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10 things: Raptors run out of gas late in loss to Nets – Yahoo!
Five — Perspective: Anunoby’s growth will end up being the most meaningful development from an otherwise lost season. There was some question around his potential after the Raptors signed him to a $72-million extension last offseason, but in retrospect it was an excellent move by the front office. Anunoby would be worth his deal just on his three-point shooting and his defense, but he’s starting to gain confidence in all aspects on offense. In terms of his shooting, Anunoby has doubled his attempts from deep as compared to last season while maintaining the same efficiency. He’s also improving with the handle, as evidenced by Anunoby crossing up Durant before driving in for a dunk early on. There is still a question of how Anunoby would fare as even a secondary option on offense, but for a guy that was the fifth option last season, to even entertain that conversation is a huge step forward.
“It is nice to see it back,” coach Nick Nurse said before the game. “I talked about it in the coaching meeting today, we’ve got to get guys used to it a bit. He’s throwing it up there. What he’s seeing is two (defenders) on him and nobody pulling in from the weak side. He is throwing it up there and it is kind of … a (long) hang time. We talk about those guys (needing) to really go catch those things.
“I think we’ve got some nice, easy buckets out of that lately. It is good to see some roll threat in our offence. It’s really important. I think you’re seeing it.”
Birch has been such a good fit that you wonder how the season, both Lowry’s and the Raptors’ as a whole, would be different if he had made it to Tampa sooner. Sure, the Raptors would have had to surrender some sort of asset to pry him from Orlando before the deadline, but as they ended up trading Matt Thomas and Terence Davis for second-round picks, it’s fair to consider that a deal might have been doable, thus helping the Raptors navigate the issue.
Birch has been useful in many simple ways. He’s brought a rim protection element that nobody but Boucher has given the team. His quickness allows him to capably hang with smaller players, even if that is not ideal. After a slow start, he has been a presence on the glass, with nine offensive rebounds against Brooklyn. And he knows how to play offensively, with his simple ability to catch on the move doing wonders for the cohesiveness of the offence. In 245 minutes over nine games, the Raptors are scoring 115.6 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor. The Raptors got used to starting five players who could reliably hit the 3-pointer, but Birch has shown that it is possible to keep the offence humming even without that luxury.
“He’s been a good factor here,” Nurse said after the game. “I thought he was solid, too, defensively. I can remember maybe one double-team he went a little too quick on that they cut back door on us, but other than that, he was pretty mistake-free down there, too. So good game for him. He’s stringing ’em (together), playing well.”
Even though the Raptors are only a game and a half behind Washington for the final spot in the play-in tournament, they are going to have to do something pretty special on their daunting Western Conference trip that starts in Denver on Thursday to hang in the race. (That, or hope the Wizards struggle against a much easier schedule.) Still, getting this look at Birch has been beneficial for the franchise, and it is going well enough that extending the arrangement in free agency is easy to imagine.
Whether Lowry will be around to help make him look even better is a much tougher question to answer.
Nets loss means Raptors must run the gauntlet to keep playoff hopes alive – Sportsnet
If the Raptors harbour any hopes of salvaging a competitive result from their topsy-turvey season, they are going to have to beat some really good teams.
That hasn’t changed after Tuesday night, but they have one less game to do it.
The Raptors were in the mix for 38 of the game’s 48 minutes, even while playing on the second night of back-to-back against a rested Nets club. They showed enough that you could believe that maybe this version of the Raptors — healthier, deeper and bigger than they have been at any point this season — could do something special.
And then the Nets abruptly shut the door on what ended up a 116-103 win.
The Raptors were up six early in the fourth quarter after emerging rookie guard Malachi Flynn converted a spectacular three-point play with 9:36 left to play. Toronto had momentum and reason to believe.
But a pair of Harris triples sandwiched around a three by Griffin sparked a 22-6 run that put the Nets up by 10 with 3:37 to play. Toronto couldn’t get back under seven and the Nets pulled away.
The loss dropped Toronto to 26-36 and keeps them in 12th place with 10 to play, while the Nets improved to 42-20 and kept their spot atop the East.
There was plenty to like: The Raptors got another nice game from Flynn, who finished with 13 points on eight shots and added three assists without making a turnover in his 21 minutes. Khem Birch continued to show well in his seventh start since joining Toronto from Orlando as a free agent, finishing with 13 points and 14 rebounds — including nine on the offensive glass — in 32 minutes, while Kyle Lowry had his best game since being rested for much of April as he put up 24 points while shooting 6-of-9 from three.
