After Kyrie Irving hit a buzzer beater to beat the Toronto Raptors, and the Brooklyn Nets were done celebrating, and the Raptors were done their discussion in the locker room, Nick Nurse walked into the media room to face questions. The first was a softball, about doing good things and not getting a good result, and Nurse stared at the table for almost a minute as he spoke. He listed good things and bad and spoke for a long time, and didn’t look up until he got to the final play of the game.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t say we made all the right plays, but we made a lot of good plays and played really hard and I thought we played really tough at both ends,” he said, downcast. Eventually: “We could have executed a little bit better on that last defensive play, get it out of Irving’s hands. But, tough. They made all of them down the stretch, until that last one we had the guys doing a lot of good things to make some other people make plays, and they made them.”
In other words, it’s not really our fault. And the Raptors did play well. They’ve found solutions for just about every problem they’ve faced. Fred VanVleet lost his jumpshot, so he’s become a killer in the midrange and at the rim. (And against the Nets, his jumper returned — if we are going to care about process and moral victories, that’s kind of the most important positive that could have happened.) O.G. Anunoby is out with injury, then Gary Trent jr., so Malachi Flynn steps in and scores 13 points off the bench.
The Raptors can’t find solutions for a team simply making all of its shots to close the game.
The Nets hit six of their final seven shots. Oh, and they opened the fourth quarter making seven in a row, too. Not all easy shots, and not all hard shots, but mostly a pretty livable spectrum if you’re the Raptors. Makes, nonetheless. Ultimately, the “livable spectrum” component is meaningless for the Raptors.
For Toronto, there are no moral victories at the moment. This is a young team that won 48 wins last season and was supposed to build on it. None of its core four — VanVleet (28 years old), Anunoby (25), Scottie Barnes (21), or Pascal Siakam (28) — has reached an age that indicates growing and improving is done. The Raptors were supposed to be better this season than they were last year, but to this point they are decidedly worse.
The 2022-23 Raptors have not yet won three games in a row. They won three in a row before October was done last season. This year’s Raptors have now lost four in a row — a feat they never matched in all of 2021-22. It’s a truism, but it’s a truism for a reason: Good teams find ways to win, and bad teams find ways to lose. For Toronto, no matter how much good they find, it has decidedly not been good enough. They were a good team last season. For all the good they’re finding this year, they are not.
Process can only take you so far.
“They had a lot of guys make plays….that I was pretty happy with,” said Nurse. “We were trying to cover Durant way more one on one than we have in most games that we play, and we didn’t start getting to the doubles til late, and I think that threw them out of rhythm a little bit. They have a lot of guys throw in, you know, make plays and throw dump offs or whatever that ended up in baskets that I was pretty happy with. And I was pretty happy that Durant only took 15 shots, and I know 15, that’s not a ton for him when you’re single covered him, right and only three threes. We talked about trying to keep him off the 3-point line and live with some of those twos and I thought we did that tonight.”
All of that, sure, be happy with the process. But the Raptors can’t live on process. They can only survive on results, and they can’t get any of those.
Usually players take their time coming into the press conference room. There will be gaps, sometimes for five minutes, sometimes for 20, between the coach and the (usually) two players who speak with us. After Toronto’s loss to Brooklyn, the entrances were immediate. Nick Nurse came in almost immediately after the loss, and when he left, Scottie Barnes was waiting to enter, and when he left, Fred VanVleet was waiting outside the door. I’ve never seen that before in almost four years of home games, whether live or virtual.
I asked VanVleet if he has any rituals or processes to stay positive with the losing.
“No, it should affect you,” he said. “Losing is not acceptable.”
Yet the press conference remained positive for almost its entirety. “What did you like about Malachi Flynn?” “Were you happy with scoring 39 points in two consecutive games?” “How did Christian Koloko help you tonight?”
Positive after positive. (To be fair, players can only answer the questions that they’re asked.) And yes, the Raptors had a lot about which to be positive. But bad teams find ways to lose.
The Raptors have now had two games in a row with great halfcourt performances. They even threw in some 3-pointers for a change against the Nets. It didn’t matter. No matter what the Raptors find, it isn’t enough. The Sacramento Kings found easy lanes to the rim against Toronto — that was Toronto’s fault. But the Nets largely just hit difficult shots. They shot 60 percent from the floor. No fault to pin on anyone, which is almost worse. How can you find a solution to a problem out of your control?
And so the Raptors are circling the drain. Bad luck, perhaps, but it doesn’t make the drain any less real and stinky and looming. Only the Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets, and Oklahoma City Thunder are riding longer losing streaks. The Raptors are defined, at the moment, entirely by their record. I would still stake good money that, void of context, this Raptors squad is a good team. But that increasingly matters less and less. Good teams get to care about nuances like process; bad teams don’t have that luxury. And right now, the Raptors are a bad team.
