Is it time to lower our expectations for the 2022-23 Toronto Raptors? – Raptors HQ
Through the first 26 games of last season, the 48 win Raptors were actually slightly worse than this season, starting off 12-14. Nearly identical to this season, Siakam missed 11 games within that stretch. This year he missed 10 due to his adductor injury. Just like this year with OG Anunoby, VanVleet last season had taken his game to a new level and looked like an all star candidate.
This year is more so due to injuries, but the bench was a big question mark last year, just like it’s been through big spurts of this season. The first 26 games of both years have seemed nearly identical.
I still personally think that this Raptors team can put up a similar season to last year’s team. This is a team who can compete with the best teams on one night, and remain way too competitive with the worst teams on the next.
It’s completely frustrating, but that might just be where this team is at. Relying on internal improvement is possible, yet difficult. It is especially difficult when you expect a big internal improvement jump in one season.
Not only that, but it is even more difficult when teams who were below you in the standings last season, made moves in an effort to bolster their team ahead of yours.
The Brooklyn Nets got their guys back from injury and whatever the heck else had them sitting out. The Cleveland Cavaliers added Donovan Mitchell, the Atlanta Hawks traded the house for Dejounte Murray. Even teams like the Philadelphia 76ers and Indiana Pacers, who had made big mid-season trades, got to enter a full season with their new guys.
It was not inevitable that the Toronto Raptors would make a big jump based off internal improvement, when a ton of their East opponents went the more reliant route of external improvement.
Even despite this, it seemed as if every single media member was hammering the over on Toronto’s pre-season win total. Vegas placed their over/under at 46.5, which would hold them very similar to last season’s record. All I could ever hear was how Toronto was not only going to hit the over, but absolutely smash it.
Prior to this season, the Raptors have hit the over on their projected win total in 9 of the past 11 seasons. 9 of the past 10 if you take away the Tampa season where they essentially played nothing but road games.
The over still might be the move. I still think it is realistic for Pascal Siakam to be award with an All-NBA Second Team honour, lead this team to a top 6 seed, win 47-49 games, and have a competitive first round playoff matchup.
At this point, that seems like a realistic expectation. I know it’s fun to dream of dark-horse conference finals runs, or multiple all stars, but it is looking like the Raptors have some kinks they need to work out.
Koreen: Raptors’ poor starts prove they are not yet a serious, mature team – The Athletic
Who do the Raptors want to be?
Are the Raptors a serious basketball team? Do they deserve the benefit of the doubt? These questions are very much on the table.
In their past three first quarters on the road, the Raptors have surrendered 40, 41 and 37 points. They came into Friday’s game as the seventh-best defensive team in the league, and yet they have been embarrassingly off to start the past three games.
Friday, it was simple one-on-one defence. Franz Wagner dominated every Raptor — yes, even O.G. Anunoby. There were too many easy baskets, with Wagner or Paolo Banchero getting to the rim without much resistance. Some zone defence helped until it didn’t.
We know the Raptors can play defence well. They held the Magic to just 19 points in the fourth quarter, denying Wagner and Banchero straight line drives to the basket. They made smart gambles, a world away from the excess of aggression they showed early in the game.
The Raptors are now 3-10 on the road. They were 24-17 last season. We can look at the muddled Eastern Conference and say they are still in a fine position to make a run. They are. They have to string together a few solid performances to do so. But something seems off about this team, and missing Precious Achiuwa and Otto Porter Jr. is not an adequate excuse. This team is the opposite of solid right now.
Raptors fumble chance to gain some momentum with more poor shooting in Orlando – Sportsnet
“We’ve got to guard the ball a little bit,” was VanVleet’s prescription after Friday’s loss. “Sometimes we fall into the schemes too much and rely on them, when we have to sit down and guard the ball, just keep it simple; keep the ball in front of you, one-on-one basketball.”
There was plenty more of that going on in the first quarter of Sunday’s game. There were deflections, straight-up competitive individual defence and bodies on the floor in pursuit of loose balls. The Raptors held the Magic to just 19 points and 36.7 per cent shooting — literally almost half the production and efficiency compared to the first quarter Friday. Not coincidentally, Toronto led 19-18 after 12 minutes. The only fly in the mix was that the Raptors offence was ragged as well as the Magic, who were emboldened coming off consecutive wins at home were meeting Toronto chest-to-chest at the point of attack and taking their chances if they got beat off the dribble that their superior size would help them tidy things up in the paint.
But guarding without fouling was an issue and when Pascal Siakam picked up his fourth foul when he got called for moving laterally as seven-foot Mo Bomba rumbled down the lane for a dunk, the first half shifted a little bit.