OG Anunoby continued his outstanding run of two-way play, with 21 points on 15 shots and six assists while hounding Durant for much of the night as part of a scheme to eliminate him and Irving and let the rest of the Nets beat them.
That all worked out well as the Raptors limited Durant to just 17 points on seven shots in 33 minutes — tying a career low for attempts in games he’s played at least 30 minutes — and held Irving to nine points on 3-of-13 shooting. As well, they out-rebounded the Nets 47-41 and — thanks to Birch — grabbed 15 offensive rebounds to seven for Brooklyn.
But the Raptors still had some holes in their bucket. Pascal Siakam had a miserable game after what has been a fantastic month of April, as he shot 2-of-16 from the floor while Fred VanVleet was 4-of-17.
“I think our offence was pretty good tonight. Our shot-making maybe wasn’t great, but I think it was pretty good — it wasn’t great, but it was pretty good,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “I don’t think 116’s an outlandish number for that team and you’ve just gotta score a little bit more and I think the opportunities were there to do that.”
Nets clinch playoff berth, defeating Raptors, 116-103 – NetsDaily
The Raptors were dealing with foul trouble in the second quarter when OG Anunoby picked up his third while overplaying Kevin Durant on a backdoor cut. Other than the Raptors wing, Toronto had three other players with at least two fouls in the opening six minutes of the second quarter.
Given all of Toronto’s foul trouble, Brooklyn applied pressure on the driving lanes and in the paint to go on a 13-3 run while growing their lead to seven with 4:10 remaining in the second. The Nets, once again, got a boost from Griffin, who ended with 10 points and three rebounds at the break due to his scrappy play. Despite a slow final two minutes to end the first half for both squads, offensive rebounding, led by Khem Birch with five, from the Raptors did major damage to Brooklyn’s defense, resulting in 15 second-chance points.
The Nets shot the ball well in the first two frames, hitting 44.7 percent from the floor and 40.0 percent from deep, led by Green’s 12 points on 4-of-7 shooting overall and Landry Shamet with 10 points in 21 minutes. The Nets had a four-point cushion at the break.
Both teams continued to find consistency shooting the long ball. Matt Brooks hit it on the nail, noting how going small doesn’t always have its perks.
Out of a Raptors timeout with six minutes remaining in the third, the 3-balls started to fall for Brooklyn as they did for the Raptors. Toronto began converting their stops into an effective transition offense, forging a 17-4 run that erased a 10-point Nets advantage into a three-point Raptors lead heading into the final 12 minutes of play. Despite trailing by three, Brooklyn wasn’t getting their usual firepower from their two stars. Durant and Irving combined for 19 points heading into the fourth and KD only attempted five shots (3-of-5 from the field) in 25 minutes.
It was time for the bench mob to show what it could do. Brooklyn got a 13-2 push from the second unit in the opening minutes of the fourth behind the gritty play of Griffin and Joe Harris’ marksmanship. James served as the floor general to create looks and hit two threes during the hot span.
“They were great. Tyler, Mike James was great. We played with a little more pace, which made it more difficult for them. We were able to spread them out, make plays, made some shots, made them guard in space and we were scrappy defensively,” Nash said on the second unit’s play in the fourth. “Really proud of the second unit, for sure.”
The Nets continued to their late offensive charge and got the stops they needed late to hold off a late Raptors push, finishing with a 13-point win. Brooklyn outscored Toronto 36-20 in the final frame.
“Just all the adversity that we fought through this year with all the injuries, protocols, trade situations, guys getting in and out of the lineup,” said KD summing up the year … so far. “Very proud of everybody top to bottom, everybody in the organization but especially our coaching staff that put us all in great positions to be successful every night. A lot of the credit goes to them.”
Game Recap: Raptors sputter late, lose 116-103 to Nets – Raptors HQ
Neither team was fully healthy, with the Raptors down Gary Trent Jr., Chris Boucher, and Paul Watson Jr., while the Nets suited up without one of their triumvirate of stars, James Harden. Toronto’s depth issues were exacerbated by the fact that it was the second night of a back-to-back, an occurrence that has plagued the team all year.
Still, the Raptors came out looking like a team with a purpose, a team on a mission. Kyle Lowry opened the game with a three. The defense was locked in and tight. A couple possessions after a block from Khem Birch, OG Anunoby made an athletic save along the sidelines to turn the Nets over and set the big man up for an easy dunk. Lowry knocked down a couple more threes and tossed up a beautiful alley-oop to Birch which made Raptors fans dream about what Lowry’s career may have looked like with a consistent vertical threat off lobs.
