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Raptors recent play is giving us PTSD from the early-mid 00s | Y u no play defence? | Will the recent slide force a trade?

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10 things: With no end in sight, Raptors’ losing skid hits five games – Sportsnet

4. The Raptors were built on defence but you would never know it based on their recent form. Toronto holds the third-worst defence in the league over their last nine games, which includes just two wins against the Magic and the Lakers — without LeBron James and Anthony Davis. In those nine games, the Raptors have kept only the Magic to under 110 points, and this loss to Golden State is the third time an opponent finished with 126 points. The whole premise of this team is that they’re long, athletic, and able to guard multiple positions with one of the league’s most creative strategists at the dials. However, outside of being league leaders in turnovers forced, the Raptors aren’t very good at the actual business of forcing tough shots. They’re constantly having to compensate for having no rim protection inside which leaves the corners perpetually open, and they exacerbate this issue by pressing up too close which actually invites more drives. There are communication breakdowns on every other trip which is leading to the Raptors allowing the highest field goal percentage within eight feet of the basket dating back 25 years.

The Raptors’ problems are only beginning — and there’s no soft landing in sight – Sportsnet

So it may be a measure of how much the Raptors are hurting right now that the Warriors knocked them back early and never let Toronto have a sniff in a 126-110 loss. The Raptors could neither effectively puncture the Warriors’ defence nor find a way to even briefly contain the short-handed Warriors when they had the ball.

“Well, I think we are going to have to guard better, first of all,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “… We certainly had a tough time tonight. It wasn’t very good. There wasn’t a whole lot of positives to take out of the defensive side especially. We were just chasing them all night and not playing our schemes very good … “

The Raptors were coming off a pair of ‘encouraging’ losses against Sacramento and Brooklyn that went down to the wire. That wasn’t the case Sunday as Toronto – playing without Gary Trent Jr. (quad soreness) and O.G. Anunoby (hip soreness) – lost for the fifth straight game and eighth time in 10 games as their record slipped to 13-17. The Warriors improved to 15-16.

The box score was a familiar one if you’ve been following along in what is turning out to be a very strange season. They did most of the things they set out to do each game: earn extra possessions through offensive rebounds (Toronto led 18-12); force their opponent into more turnovers than they make (17-14 Raptors, in this instance) and hope that the overall shot advantage (Toronto took 14 more than the Warriors on Sunday) will translate into more points.

It’s a nice plan, but it has been failing more often than not because the Raptors are high-volume missers – they shot just 42.1 per cent from the floor Sunday – and rather generous defenders, as the Warriors shot 53.1 per cent from the floor and 46.2 per cent from three. Teams were shooting 53.3 per cent against them  in the four lossed before last night and 38.8 per cent from deep.

Golden State was sparked by a career-high 43 points from Jordan Poole, who did his damage on 14-of-23 shooting including 5-of-11 from three. But it was the Warriors’ 30 assists on 42 made field goals prior to the final few minutes of garbage time that stood out. The Warriors could get what they wanted.

The Raptors? They played offence like their only tool was a shovel.

Too many possessions were drives into traffic that neither collapsed the defence nor resulted in much more than a contested two in the paint. When the Warriors went zone the Raptors had no answer through ball movement, player movement or penetration, so the Warriors wisely kept it up.

The Raptors’ season is teetering on disaster – The Athletic

The Raptors’ vaunted identity is gone

To begin the second half, the Raptors started Malachi Flynn in Christian Koloko’s place. Yes, that’s the same Flynn who Nurse didn’t play through the depths of some of the worst perimeter shooting you’ll see in the modern NBA because he was a defensive liability.

Flynn has been fine over the past two games, but it was a concession to a reality everyone can see: The Raptors defence is broken. At least on Sunday, so was their spirit. In the absence of that, they might as well try to go all in on shooting and creation.

