Starters go deep as Raptors edge Knicks | Toronto Sun
The Raptors bench is full of young players with plenty of upside but also plenty to learn about the NBA game. Injuries to regular rotation guys like OG Anunoby, Khem Birch and Precious Achiuwa have further depleted the reserves the Raptors can call on.
In a week in which most of there remaining healthy bench has been up and down between the Raptors and the Raptors 905 G-league team with a heavy home schedule for both, contributions from that group last night were scant.
What it meant was a heavy load for all the starters last night and a lot of hoping and praying while Nurse and company tried to buy minutes with just limited input from the bench.
Nurse got just enough minutes and somehow his starters avoided too much foul trouble to stay in the game long enough for a hard fought 90-87 win over a struggling New York Knicks squad.
The difference in this one was the defence as the Raptors held the Knicks to just 35.8% shooting. The 87-point total marked the fourth game in the past five that the Raptors have held their opponents under 100 points.
The return of the energy, which was missing in Wednesday’s loss to Oklahoma City, was also pivotal.
“Just the loose balls and offensive rebounds and stuff are good signs of that,” Nurse said. “ I just think we really needed to play with that kind of (energy)… well, we have to, we have to win the 50-50 balls and we gotta get on the glass to get some extra possessions and things like that and I thought we did that all night coming up with loose balls, a lot of deflections, it seemed like. Tipped a lot of passes, made a lot of passes not quite on target because of our high hands and things like that.”
Knicks miss final four shots and fall to Raptors, 90-87 – New York Daily News
The Knicks missed their final four shots following Trent Jr.’s 3-pointer, including Randle’s attempt from the top of the key. Barrett passed up on a chance under the rim to kick out the ball, and it’s hard to argue with the decision considering Randle was open.
“Jules had a great look at it,” Thibodeau said. “In and out. You live with that.”
After Trent Jr. missed one of his two free throws on the following Toronto possession, the Knicks had 0.6 seconds left with a 3-point deficit. Barrett heaved a shot off the inbounds that clanged off the rim.
Barrett, a Toronto native, returned home for just the second time since being drafted by the Knicks. He brought 1,000 fans to the arena, many through his church and foundation. The 21-year-old dropped 19 points but missed 11 of his 16 attempts and left a loser.
“I got a lot of friends, family, supporters. My whole church was here,” Barrett said. “So that was just amazing to have their support.”
Toppin again stole the show for the Knicks. Two nights earlier, the power forward made the highlight rounds by going through his legs for a breakaway dunk in Indiana. In Toronto, he led a second unit that helped the Knicks recover from a 30-10 deficit in the first quarter.
But after he missed consecutive 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, Toppin was pulled with 3:40 left for Evan Fournier. Thibodeau said the Raptors were playing a zone defense and he needed more shooting on the court.
Toppin finished with 24 minutes, which is his most since the season opener on Oct. 20.
Knicks' comeback falls short in tough loss to Raptors
Obi Toppin carried the Knicks on Friday night, sparking a comeback against the Raptors, but ultimately he couldn’t reverse the team’s ugly trend in Canada.
Even with a career-high 19 points to go with a career-high 10 rebounds from Toppin, the Knicks couldn’t fully recover after falling into an early 20-point hole and lost for the ninth straight time in Toronto with a 90-87 defeat at Scotiabank Arena.
Julius Randle’s potential game-winner on a straightaway 3-pointer with 3.2 seconds left rimmed out before RJ Barrett missed a desperation attempt from beyond the arc with 0.2 seconds left off an inbounds play to seal the loss. That dropped the Knicks’ record to 12-14, keeping them in 11th place in the Eastern Conference.
“It’s a shame not to come out of here with a win, but the way we started the game, it really hurt us,’’ coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Jules had a great look at it — in-and out. You live with that.’’
This wasn’t about a Toppin showboat dunk for Tik-Tok. This was an efficient, high-flying powerhouse game that kept the Knicks in it and legitimately raised the issue of whether the backup power forward either needs more minutes or needs to close despite his 3-point shooting woes.
“He’s always been a confident guy,’’ Thibodeau said of the 2020 lottery pick. “There’s still a long way to go. His progress has been steady. I’m pleased with him. He’s got to work on being an all-around player. If he plays well, he plays more.’’
Recap: Toronto Raptors defeat New York Knicks in 90-87 nailbiter – Raptors HQ
Malachi Flynn also got some run in the fourth, and although he only scored one point on a single free throw, he did find Trent to open the fourth-quarter scoring with a three.
The first half was a tale of two quarters, as the Raptors nearly ran the Knicks out of the gym in the first… and then the Knicks turned the tables in the second.
The Raptors immediately took control after the opening tip, as Chris Boucher, Fred VanVleet and Gary Trent Jr. all hit threes in the first three minutes to stake the Raptors to an early 13-5 lead.