The Raptors offence stalled even as VanVleet vainly worked to break down the Magic with repeated paint attacks. But Orlando was content to trail VanVleet with their length and size, confident he wouldn’t be able to hurt them by getting the ball all the way to the rim. When the Raptors did get to the paint and get the Magic defence scrambling Toronto couldn’t take advantage, such as when the Raptors did everything right only to have Khem Birch miss a wide-open corner three that would have been Anunoby’s or Siakam’s in different circumstances. Meanwhile, the Magic went on a 14-2 run the minute Siakam left the floor, with Bamba the prime engine as he scored 11 points with a dunk, a pair of threes and free throws as the Magic eventually took a 47-39 lead into the half. Toronto shot just 35.9 per cent from the floor and 2-of-13 from deep in the first two periods.
The game opened up offensively a little bit in the third quarter, but unfortunately it was the Magic who began to get loose as Banchero and Wagner each shook free for a pair of threes. The Magic shot 6-of-10 from deep in the period and 66.7 per cent from the floor overall for the quarter. VanVleet finally saw a three drop and Trent Jr. knocked down a pair also. Toronto also bullied their way to the line for 17 free throws with Trent Jr. and VanVleet converting four and five each, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with Orlando who led 82-75 to start the fourth. Another flurry from deep — Wagner hit three triples in less than 90 seconds in the opening minutes of the period, all off paint touches by Magic guard Cole Anthony — pushed Orlando’s lead to 16. The Raptors were 0-of-6 from deep in the fourth and the comeback wasn’t going to happen.
“It’s a bad time for [a shooting slump],” said VanVleet, who was 2-of-7 from deep and is 13-of-57 in his last six games. “We desperately need them the way the offence is flowing. We need some of those threes to go down and the other team just gets more and more aggressive, and they load up more if you don’t make them and we saw some of that tonight.
“But we fought. It just wasn’t good enough.”
The Magic played well over the weekend — it would be wrong to say they had nothing to with the way things unfolded, and they clearly have some really good young players to build around. But the Raptors have standards and ambitions, and the only way for them to reach them is to take care of the opportunities the schedule offers. There was a gift waiting for them here in Florida, and they fumbled it.
Magic beat Raptors for season-best 3-game win streak – Orlando Sentinel
“I loved our grit,” coach Jamahl Mosley said. “Our ability to know it was going to be a knockdown drag-out type of game, we stayed the course. Shots may not have been falling early, but our ability to stay the course and stay in the fight [prevailed].”
The victory was the third consecutive for the Magic (8-20), a season-best win streak. The Magic’s previous three-game win streak had been from Feb. 17-21, 2021.
Orlando beat Toronto Friday 113-109 after falling to the Raptors 121-108 in Toronto on Dec. 3. The Magic tipped off the winning streak with a 116-111 home overtime win over the Los Angeles Clippers Wednesday.
Both the Magic and the Raptors struggled to create good scoring opportunities early, leading to the Raptors having a 19-18 lead at the end of the first quarter and both teams shooting under 40% from the field when the Magic took a 47-39 lead into halftime.
The offenses woke up in the second half, with the Raptors winning the third 36-35 to reduce the Magic’s lead to 82-75 heading into the final quarter.
But the Magic got the buckets early in the fourth — and the defensive stops — necessary to create separation.
With the Magic leading 86-79, there was the Franz Wagner pull-up 3 with 10:04 remaining that kicked off a stretch of three consecutive Wagner 3s to give the Magic a 95-79 lead.
“It showed so much trust in each other, our team and the guys willing to make that extra pass, the simple pass,” Mosley said. “We talked about it at halftime: just make the simple play. The simple play is going to be the best play.”
Mo Bamba had a putback dunk and Cole Anthony made a floater to keep the Magic’s lead at 16 in the middle of the fourth, with the Magic holding at least an 8-point advantage for the remainder of the game.
Wagner scored a team-high 23 points, including 11 in the fourth, on 6-of-14 shooting and 8 of 10 on free throws.
Bamba (18 points on 6-of-6 shooting, 9 rebounds and 2 blocks) and Anthony (14 points, 6 rebounds and 6 assists) combined for 32 points off the bench.
Paolo Banchero, who made the pull-up midrange shot to give the Magic a 109-99 lead with 46.5 remaining to seal the win, added 20 points, 12 rebounds and 5 assists.
Both teams were desperate to find a little more offensive flow in the second half, but unfortunately the referees had other plans. In what turned out to be an incredibly disjointed and interrupted period, the officials were arguably the busiest and most impactful participants of the third quarter.
