain some separation in the second quarter.
The Raptors struggled early against a heavy dose of Miami’s zone – nothing new there. But Toronto didn’t help their cause with some odd lineup choices, such as when Nurse had Stanley Johnson and Patrick McCaw – both little-used and less-than-adequate three-point shooters — sharing the floor with OG Anunoby, VanVleet and Powell.
The offence stagnated and the live-ball turnovers mounted and Miami was off and running. A 17-2 surge fuelled by Raptors’ errors over a three-minute span late in the quarter put Miami up 15 before the Raptors got a pair of late threes from Chris Boucher and Powell to go into the half trailing 66-56.
It wasn’t that different in the second half, as the Raptors kept trying to chase the game with Lowry leading the charge but couldn’t quite catch it.
A brief dry spell in Miami offers a lesson in lineups for fully loaded Raptors – The Athletic
During the moments when both Johnson and McCaw played, the Raptors scored just five points. Three of them came on a 31-footer from Kyle Lowry, which, suffice to say, was taken all the way over the Heat’s zone at the end of the shot clock. On the whole, the Raptors put those five points over seven turnovers. The Raptors have cold stretches like that all the time, and they aren’t that notable. The problem was the manner in which those possessions failed. There were three turnovers, including a lazy pass from Johnson to Fred VanVleet that led to an easy Heat layup the other way. There were three 3-point attempts: Lowry’s bomb, another deep one from VanVleet that was blocked, leading to a transition 3, and a miss from Johnson early in the shot clock. Other than VanVleet smartly attacking a mismatch with Kelly Olynyk, there was not a good offensive possession among the seven. Five points in seven possessions was a just outcome.
The stretch stood out because, for the most part, both teams executed their offences well in Miami’s 116-108 win Wednesday. It was only in that frame, in which the Raptors got just 21 points on an offensive rating of 91.3, that either team looked out of sorts. Given that the Raptors ran themselves empty the night before, the consistency of effort was commendable. If you want to dwell on any stat, look at offensive rebounds, with Miami grabbing 11 to Toronto’s three. The Raptors played small, and the irrepressible Bam Adebayo exploited it on a back-to-back.
Nick Nurse has said he wants to use more of his team’s depth in the second half of the season. While it will be busy, other teams will have it worse. The Raptors finished a five-games-in-seven-days stretch in Miami, their second such string of games of the month. In total, it was their 12th game in 20 nights, and their flight from Miami to Tampa on Wednesday night was their 11th over that span. It was also the first time all season that the Raptors had all of their main roster players available to them, and Nurse ended up using 12 of them.
We will probably see more of that in the second half, which will be necessary at times. VanVleet and Pascal Siakam are third and sixth, respectively, in the league in minutes played. This season, minutes must be massaged. At the same time, in Johnson, McCaw and DeAndre’ Bembry, the Raptors have three bench wings who don’t provide much perimeter shooting. (Yuta Watanabe also qualifies if/when he works his way back into the rotation.) Against some of the more finely tuned defences in the league, it will be hard to survive offensively with more than one of those guys on the floor at a time.
Six of Miami’s nine rotation players finished in double-digits and all players ended with at least one score. Duncan Robinson continued to shoot the leather off the ball, as he finished with 17 points and four 3-pointers. Meanwhile, Bam Adebayo took not being named an All-Star personally, as he dominated Toronto with 19 points, 12 rebounds and four assists. Six of Adebayo’s 12 rebounds were on the offensive glass, aiding Miami’s 42-32 rebounding advantage.
Goran Dragic returned to the lineup for the Heat and looked spry after not playing since Feb. 5. “The Dragon” ended the game with 15 points, adding to an overall impressive bench performance by the Heat, even without Tyler Herro.
Also off the bench, Andre Iguodala hit four 3-pointers for 12 points while Gabe Vincent hit three 3-pointers, finishing with 11 points. Even the players that weren’t scoring for the Heat found ways to impact the game. Olynyk shot poorly from deep but added seven points and, more importantly, seven rebounds and four assists.
Kendrick Nunn had an equally impressive game, getting three early assists en route to a seven-assist game. While Nunn is an excellent scorer for the Heat, he’ll be able to make a more long-lasting impact if he’s able to expand upon the playmaking that he flashed tonight.