That forced Tom Thibodeau to call for time, and if you thought the Knicks would come out of that timeout fired up… well, you were wrong. The Raptors kept the pressure on, and with Boucher, Trent and VanVleet notching 7, 8 and 9 respectively in the quarter, Toronto built a 30-10 lead.
But when Nick Nurse went to his bench, rolling out a Siakam-Svi-Yuta Watanabe-Dalano Banton-Justin Champagnie lineup in the second, things turned ugly for Toronto. The Raptors started the quarter in a 2-for-14 shooting slump, and the Knicks stormed all the way back, tying the game at 39. Nurse had no choice but the bring the starters back in, and they did settle things down — especially on the defensive end. Fred VanVleet picked up his defensive intensity, doing his usual masterful job of locking down allegedly quicker offensive guards, then quickly pinching down to knock balls away from opposing bigs. Two such plays led to back-to-back coast-to-coast drives from Barnes and Trent, and another Barnes-to-VanVleet-to-Siakam break finished off the half — and the Raptors were back in front, 50-42.
For the people who are still here who have won before — Nurse, Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam — it is about managing that frustration and saying the right thing at the right time. Sometimes, it’s managing to not say the wrong thing. On Wednesday, VanVleet railed about what, to him, seemed to be a trend of the team playing well, getting fat and sassy, losing to a team they “should beat,” getting yelled at by Nurse and playing better again.
“It’s all part of the learning process,” VanVleet said of those comments after the Raptors beat the Knicks 90-87 on Friday. “It’s kind of hard to have that perspective 20 minutes after the game. I came (in) here pretty quickly and I didn’t have much to say, or much positive to say, at that point. So you go home, you watch the film, you realize it really wasn’t that bad.”
As much as the younger guys are learning how to start to belong in the NBA, the more experienced ones are figuring out how to be at the top of the team’s accountability food chain. You have to look past the results, but it’s hard to look past the results when you’ve gotten this far by producing results, by nailing the little things.
Honestly, there wasn’t a ton of difference between Wednesday’s loss and the win over the Knicks, which is kind of the point. Masai Ujiri and his front office have chosen to build the back end of the roster with dart throws and lottery tickets instead of proven veterans, which makes perfect sense when you are more invested in the future than the present. Sometimes, Dalano Banton, Yuta Watanabe and Svi Mykhailiuk are all going to be bad on the same night. That is kind of how it goes when all of your bench players are either on the veteran minimum or rookie contracts.
There was an ephemeral sense of a better effort provided throughout the roster, but some of the production, from starters and veterans alike, was iffy. It is hard for VanVleet and Nurse to put the wins and the small details that winning basketball necessitate aside in the moment.
That helps explain the harping on energy and effort. If you’re not talking about that, you’re talking about how the team might not be good enough. And that’s a message that nobody will be receptive to.
Why It Works
Turner would slide easily into Toronto’s starting center spot, moving Khem Birch, when healthy, to the bench, and Precious Achiuwa to backup big minutes at both center and power forward. From a minutes perspective, it works perfectly.Offensively, Turner spaces the floor like few other bigs in the NBA. He’s shooting 39.7% from three-point range this season, mostly on above-the-break catch-and-shoot looks. He’d give Toronto a pick-and-pop player who would open things up inside for Scottie Barnes, Pascal Siakam, and OG Anunoby without being a high-usage big like fellow Pacers big Domantas Sabonis.
Defensively, he’d lock down the paint for Toronto, where Raptors opponents are shooting 63.3% within five feet of the rim, the eighth-worst percentage in the league defensively. Turner, conversely, is a prolific shot-blocker who ranks amongst the league’s best interior defenders.
Why It’s Complicated
The Raptors have gone all-in on versatility this season and are pushing the boundaries of the switch-everything defensive strategy. They want to get right into opposing scorers, disrupt offensive flow, and are willing to switch their bigs onto the perimeter when necessary.
19,800 Raptors fans advised to self-monitor for COVID symptoms | Toronto Sun
If you were at the Raptors-Wizards games last Sunday, December 5, Toronto Public Health (TPH) wants you to self-monitor for COVID-19 symptoms for 10 days.
Late Friday afternoon, that game was added to the TPH list of places where people may have been exposed.
TPH said spectators – almost 20,000 – should “self –monitor for symptoms of COVID-19 for 10 days.”
It also suggests any attendee at the game “get tested if you develop symptoms since the event, including mild symptoms and even if you no longer have symptoms. Self-isolate while test results are pending.”
The health notice comes as the Omicron variant is rapidly advancing in Ontario; and is expected to become the dominant variant in early January, according to the Chief Medical Officer of Health.
It also comes after Raptors President and GM Masai Ujiri tested positive after attending his “Giants of Africa” gala last Sunday evening at a Toronto hotel.