All in all, fifteen personal fouls were charged to players in the third quarter (Orlando – 9, Toronto – 6), including one flagrant-one call that went against Markelle Fultz. The two teams combined to shoot 25 free throw attempts in the twelve minute stretch coming out of the half.
“Yeah man, it definitely was. There definitely was a whistle (probably) every other play,” Magic guard Cole Anthony said after the game when asked about all the stoppage of play in the third quarter Sunday. “It’s like that sometimes, not every win can be pretty. It can’t all be sexy, it was a junkyard dog-fight and we just happened to come out on top of this one.”
A late third quarter three-point field goal from Terrence Ross gave Orlando a ten point lead heading into the final period, but that lead shrunk to seven before the fourth quarter ever began as the officials went back and awarded Raptors point guard Fred VanVleet an earlier made three-point field goal that had previously been deemed to come after the shot-clock expired.
Wagner, who had a relatively quiet first half, knocked-down three consecutive deep three-point field goals early in the fourth quarter to help the Magic push their lead to sixteen points.
Banchero put the game away down the stretch for the Magic, burying two clutch two-point jumpers in the last two minutes of the game to keep the Raptors from mounting any kind of comeback.
Anthony served as an unsung hero Sunday for the Magic as Fultz struggled throughout the game (five personal fouls, five turnovers for Fultz).
Orlando’s backup point guard finished with 14 points, 6 assists (one turnover), and 6 rebounds in 29 minutes. The third-year guard was the driving force behind Orlando outscoring Toronto’s bench 49-23.
“I’m just thinking that I deserve to be out there (man),” Anthony said after the game when asked about his approach coming off the bench and how he stays ready. “I put in a lot of work. But you know, at the time right now, that’s not my role (starting). So I’m going to embrace whatever I’m doing and just bring 110 percent whenever I step on that floor.”
Gary Trent Jr. got the start in place of an injured OG Anunoby and led Toronto with 24 points. VanVleet added 20 points (10-12 FTA’s), 7 assists, and 4 steals.
“Growth, I really do (think that),” Mosley added after the game when asked about what this win-streak means to his team. “We talk about (them) developing, growing, and getting better – this is a great test. We talked about it before the game, what happened on our last road-trip in a tight game. They came back here, and showed what they learned. (They) took the game-plan and added to it.”
Toronto Raptors shooting woes continue in 111-99 loss to Orlando Magic – Raptors HQ
With both effort and execution lacking on Friday, the Raptors came out of the gate on Sunday determined to solve the first half of the equation. They went 1-for-5 from the field at the outset, but energetic rotations on defense from the new look starters — Christian Koloko was the centre of choice tonight — resulted in tough sledding for Orlando. A Koloko dunk followed by a Scottie Barnes three were the highlights of an 11-0 Raptors run midway through the quarter, putting Toronto up 13-6.
Team fouls became an issue, though, and persisted for both teams throughout the game. An eye-rolling 17 fouls were called in the first 16 minutes of the game, 53(!!!) in the game total, as both teams were disrupted from offensive momentum. For a team in a shooting slump, that’s going to hurt more. The Magic got into the bonus with five minutes remaining in the first, then ripped off an 8-2 run of their own to give a depressing first frame a 19-18 finish in favor of the Raptors.
Orlando got another boost early in the second, as Siakam picked up his third and fourth fouls in quick succession, and was forced to check out with 7:14 left. With the Raptors running a slighter frontcourt, the beastly Mo Bamba made his presence felt. Back-to-back drives resulted in points, then a Bamba triple put the Magic up 37-29. A back-and-forth Raptors miss, Magic make stretch highlighted the so-sad-all-you-can-do-is-laugh slump Toronto is in right now, as late in the quarter another Bamba three gave Orlando their first double-digit lead. In total, the Raptors went 2-for-13 from three-point land in the first half, and not one of their players got into double figures. The Magic went into the break up 47-39.
Khem Birch, who at least presented some muscle to a monstrous Magic frontcourt tonight, started the second half in place of Koloko — and the move paid off some. Birch, who ended the game 4-for-5 for nine points, had a couple cleanup baskets thanks to the Magic honing in on a returning Siakam, and played good switching defense on the other end.
The long balls that could really cut into Orlando’s lead, though, just wouldn’t fall to keep a Raptors run going. A big three from Trent Jr. cut the Magic lead to six late in the third, but two defensive miscommunications early in the fourth allowed Orlando to stretch their lead again. Two triples from Franz Wagner in the first four minutes of the fourth put Orlando up 16 — the Raptors didn’t make a field goal in response for another three minutes.