It didn’t work. Even without Stephen Curry, the Warriors used their superior ball movement and quick-decision offence to wreck the Raptors. Jordan Poole had a career-high 43 points, but aside from some impressive pull-up 3s, it wasn’t about an amazing individual performance. The Raptors just couldn’t hang with an experienced team with a precise game plan.

“They just kept moving faster than we were ready to move,” Nurse said.

It’s not fair to say this team has given up. However, it is no longer piling up the fast-break points that carried it to start the season. The Raptors forced 17 Warriors turnovers and scored just five points on the run. They had 18 offensive rebounds to Golden State’s 12 but got outscored 23-18 in second-chance points.

The Raptors have three road games before Christmas, then home games against the Clippers, Grizzlies and Suns to end the calendar year. They’re 13-17, and a gimme win isn’t on the horizon. They are almost out of time to fix this.

Jordan Poole scores career-high 43 points in Warriors win over Raptors – Golden State Of Mind

Poole has been described as Curry’s understudy for several reasons. He’s developed into a dynamic off-ball force that generates chaos and engenders confusion among defenders. The threat of his long-range shooting puts a certain fear into defenders; that fear can be used against them in a multitude of ways.

While Poole hasn’t reached the level of fear Curry induces, he should be enough of a fear-generating machine to create workable advantages for the Warriors offense. The aforementioned shooting should comprise the main meat and potatoes of his ability to create advantages, but that has so far been more in theory than it has been in practice.

After a season where he shot 36.4% from beyond the arc (one percent above league average) on 7.6 attempts, Poole is attempting threes this season at an identical per-game basis — but has regressed in accuracy (33.1%, 2.4 percentage points below league average). Some of his troubles have been due to questionable shot selection — location, temporality, etc. — while some are just plain shots that didn’t fall in despite open and efficient looks being generated.

It’s also interesting to note that aside from three-point accuracy, Poole’s shot profile this season hasn’t deviated much — if at all — from his profile last season. He’s taking approximately the same rate of mid-range shots and is also making them at a similar rate. Ever since his sophomore season, he’s been making shots at the rim at a rate no lower than 65% — including this year.

The one shot that has seen a glaring reduction is his rate of threes attempted — down from 37% of his total shots last season to 33% this year, per Cleaning the Glass. A reduced rate of shots from the outside hasn’t translated to much better efficiency.

As a result, his overall scoring efficiency has dipped significantly from last season. A near-60% TS mark last year has come down to 56.9% this season — 1.4 percentage points below league average.

That mark hasn’t been lower for several reasons, one of which is Poole’s ability to put pressure on the rim. For a team that doesn’t generate a heavy dose of rim pressure — the Warriors are dead last in the rate of shots they take at the rim — Poole has been one of their few paint-touch merchants out of self-created shots.

Against the Toronto Raptors, Poole displayed a three-level-scoring performance that showed every bit of what he could be as an offensive weapon. The intersection of his handles and speed was on full display during his forays into the paint.

Poole’s advantage over most defenders is his speed. His ability to explode at the point of attack catches most opponents unawares — but going even one percent too fast than what is typically needed runs the risk of losing all control.

Poole certainly has had his moments of losing control and being all over the place — but when he uses just the right amount of burst, his change-of-speed chops and astute use of cadence and tempo work to his and the team’s advantage.

Jordan Poole proves his value as Golden State Warriors arrest road skid – Blue Man Hoop

Having dropped their first three games of the road-trip, and with Curry and Canadian native Andrew Wiggins out, the Warriors desperately needed to pull out a win despite going into the game as underdogs.

Golden State remarkably got three triples from the returning Draymond Green in the opening three possessions, signifying an early period where neither team had any interest in playing defense. But after the scores were tied at 20 following the opening six minutes, the Warriors kept Toronto to just six points for the remainder of the first as they opened up a ten-point lead.