Miami Heat: Jimmy Butler finds 3-ball in first Raptors matchup of the year – All U Can Heat
The Miami Heat are on a four-game winning streak! Imagine that?
Just a week or so removed from a time where we were wondering if this team was fixable or able to be remedied from some of the simple yet compounding issues they were afflicted with, they have now managed to string together a really good four-game streak.
It started with a win in Sacramento, followed by a win over the Lakers in Los Angeles, then it was further pushed along by a good win in Oklahoma City on Monday, before finally all being topped off by Wednesday night’s huge win over a Toronto team that’s currently in the top half of the conference standings.
While the win was awesome, much appreciated, and would have been good enough by it’s lonesome, it wasn’t the only positive thing to come from this win. Jimmy Butler appears to, perhaps, have found his three ball again, at least a little.
Recap: The Toronto Raptors fall short to Heat, 116-108, in Kyle Lowry’s return – Raptors HQ
Toronto lost to the Heat on Wednesday in the way they typically lose to the Heat. There were elbows, there were clutch Jimmy Butler buckets in crunch time, and there was a seemingly impenetrable zone defense in the Raptors’ way for more than half of the game. The Raps battled through such obstacles nobly for long stretches, as they do in these types of games. But some poorly-timed, wretched possessions in the fourth quarter, some weak sauce defensive rebounding, and a complete write off of an evening for Pascal Siakam left Toronto on the wrong end of a 116-108 final score.
They didn’t lose this one through any fault of Kyle Lowry, that’s for damn sure. Returning after missing the last four-plus games with a thumb injury, Lowry quickly reminded onlookers that he is still in fact the best player on the team. Tonight that was true by several orders of magnitude. After leading the team with 17 first half points, he proceeded to power a quick 10-0 run to open the second half to pull the Raps even at 66-66. From that moment in the third on, this game was an exercising in just barely hanging on to a chance at a stolen win.
Siakam had what was probably his worst game of the season. Bothered by the array of limbs the Heat cloaked him in any time he drove, Siakam made just one shot in six attempts — a three — and quickly piled up four first-half fouls. After more or less drifting through the first few minutes of the third, Siakam hit the bench stuck on five points, two boards and four assists in 24 minutes — a total he would not add to, even as the game was well within Toronto’s reach during crunch time. Instead of going back to his struggling star, Nick Nurse concluded a night of bizarre lineup juggling (please, stop with the Fred plus four bench guy looks) with Chris Boucher in Siakam’s place alongside the small-ball starters for a time, before a perplexing swapping in of Terence Davis to close the final four and a half minutes.
Struggles or not, Siakam probably should have gotten the call, considering that he’s Pascal freaking Siakam. That said, the choice to bench him was defensible if you squint. He clearly didn’t have it, and played 42 extremely hard minutes against the Sixers less than 24 hours prior. At the tail end of a tiresome and wildly successful five games / seven nights stretch, maybe Siakam getting a chill night isn’t the worst thing in the long run.
What truly did the Raptors in on Wednesday wasn’t the off night for one of its best player as much as it was that goddamned Miami zone. Everyone in the world knew the Heat would bust it out tonight, and yet the Raptors still seemed surprised by it.
The return of Kyle Lowry not enough to get Raptors past Heat | The Star
The loss spoiled an excellent night from Kyle Lowry, who returned after missing four games with a sore thumb to score 24 points with eight assists and seven rebounds in 35 minutes. “He’s got the freshest legs of anybody around so he may have to use ’em tonight,” Nurse had said before the game.
Lowry made four three-pointers, had 12 points in the first quarter alone when the Raptors got off to a good start and looked like he hadn’t missed a minute.
“It hurt a little bit,” Lowry said of his thumb. “I hit my thumb too many times, but in that situation I know it’s going to take some bumps and bruises, it’s going to get hit and it’s going to hurt.
“But it was fun to be back out there with the fellas and we put up a tough fight. But we didn’t pull it out at the end.”
The return of Lowry has to give the Raptors a measure of confidence as they head into the final four games before the all-star break. As well as they played in his absence, they are just whole when the veteran guard is in his usual spot.