That’s the kind of night it was. The Raptors ended 6-for-25 from three-point land — Fred VanVleet was 2-for-7, Trent Jr. was 3-for-8, and the rest of the team was 1-for-10. Big oof.
Nothing magic about Raptors’ shooting in another Orlando loss | The Star
What’s wrong? Start with the fact Toronto’s offence seems stumped for ways to produce easy buckets, in no small part because its three-point shooting, never a strong suit, has taken a recent dip into the abysmal, going 16-for-60 (27 per cent) in the two-game set here.
“We’re having a hard time shooting the ball right now,” Toronto coach Nick Nurse said. “OG (Anunoby) has been playing through some stuff with his shooting hand, which has probably affected him. Freddy (VanVleet) is certainly out of sync with his shooting. And we rely heavily on those two guys, and then plus Gary (Trent Jr.). I don’t know. We just need to figure out a way to will some in there.”
It’s not that the Magic didn’t deserve plenty of credit for reeling off their third straight win thanks to the stellar play of Franz Wagner, who had 23 points, and Paolo Banchero, who had 20, among others. And it’s not that there weren’t positives for the visitors in Sunday’s loss. The Raptors got to the line for 38 free-throw attempts, and their defence, lax in Friday’s game, was tight enough to force 18 Magic turnovers. Nurse, mind you, counted himself displeased that the Raptors only managed to convert those giveaways into 23 points.
“When you’re creating that many turnovers, you probably should (score more). Those are 18 chances to go back at ’em and getting a point a possession, a little more than a point a possession, is probably not enough,” Nurse said.
It doesn’t help matters that the Raptors got news this weekend of yet another key injury, this one a strained hip that kept Anunoby out of Sunday’s game.
Maybe that sidelining was inevitable. Before Sunday, Anunoby had gone 26 straight starts without missing a game, a stretch in which he had reeled off the best basketball of his career. But Anunoby’s lack of durability has been a franchise liability over the previous couple of seasons, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that his perfect-attendance streak came to an end.
The absence of Anunoby, of course, only put more pressure on the Toronto players left standing. Perhaps in part as a result of that strain, Pascal Siakam and VanVleet spent a lot of the night in foul trouble. When Siakam picked up his fourth foul with 7:14 to play in the first half, Toronto’s game immediately took a turn for the worse. The Magic reeled off a 14-2 run that helped them build a lead that got as big as 16 points.
“I think when you’re in early foul trouble like that, especially with your No. 1 offence creator, it makes it tough,” Nurse said.
Raptors Offense Goes Silent in Embarrassing Loss to Magic – Sports Illustrated Toronto Raptors
The issues for this team are the same ones that existed last season. The defense is fine when it’s causing turnovers, but miscommunication and miscues create too many opportunities for opposing teams. A risky gamble on a steal by Thad Young midway through the fourth quarter let Franz Wagner nail a wide-open three-pointer. Another lapse on the next possession for Orlando left Wagner wide-open again, sticking the Magic to a 16-point lead.
On the other end, Toronto’s offense is fine in transition and on the offensive glass but put the Raptors in the half-court and they’re a disaster. They ranked 26th in half-court scoring last season and this year they’ve gotten worse.
Coming into Sunday night, they ranked dead last in the NBA in half-court, generating just 89.1 points per 100 half-court possessions. That number plummets to 83.9 when Pascal Siakam has been off the court this season. For comparison, the Oklahoma City Thunder sit at 90.2 when their best player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is on the bench, per Cleaning the Glass.
Fred VanVleet’s inability to hit three-pointers these days and a left hip injury for O.G. Anunoby have left Toronto bereft of reliable three-point shooting. When you’re giving up 14 three-pointers on the defensive end, shooting just 6-for-25 isn’t going to cut it.
More concerning is Scottie Barnes’ lack of aggressiveness this season. Without Anunoby and with Pascal Siakam limited due to foul trouble, Toronto needed a big night from the sophomore forward. Instead, Barnes was held to just 11 points on 3-for-13 shooting and missed a crucial three-pointer late in the fourth that would have cut Orlando’s lead down to seven.
Raptors burned by Magic again in weekend to forget | Toronto Sun
After an abysmal defensive effort Friday, the Raptors cleaned things up nicely on that end but had no answer offensively when the Magic came out with another focused defensive effort of their own Sunday night in a 111-99 loss.
The result was a totally lost weekend when the Raptors were in need of anything positive.