Toronto cut it six as some offensive rebounds and Warriors turnovers threatened to turn the momentum. Poole made sure that wasn’t the case, scoring at all three levels as he had 15 in the second-quarter and 25 in an explosive first-half. On the other end, Golden State kept Toronto to less than 40% shooting from the field as they took a 68-54 lead.

Poole continued to fire in the third, recording another nine points despite the Raptors’ increased attention on him. The teams largely traded buckets until the Warriors finished the quarter on a 16-7 run to effectively put an end to the contest.

There was to be no anxious moments in the fourth as while the Raptors’ offense became a little more efficient, they were unable to manufacture the stops required to produce any sort of meaningful comeback.

Poole continued his Curry-like performance, notching a career-high in scoring and then passing the 40-point mark. He finished with 43 points on 14-for-23 from the field, 5-for-11 from three, and 10-for-11 from the free-throw line. His efficiency could have been even better if not for some late misses as he pushed towards a 50-piece.

The Warriors shot 53.1% from the field and 46.2% from three-point range, also recording 31 assists from 43 made field-goals as the ball movement popped amid some beautiful offensive basketball. The Raptors shot just 42.1% thanks to some suffocating Golden State defense, with Pascal Siakam (27) points the only player to really cause headaches.

A more subdued Klay Thompson had an effective 17 points, seven rebounds and four assists, while Green stamped his impact on the game with 17 points, nine rebounds, five assists and some excellent defense. Kevon Looney had another double-double with 11 points and 11 rebounds, while backup five JaMychal Green perhaps his best game of the season with 15 points and seven rebounds off the bench.

The ease of the win is a surprise, but perhaps not the result given the loss is Toronto’s fifth in a row and eighth in ten games. Conversely, Golden State move to 15-16 on the season ahead of a back-to-back against the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets starting on Tuesday.

Toronto Raptors lose to Golden State Warriors 126-110, Jordan Poole career high – Raptors HQ

I know the Raptors are thin right now, but I think it’s time to send Koloko to Mississauga, and get him some serious G League reps where be can build some confidence and get the schemes down right. In his place, give Khem Birch more minutes. Is Birch the right long-term answer? Nope. But he’s a solid vet who can rebound and be the roll man in PnR sequences with VanVleet and Malachi Flynn. He may not have the rim protection potential that Koloko offers, but he won’t make half as many mistakes.

Unsurprisingly, the Raptors opted not to start Koloko in the second half; perhaps surprisingly, Nick Nurse gave his spot to Malachi Flynn. Flynn played well for the second straight game, hitting four of his eight three pointers.

As the second quarter opened, the Raps quickly closed to within six, then gave up a 7-0 run… and that’s pretty much how the quarter went. The Raps would score 4 or 6 in a row, then give up 8 or 10 in a row.

That’s exactly how the quarter ended, too: a VanVleet three with a minute to go in the frame brought the Raptors within 10, but a Siakam offensive foul, a Klay Thompson three, a Raptors turnover, and a Ty Jerome free throw gave the Warriors a 14-point halftime lead.

While it’s true that defense remains Toronto’s top issue right now — a bit of a shocker for a Nick Nurse team — their offense still isn’t setting any records. Much as I appreciate the team’s effort in crashing the offensive glass, it can lead to rather comedic (or tragic?) outcomes, as it did in the second quarter tonight; the team missed five shots on a single possession, three of them three-pointers. Offensive rebounding? Great! Inability to take advantage? BAD.

I will give Chris Boucher credit for his rebounding, though. He struggled to score in this one — 4-of-10 shooting, 0-for-2 from downtown — but he pulled down 14 rebounds, 7 of them offensive.

The third quarter started much like the first, with the teams both shooting well and matching each other step-for-step. Thompson, Donte DiVincenzo and Poole all nailed threes for the Warriors in the first five minutes; Flynn, VanVleet and Barnes all knocked down triples for Toronto. The Raptors quickly cooled off — of course they did — and the Warriors didn’t, but the Raptors were at least slightly more feisty on defense in the third, forcing 6 turnovers.

