Aside from the Detroit game, this road trip has been hard fought. Dallas was threatening to pull away late in the third quarter up 10, but the Raptors found a way to stay within striking distance despite shooting 38 percent. The Mavs are 10-1 in their last 11 games much thanks to their improved defence. They came in 4th in defensive rating (up from 21st last season), allowing a league-best 94 points during their hot streak. Toronto did its best to match in a grind out fourth quarter that saw Fred VanVleet have the cohones to pull up way behind the arc to give the Raptors a brief lead despite shooting 3-18 at that point (finished 4-20). In the dying seconds with Toronto down two, both Fred and Chris Boucher (who made two threes earlier) took their chances for the win but both fell short.

Two prying topics in my head for this one.

Scottie vs Luka: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Starting with the good obviously.

TOR 89, DAL 93 (4:25 left in 4th): Amazing sequence by Scottie. Pascal Siakam was originally guarding Luka Doncic but Barnes takes over on the switch. Luka tries to probe in the paint but ends up taking a contested fadeaway that misses. Fast forward to the other end of the court, where Barnes calls for the ball on the block with Luka guarding. Scottie backs down a bit and despite temporarily losing his handle, knocks down a turn around in Doncic’s face. Great stuff. We’ve seen him relish going against the biggest stars like Kevin Durant earlier in the season so that’s always fun to see.

Scottie's got a bucket for anyone! pic.twitter.com/kyBAc4ggST
— Raptors Republic (@raptorsrepublic) January 20, 2022

After Fred gave the Raptors the aforementioned brief lead, Doncic drove vs Scottie again for a sweet spin move layup to put the Mavs back in front. Nothing wrong with that, Luka’s great. My bad and ugly is Scottie defending Luka at the three point line. Check out the first (bad) and third (ugly) clips.

Sure, Luka went 1-3 on these shots, but let's not act like it was because of the defense. Here's the 3 stepback 3s Luka took vs Scottie Barnes. Still not sure what happened on the last one, but he simply couldn't stay in front of/with Luka's stepback all night #MFFL https://t.co/jSfR8BhhVi pic.twitter.com/xLCr54A7Py
— Mavs / Magic Draft (@MavsDraft) January 20, 2022

Basically Doncic shook Barnes on the both step back moves and the rookie conceded to just give up the open three. It was an eyebrow raiser in the second quarter. However with the game on the line?

You can see how exasperated Chris Boucher was. Nick Nurse (not in the above clip) to any novice lip reader clearly asked his assistants “what the f**k is he doing?” He was quickly asked about the play in the postgame scrum afterwards.

“I probably would have guarded him harder,” Nurse responded.

Luka finished with a season-high 41 points, which is anti-Raptor strategy. Usually Nurse will die on the hill of leaving the 7th/8th man open in the corner as long as the superstar is double teamed, trapped, box and one etc. So that in itself makes Doncic’s night more impressive. His three point shot has been lost for most of the season so even when you throw in his 4-for-10 against the Raptors it’s still only at 29.4 percent.

7 Man Rotation: The Sequel

Let me introduce a potential reason why Scottie gave up that clean look late. He was tired? Or is that a reach even though it’s probably true?

For the second straight game the Raptors only played seven guys. Siakam led the way with 44 minutes, followed by OG Anunoby’s 43 and VanVleet’s 42.

VanVleet just became the 1st player in the NBA to log 40+ minutes in 5 straight games this season. He’s played 40+ mins 14 times, most in the league.
Siakam’s logged 40+ mins 9 times, 5th most. He didn’t make his season debut until Nov. He’s played 40+ in 9 of his last 13 games.
— Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) January 20, 2022

That’s nothing new, but the playoff rotation being used three months before the playoffs is. Eight guys were used in Milwaukee, but Yuta Watanabe only saw five minutes of action and Svi Mykhailiuk played seven.

This is something that Bobby Webster and Masai Ujiri have to solve. We’ve seen what happens when too much of the bench is used, and with a plethora of teams jammed around the play-in seeds, these games are starting to mean something around the halfway point. Using only seven guys is asking for burnout. Especially during a road trip. As superhuman as Fred has been during his all-star campaign, even he may be starting to feel the effects shooting under 50 percent from the field in each of his last six games.

He’ll never tell you that though.

“This is what we got, there’s no other way. We’re in a fight, we’re grinding it out. We have high character guys, guys that work extremely hard. We’ve got a great medical team, great organization and we’re doing everything we can to be ready to play every night. I think we are getting good performances from the guys that we’re playing and this is what we’ve got until otherwise,” VanVleet said.