The first Suicide Squad was miserable. Watching it made me boned-tired bored and anxious twitchy all at once. There was a crocodile? Then there was a second Suicide Squad five years later. Was it a sequel? A remake? Hard to say. Some of the characters were the same, and some were different. The plot and script and acting and premises and delivery and cinematography and setting and structure and thematic consistency and purpose were equally vapid. There was a weasel? The movie was so truly terrible that the weasel, a non-entity during the entire film, was set up to be a villain for the next sequel. Talk about out of ideas.
However, the Toronto Raptors must have enjoyed the films. Because they’ve reproduced both Suicide Squads shot for hacky shot — with breathtaking cross-genre accuracy — over their last two games.
Only one game after shooting 26.9 percent from deep in a cramped, uncomfortable, and loose 108-106 loss to the Detroit Pistons, the Raptors decided to remake that monstrosity against the Orlando Magic. At least against the Magic they shot 32.4 percent from deep! A step up. At least this one can’t be blamed on a curse.
The Raptors lacked structure, plot, premise, delivery: you name it, they needed it. They turned the ball over on entry passes, missed block outs. At one point Khem Birch and Scottie Barnes posted up four feet away from each other, seemingly unaware of the other’s presence on the same block. The Raptors airballed jumpers. They missed uncontested layups. That’s the basketball equivalent of shooting a billion-dollar superhero movie and failing to include a single exciting action sequence in it.
Mostly, the Raptors just didn’t have any shooters. That’s death in the NBA. The same as it was against the Pistons. Going up against an NBA team with practically no shooting on the roster is more or less the premise of Suicide Squad. I wouldn’t know, actually, what the premise was — it wasn’t really made clear in either film. But I’m assuming based on the title of the films that the Raptors assumed the literal mantle of suicide squad in playing NBA basketball with so little shooting. Precious Achiuwa did his best to space the floor. Yuta Watanabe got some run. Chris Boucher was working. Mostly, it didn’t take. The Raptors, like Ayers and later Gunn, were out of ideas.
Hey, if you at least liked Margot Robbie’s performance in Suicide Squad? (Either of them — she was inexplicably in both.) The Raptors had one performer, at least, who stood his ground. Pascal Siakam followed up an efficient 28 points against Detroit with an outrageous 34 against Orlando. He won his points the same way they did in the battlefields of the Great War: inch by inch. With a grittiness that neither Suicide Squad could have even imagined. The Magic packed the paint against Siakam, not even bothering to close out to shooters, and at first he passed to his open teammates who then did nothing with the advantages he created. Eventually Siakam chiseled his way through non-existent lanes, slipped into cracks, slid through seams, and kept the team afloat play after back-breaking play. A redeeming performance in an otherwise eye-gouging-inducing game. Okay, maybe Siakam was better than Margot Robbie.
“They were certainly living in the paint off of pretty much everybody,” said Nurse of Orlando’s defense. “Right? And [Siakam] still had to kind of maneuver his way through all that. Obviously shot a pretty decent percentage. I thought he showed some good composure. He played his guts out, man.”
Excuses, of course, abound. Not even excuses — legitimate explanations. The Raptors have three shooters on the team, and two of them have been out injured during these trainwrecks. The third has been so ice cold that he shot 3 for 24 from distance in the two games. Gary Trent jr. didn’t just miss shots over the last two games, he was missing wide right or left — never good signs — on uncontested looks.
He has in fact been so off from three that some records have been in his sights. But as with the basket, he failed to connect on them. Against Detroit, he came within three more misses of tying the all-time record for most threes attempted without a single make — he shot zero for nine. Or perhaps you’ll prefer this nugget: he shot 20 percent from deep against Detroit and zero percent against Orlando, and the longest stretch at equal or greater volume with that level of inaccuracy is three games. He’s only one away! In fact, notching consecutive games with his marks or worse from deep has only happened 33 times. Ever. Only twice has one of those games included a bagel, featuring James Harden and Antoine Walker. Now joined by Gary Trent jr.
The small picture might be understandable, explicable, and repetitive. Trent will recover his shot — shooters go through cold streaks. The injured stars will return. But the big picture is more frustrating. The Raptors came out of the All-Star break ostensibly healthy with a weak stretch of teams in front of them. They got absolutely smoked against the Charlotte Hornets and Atlanta Hawks, won two against a pitiful Brooklyn Nets squad, and now have lost two against two of the worst teams in the league in the Pistons and Magic. Toronto could — probably should — have gone 6-0, putting them right around the third or fourth seed in the East. Legitimately contending for home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Now the Raptors are much more likely to be facing a play-in game, and perhaps not even that on their home court. At least it’ll probably set up a first-round series against either Kyle Lowry or DeMar DeRozan. So even when the big picture is grim, excitement always looms around the corner. If only Suicide Squad could make the same claim.