That helped the team keep pace for the first 10 minutes of the frame, but ultimately their ability to stop the point of attack, and inability to attack the Warriors’ zone defense on the other end, led to a 22-point deficit that no amount of turnovers or offensive rebounds was going to help them overcome.

Both teams essentially went through the motions in the fourth. The only things of interest was how long Nick Nurse left Barnes, Siakam and VanVleet in the game (way too long!), how the bizarro three-guard lineup of VanVleet, Flynn, and Dalano Banton would play (poorly!), and how quickly Poole would hit his career high (within 5 minutes!). Nurse finally waved the white flag with five minutes to go.

Josh Lewenberg: Koloko experiences growing pains as Raptors losing skid reaches five games | TSN

The Raptors, who allowed Brooklyn to shoot 18-for-20 at the rim on Friday, rank 27th in opponent field goal percentage from inside five feet. That’s not necessarily an indictment on Koloko, who’s their best rim protector, but it does speak to why a rookie second-rounder shouldn’t be their best rim protector.

On Sunday, they weren’t stopping anything from anywhere, which has been a reoccurring theme throughout their recent skid. If anything, it puts even more pressure on Koloko and the second line of defence when guys aren’t containing dribble penetration. After a pair of disappointing but hard-fought losses to Sacramento and Brooklyn, both of which came down to the final possession, this felt like a definitive step back for a team that’s on the ropes.

“We have to guard better,” Nurse said afterwards. “I don’t think we’ve shown that this group of guys can play the way we want to play.”

“This is a terrible stretch,” Fred VanVleet added. “You don’t want this, you don’t expect this and you can’t accept this. It’s where we are. There’s a lot of basketball left to be played and a lot of time to fix it. We’ve gotta start that tomorrow.”

Steve Kerr and the reigning champs have faced a similar challenge this season. Having lost some valuable role players in recent years – the by-product of committing to an expensive core of veterans and spending deep into the luxury tax – they’ve had to turn to a youthful supporting cast. They have some intriguing pieces, to be sure – centre James Wiseman, forward Jonathan Kuminga and guard Moses Moody are all former lottery picks under the age of 22. However, they’ve also learned that there’s no substitute for experience.

With their vets on the floor, the Warriors have mostly looked like the Warriors. When Green is out there, they’re scoring more efficiently than the league’s best offensive team (Boston) and allowing fewer points than the league’s stingiest defence (Cleveland). Green, Wiggins and Curry all rank among the NBA’s top-20 in net rating. When Green or Curry are off the court, they’re getting outscored by more than 11 points per 100 possessions. It’s resulted in a disappointing 15-16 start to the season.

“It’s hard because obviously you’re trying to win games while you’re [developing],” Kerr said ahead of Sunday’s game in Toronto. “With our record we clearly haven’t done what we’ve hoped that we can do, but it’s still early in the process. And for sure there are growing pains anytime you’re trying to raise a number of young guys at the same time.”

Prospects don’t get more confounding than the seven-foot Wiseman, who didn’t see the floor until the final two minutes of Sunday’s blowout win. At 21, he still posses the elite upside that made him the second-overall pick in 2020, but after missing all of his sophomore season with a knee injury, he remains a long way from reaching it.

Coming into Sunday, the Warriors had been outscored by 83 points in his 163 minutes. So, after a shaky start to the season, Golden State sent him to the G League, where he could play more minutes, work on his game and get his confidence back up. In 10 games with Santa Cruz, Wiseman averaged 18.8 points and 10.3 rebounds on 68 per cent shooting before re-joining the NBA club this week.

It begs the question: could Koloko benefit from some G League seasoning? An extended stint or two with the 905 may still be on the table later in the season, provided they’re able to get healthy – O.G. Anunoby is expected back from his hip and hand injuries over the coming week, which is a step in that direction.