It allows the Raptors to start their most effective five-man unit — Lowry, Fred VanVleet, Norm Powell, OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam — and to bring Boucher, Aron Baynes, DeAndre’ Bembry and someone else off the bench.
The issue on Wednesday was that the bench production was again too spotty. Some of the backups were good, none were great and that was a factor.
“They needed to provide some fresher legs and some energy and some minutes and some solid play,” Nurse said. “I think we had one little bad stretch there where the bench had a little bit of a bad run but I think there was a couple of really unfortunate plays mixed in there as well that hurt them, too.”
Tired Raptors scorched by Heat in Lowry’s return | Toronto Sun
It showed up in the Raptors’ inability to end defensive possessions with rebounds. Yes, the Raptors are starting small these days, and, yes, the Heat boast significant size in Bam Adebayo, but the same small lineup has handled themselves of late with the likes of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Brook Lopez, Karl Anthony-Towns and Joel Embiid opposing.
Keeping Adebayo off the boards Wednesday night proved to be too much.
Adebayo had six offensive boards, forcing an already tired-looking Raptors unit to extend defensive intensity and ultimately give up points anyway as the Heat would pad their lead with second-chance points.
Lowry, who returned following a four-game absence due to a sprained thumb, as he usually does, had an immediate impact.
Even with that left thumb still bandaged and Lowry constantly adjusting the bandage, he was stepping into and making shots all night.
Lowry finished with a Raptors-best 24 points including four three-pointers while playing his all-out style of defence. He also had seven rebounds and eight assists in the game.
Against the majority of the NBA, that performance would have been enough to get the Raptors a tough win in very difficult circumstances. But the Heat play a similar style of hard-nosed basketball that the Raptors pride themselves in, and, like Lowry, are led by a win-at-all-costs veteran of their own in Jimmy Butler.
Butler, whose 12-game absence earlier this season was a big part of the reason the Heat record isn’t what many expected it to be, is back in full force and seemed to single-handedly respond to every run the Raptors went on.
Although he lost the chance to celebrate winning the 2019 NBA championship because a law enforcement officer wrongly prevented him from stepping on the court, Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri said what he thinks about is the many other minorities who find themselves losing far more after encounters with police.
“As much as we say ‘Yeah, this happened to me,’ there’s worse that’s happened to other people, right?” Ujiri said during an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” that aired Wednesday morning. “I lost a moment. People have lost their lives.”
It was Ujiri’s first television interview since the lawsuit against him by Alameda County Sheriff’s deputy Alan Strickland was dropped earlier this month.
“I say it as humbly as I can: The privilege of the job I have is to fight for this,” Ujiri said. “They are wrongly accused, there is no body cams, nobody sees what happens, and they are inca
Although he lost the chance to celebrate winning the 2019 NBA championship because a law enforcement officer wrongly prevented him from stepping on the court, Raptors president Masai Ujiri said during an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” what he thinks about is the many other minorities who find themselves losing far more after encounters with police.
Raptors to be tested by back-to-backs, Western teams in second half schedule – Sportsnet
According to Positive Residual—a basketball analytics site that tracks and charts a number stats and trends in both the NBA and WNBA—the Raptors have played the eighth-toughest schedule so far and will be in for a bit of a break with the eighth-weakest schedule ahead in its remaining games (including Wednesday’s against Miami).
However, while Positive Residual does take into account many other factors such as games played with good or bad rest, the raw numbers of Toronto’s schedule so far tells a different story.
Purely looking at the winning percentage of the opponents the Raptors have faced, Toronto has faced the easiest schedule by far, according to Tankathon, with opponents only putting up a .414 winning percentage.
And while the advanced figures may say the Raptors have had an easier road so far, it certainly looks a lot tougher for the Raptors after taking a bird’s eye view of the remainder of their schedule. They’ll be facing more Western Conference competition and they have a ton of back-to-backs on the horizon.
In particular, the Raptors will have to embark on a murderer’s row Western Conference road trip from April 29-May 4 where they’ll see Denver, Utah and both L.A. clubs over the span of just six days.
There’s no doubt the Raptors will be tested in the second half.