But as good as the starting lineup was, things unraveled a bit when the bench started to be incorporated. The offense stalled out, and the egalitarian beauty of the first quarter was traded out for a team just getting by on some gritty one-on-one efforts. Predictably, it was less efficient and the Raptors found themselves trailing 56-52 at the end of the first half.
Although the Raptors kept Brooklyn’s two healthy stars in check, they were unable to capitalize as Jeff Green — a player with a unique talent for being really good when you don’t want him to be — picked up the slack on offense. He would finish with 22 points on 50 percent shooting to lead his squad. The Nets kept up that momentum going into the second half.
Just as the Nets were starting to pull away in the third, leading by ten at various points, the Raptors dug their heels in. They hung around until igniting a 17-2 run that gave them a three point lead to end the third, with the score sitting at 83-80. The run started quietly enough, but Malachi Flynn blew the doors open when he banged a three on one end, then played the thief on the other, stealing the ball away and setting Anunoby up for an and-one. Although Anunoby missed the free throw, he made up for it with a crafty pass for a Birch dunk, then received a high-arcing pass from Lowry that he stuffed in easily for a dunk. Following that was a possession worthy of basketball-nerd Nirvana.
One can only imagine this sequence in front of a sold-out Scotiabank crowd. Pandemonium might not do it justice.
But, Brooklyn weathered the storm. With a quiet night from their stars, the Nets relied on contributions from some unexpected sources. Mike James, a recent signee to the team from Europe, traded talent with Kyrie Irving before the game, busting out an endless bag of tricks late in the third and early in the fourth. Blake Griffin, only averaging nine a game, hit a couple big shots down the stretch of this one. And though Kevin Durant was not dominant for the entirety, he was when the Nets needed him to be. His dead-eye shooting late was the nail in the coffin for a Raptors team that was showing life towards the end.
Brooklyn pulled away late and Toronto just couldn’t match their late game shot-making.
Raptors go cold in the fourth quarter and watch the Nets pull away | The Star
With the Nets trying to hold off Philadelphia for first place in the East and Toronto trying to stay in touch with Washington and Chicago and the final play-in spot, the game had some significance.
But while that was obviously a talking point before the game, it wasn’t anything Raptors head coach Nick Nurse wanted to discuss.
“I don’t ever talk about big games,” he said. “Usually they kind of take care of themselves. People know when the big ones are coming or whatever. I’m just trying to move forward and build.”
There were signs to build on — OG Anunoby shone at both end and Khem Birch had an outstanding rebounding night — but there might not be enough time to really carry it forward.
The Raptors now take off on a critical four-game road trip to face Denver, Utah and both the Los Angeles teams.
A slow start to the fourth quarter was the final blow for the Raptors on Tuesday. They saw a group of Brooklyn backups turn a three-point third-quarter deficit into a 10-point lead by the time the quarter was eight minutes old.
“I think the bad minutes were too bad, too,” Nurse said. “I think we played some really good stretches there but the stretches that weren’t so good were not average, they were below average.
The Raptors survived a second-quarter lull when they made just seven of 23 shots from the field and gave up 30 points to fall behind by four at halftime.
The lulls have hit them at some point in nearly every game this season but they are becoming shorter each game out. It has to do with having a consistent starting lineup — this was the fourth game in a row that Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet, Anunoby, Pascal Siakam and Birch have started — and a somewhat settled rotation. But Tuesday’s lulls were costly.
“We probably had the shots to score about 125 tonight, to be honest with you,” Nurse said. “We didn’t finish enough layups or make enough three-balls.”
Confidence is soaring but Nets just too much for Raptors | Toronto Sun
Toronto’s defence held Irving to just nine points on 3-of-13 shooting and had Durant at least contained until the latter stages of the fourth when he helped bring it home for the Nets.
Brooklyn’s bench got 38 points from the trio of Griffin, Tyler Johnson and newcomer Mike James to offset the lack of expected production from Irving and Durant.
The Raptors though won’t have time to dwell on this one.
Going forward the big question is whether the Raptors have the time to make all their newfound or restored confidence count.
There’s no question the odds are firmly against the Raptors considering the deficit, the schedule and the circumstances in front of them.
You would be hard-pressed to schedule a tougher west coast trip that awaits the Raptors were you given carte blanche and control of the NBA schedule maker’s laptop.
Maybe throw in the Phoenix Suns and make it a five-game trip, but Denver, Utah, the Lakers on a back to back and then the Clippers is the equivalent of NBA’s death row and that is what awaits the Raptors.
That confidence, that all-around swagger is a must going into this stretch.
But will it be enough?
