Raptors’ poor shooting has a domino effect | The Star
It’s the mixing and matching and gaining familiarity that the Raptors have done all season that needs to happen now.
“(The lineup) kind of keeps changing, who’s going where. And in basketball when it’s two guys, it could be a domino effect (where) three or four guys are moving positions,” coach Nick Nurse said. “So I think it looked a little clunky the last couple of games on top of not a ton of energy.
“We’re cleaning it up slowly here with this group.”
There are signs that the defence is being active and disruptive enough to keep the Raptors in games despite bad offence.
They forced 19 turnovers and turned them into 20 points in the loss to the Cavs on Sunday and it was the main reason they were in the game down the stretch.
The third quarter was tremendous. Toronto held Cleveland to just 14 points in their best defensive quarter in weeks.
“The past three games, it seems like everybody is just going into the paint at will,” Boucher said. “I think one thing that we changed in the second half is that we made it a lot harder for them to score in the paint. Just make them (make) a second decision, get up in the air and pass it to the corner and then rotate.
“I feel like we did a better job in the second half, but we need to be doing that for all the time. We’ve done that for a streak of games, and we were playing our best basketball, so we need to go back to that.”
But the Raptors also gave up 20 fast-break points in the game, which proves the transition aspect of defending was lacking. Some of it was purely effort, some of it arose from mistimed and ineffective offence.
All of it is correctable.
RAPTORS BLOG: Lack of offence could help Toronto keep first-round pick this season | Toronto Sun
As a reminder, if the Raptors finish 7th or 8th in the standings and either host a play-in game or go on the road for one and win that game, San Antonio gets the first-round pick. If they lose that game and a game against the 9-10 game winner they keep the first-round pick. If they play in the 9-10 game and win and then win against the 7-8 game loser, they make the playoffs and lose the pick this year. If they win the 9-10 game and lose the other one, they keep the pick and don’t make the playoffs.
NBA Power Rankings, Week 21 — ESPN
This week: 15
Last week: 14It’s now three losses in a row for the Raptors, who have fallen three games behind sixth-place Cleveland and have an uphill climb to escape from the play-in tournament. Much of this is out of Toronto’s control, given the injuries to Fred VanVleet (knee) and OG Anunoby (finger), but if the Raptors don’t get into the top six at the end of the season, they’ll likely look back to this week as when things began to slip away. — Bontemps
Last week: 15
This week: 1734-30, +0.9 net rating
Weekly slate: Win at Nets, Win over Nets, Loss to Pistons, Loss to Magic, Loss at CavsClutch profile: 18-16 | Offense: 113.8 (7th) | Defense: 105.7 (11th) | +8.1 net rating (9th tied)
Go-to guy: Fred VanVleet | 74 points on 63 shots | 34.9/45.9/81.3 shooting splits | 18 assists, 7 turnovers
Potential liability: Fred VanVleet | 74 points on 63 shots | 34.9/45.9/81.3 shooting splits | 18 assists, 7 turnovers
As part of the Toronto Raptors showing resilience and finding a way to claw through wins throughout this season, their clutch performances have mostly been really good. Maybe that’s just the moxie of a team that won a title a couple of years ago, and the remaining core players possess poise forever in these tight moments. Or maybe it’s just a team getting healthy and trusting its leaders to pull it through those pressure situations. Whatever it is, the Raptors have been good in most clutch games. VanVleet is a bit of a mystery. He’s been killing opponents by knocking down 3-pointers, but he has to be able to get easy buckets going toward the basket too. He’s been really bad inside the arc in the clutch. He could correct that moving forward, or maybe it’s just something he can’t figure out right now. Either way, the Raptors continue to put together a great playoff-worthy campaign.