The magnitude of Sunday’s loss was only made worse by the pre-game news that defensive lynchpin O.G. Anunoby was out of the lineup with a left hip injury, the severity of which will only be known after further tests are conducted upon the return to Toronto on Monday.
Early on Sunday evening it appeared the Raptors might just have the response to their woeful performance in the opener Friday.
The Raptors had a 19-18 lead after 12 minutes but more importantly had set the tone with some solid defence where the Magic knew there weren’t going to be any easy baskets, unlike Friday.
Even without their defensive anchor in Anunoby, the Raptors’ defence was miles better than it had been Friday with Anunoby in the mix.
Franz Wagner, who got just about whatever he wanted in the first three quarters on Friday, was held to just five points in the first half.
The beginning of the end for the Raptors, though, proved to be Pascal Siakam’s fourth foul of the night just over four minutes into the fourth quarter.
Without Siakam to lean on, coupled with the loss of Anunoby who has been a bigger offensive factor than any season before this one, an already struggling offence became even harder to watch.
The Magic immediately went on a 14-2 run, opening up a lead they would hold on to for the remainder of the game.
“We’re having a hard time shooting the ball right now,” head coach Nick Nurse explained. “O.G.’s been playing through some stuff with his shooting hand, which has probably affected him. Freddy’s (VanVleet) certainly out of sync with his shooting. And we rely heavily on those two guys, and then plus Gary (Trent Jr). I don’t know. We just need to figure out a way to will some in there.
Trent Jr. would lead all Toronto scorers as he rejoined the starting five with Anunoby in street clothes.
Trent Jr. had 24 in the loss and a team-high three triples, but he didn’t have a lot of company in that department.
The Raptors were good on just 6-of-24 three-pointers continuing a disturbing trend of sub-30% shooting from three over the past eight games.
The Magic, meanwhile, made 14-of-their 31 three-point attempts to keep the Raptors in chase mode most of the evening.
“No doubt, it’s a little gut punch for sure,” VanVleet said of a night when the Raptors did a lot of things right but simply couldn’t put the ball in the basket. “I was proud of our effort tonight. Obviously we have high standards around here and so we try to uphold ourselves to those at all times. It just wasn’t our night tonight which is why you have to take care of business on Friday night (when the Raptors let a winnable one get away).
“It’s unfortunate the way it turned out,” VanVleet added, “but we just have to stay positive, stay together understand it’s a long season and you take the positives and try to grow from that.”
Masai Ujiri’s ‘Giants of Africa’ growing basketball infrastructure in Africa – Yahoo!
“This” being the massive event held at HISTORY in Toronto, where hundreds of millions of dollars flow through the space — money that Ujiri surely hopes will be put towards his philanthropic work in Africa. But “this” also refers to the work itself, including Giants of Africa’s newest and boldest venture, the “Built Within” initiative, with the goal of building 100 new basketball courts throughout the African continent. In just over a year since announcing the initiative, Giants of Africa has already built 25 courts in nine different countries.
“Yeah, it’s [a] good [accomplishment],” Ujiri tells Yahoo Sports Canada. “Sometimes we are just really trying to show an example so that when people see that you can do it, people do — people also come and build more.
“But we do need infrastructure in Africa. We do need to continue to grow. These youth need a chance somewhere to play. And that’s why it means a lot to us.”
The idea for the 100 courts came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Giants of Africa was unable to run the camps they are used to running for boys and girls throughout Africa. Instead, they diverted their resources to building physical infrastructure in the form of courts.
“Building these courts is very very important for us because it takes kids out of the streets,” Owinje, who was homeless himself for a period of time growing up in Nigeria before Ujiri and his family took him in, says. “The places we build these courts are very strategic. They’re in communities that need it. So it can take kids out of the streets to try to do something with themselves.”
With each court unveiling comes a ceremony attached. Giants of Africa coaches and special guests including musicians and former NBA players gather with hundreds of kids in the community to celebrate the occasion, singing, dancing, and going through a basketball mini-camp. Players are run through drills by NBA players and coaches for a day before wrapping up, at which point the realization hits them that all of this — the court, the basketballs, the shoes, the equipment — is for them; that the coaches are leaving, but the rest is staying right there for them to use indefinitely.
“It’s like if you’re growing up in the West, it’s like getting a basketball court on Christmas morning,” Director of International Scouting for the Toronto Raptors and Giants of Africa coach Patrick Engelbrecht says. “The whole neighbourhood is gonna play on it, you know it’s yours, it’s gonna be there — it’s just this feeling of the community will be able to gather, use it, play and change lives for so many youths.”