It was the first in-person edition of the gala since 2019.
It is unclear how many people attended.
2. RJ Barrett back in Toronto
It’s always a special one whenever Barrett returns to his home city of Toronto, Ontario.
Believe it or not, this is just the second time that Barrett has played against the Raptors at Scotiabank Arena. After making his first NBA appearance in Toronto back in Nov. 2019, Barrett had to play against his homeland team in Tampa, Florida last season.
As a rookie, Barrett had a solid outing in his first game in Toronto, going for 16 points, five rebounds, four assists and three steals. He also had one of his best games of the season against the Raptors earlier this year, going for 27 points and six rebounds.
Back home in Toronto, Barrett went for a team-high 19 points but the efficiency wasn’t really there. He shot 5-for-16 from the field and 2-for-7 from 3-point range, and he also just missed the potential game-tying 3-pointer at the buzzer.
It wasn’t his most memorable game against the Raptors, but he still did enough to put his team in a position to win the game, even if they came up short.
3. Chris Boucher back in the starting lineup
With regular starters OG Anunoby (hip) and Khem Birch (knee) still out and interim starter Precious Achiuwa (shoulder) joining them on the inactive list, Boucher was slotted into the starting lineup for the second-consecutive game.
Boucher was solid in his first start of the season in the team’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, going for 11 points and seven rebounds, bringing the energy with five of those boards coming on the offensive glass.
He maintained that energy in this one, making an immediate impact on the glass with a pair of offensive rebounds and seven quick points in the first quarter.
Raptors grind out a much-needed win over the Knicks with subtle changes, solid defence | The Star
So they blow a 20-point first half lead and Nick changes things up with a zone defence at 39-39 and it calms the Raptors down.
They see the eight-point halftime lead disappear in about the blink of an eye and again they go to a zone and string together a couple of stops to staunch the bleeding.
It’s an old tactic of Nurse’s for a couple of reasons: It just presents a different look to the opponent that might steal the Raptors three or four possessions and it basically forces the Raptors to communicate better on defence and that gets them more engaged.
“(We had) some really good stretches of defence and then we ran into a little tough run and just trying to find something to get ‘em out … they were really rolling, they were really getting to the rim, I thought, a lot,” he said.
“You know how that goes, we go to it and have a little success and it ends up sticking for a long time.
I thought it slowed ‘em down a little bit as well, they were getting some transition buckets on us even after we scored some times so we were just trying to get something set up to make them play a little bit more in the half court.”
Just what they needed on the night.
Raptors bounce back after rough 48 hours on and off floor
At the other end the home side had to survive three Knicks possessions in one as Toronto would swarm defensively, force what seemed like a turnover only to have the ball be ruled to have gone out off a Raptors player. In each case Toronto brought multiple bodies to the ball and left with the Knicks with nowhere to go. It was tough, desperate defence.
Perfect.
“You just got to keep making plays at that point in the game,” said Fred VanVleet, who was in the middle of every scrum. “It’s time to make a play and we talked about before a game just by any means necessary and that’s exactly what it was there. Double and triple the amount of stops we needed; we couldn’t get the ball. There was probably a jump ball that should have been called. It rolled off my foot, you know there was all types of stuff going on. But we just kept making play after play.”
The win improved the Raptors to 12-14 and 3-3 on their season-lone homestand, which wraps up Monday night against Sacramento. The Knicks fell to 12-14.
It wasn’t the homecoming Canadian national team star RJ Barrett wanted as he finished with 19 points on 5-of-19 shooting, though he almost brought the Knicks back with a five-point burst late in the fourth quarter and front-rimmed a three that would have sent the game into overtime at the buzzer. He made a smart play in the final seconds when he drove the ball the length of the court, pulled up in the paint and found a wide-open Julius Randle trailing for what could have been a game-winning three, but Randle couldn’t convert.
'Superfan' Nav Bhatia, in isolation, misses 1st ever Raptors home game | CBC Sports
Friday night’s Toronto Raptors game was notable for who wasn’t in attendance.
The Raptors’ COVID-19 scare kept “superfan” Nav Bhatia from Toronto’s game against the New York Knicks.
It’s the first home game he’s missed since the Toronto franchise joined the NBA in 1995.
Bhatia had attended Masai Ujiri’s Giants of Africa gala event on Sunday night. On Wednesday, Ujiri, the team’s vice-chairman and president, announced he’d tested positive for COVID-19.
Bhatia said he’s following a Toronto Public Health request that everyone in attendance at the event isolate, calling it an “incredible event that followed all protocols,” and that he wasn’t experiencing symptoms.
He posted the news that he’d be missing the game on his Instagram account, telling Raptors fans: “I have been there for you and our team since Day 1. Tonight I need you to help me.”