“He’s gotta play through those mistakes,” VanVleet said of Koloko. “It’s not necessarily his fault that we need him at his mature self right this second. He’s gonna go through some growing pains, some ups and downs. But as long as he goes up there and he fights and he plays as hard as he can and he doesn’t keep making the same mistakes, I’m rocking with him.

“We’ll keep supporting him and keep helping him grow. The faster the better obviously for the team, but everybody’s path is different.”

The Raptors are high on Koloko and the player he can become. There’s a lot to like. With his size and length, he’s already got the physical tools to be a good NBA big man. The next step is to both get and finish stronger – he’s last among all NBA centres in field goal percentage at the rim. But for every play in which he gets a layup blocked or misses a dunk, he does something spectacular on defence.

The Raptors are in a bad place after fifth straight loss | The Star

In another disheartening Raptors performance, the Golden State Warriors — without Stephen Curry and Andrew Wiggins, and losers of 14 of their first 16 road games this season — marched into Scotiabank Arena and laid waste to the tune of a 126-110 victory that wasn’t as close as the score might indicate.

“In the course of an 82-game season, this is certainly a terrible stretch and you don’t want this, you don’t expect this, you can’t accept this,” VanVleet said after a 22-point, 35-minute night. “We got work to do.”

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In itself, the loss may not send vice-chair Masai Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster scouring the trade market for moves this week, and it’s hard to imagine coach Nick Nurse abandoning his foundational basketball beliefs. But the truth is, this team just isn’t working.

“We’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing very well. Tonight, we didn’t,” Nurse said, while eschewing any suggestion that significant change is coming. “I know this is a few (five losses) in a row here, but this is the only one that hasn’t come down to the last couple of minutes of the game.”

A three-game road trip to Philadelphia, New York and Cleveland starting Monday night should hardly inspire any sense of optimism.

“We’re in a bad stretch that needs to stop immediately,” VanVleet said.

It falls, then, to this group and this coaching staff to find something that works, at least until more players get healthy and there is perhaps some semblance of normalcy. The absence of O.G. Anunoby (hand/back, may return this week) and Gary Trent Jr. (quad soreness, requires deeper examination) was a factor, but not the whole problem.

The Raptors started slowly — down 10 points after a first quarter when Golden State shot 62 per cent from the field — and while they had a few good bursts and looked like they might get back in the game, they never really threatened.

Raptors Fall Continues as Problems Mount in Loss to Warriors – Sports Illustrated Toronto Raptors

At this point, the excuses are running thin. Yes, Toronto was without O.G. Anunoby, Gary Trent Jr., Otto Porter Jr., and Precious Achiuwa, four of their top eight rotation players. But it wasn’t like the Warriors packed it in without Steph Curry and Andrew Wiggins. Instead, Golden State’s undermanned group ran away with things, blowing out the Raptors 126-110 and dealing Toronto its fifth straight loss.

“Certainly not very happy with the performance,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said. “We[‘ve] got to at least give ourselves a chance. We have in most of the other games. Tonight we didn’t give ourselves much of a chance.”

Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, and Scottie Barnes were fine. The trio tallied 66 points combined. The problem was everyone else. Nobody stepped up off the bench. Christian Koloko was benched to start the second half. Malachi Flynn who took his spot wasn’t much better. Juancho Hernangomez isn’t good enough to be starting NBA games and the five bench players who saw minutes combined for 36 points.

But for all the offense’s struggles, at least they were predictable. It’s the downfall of this defense that’s the most surprising. The lack of a reliable rim protector leaves Toronto far too exposed when its defensive gambles don’t pay off. That’s not entirely Koloko’s fault because, as Raptors coach Nick Nurse acknowledged prior to the game, the 22-year-old rookie is being thrust into NBA action when he’d be better served getting extended action in the G League right now.

“I think we are going to have to guard better, first of all. I don’t think that we haven’t shown that this group of guys can play the way we want to play,” Nurse added.

Without a rim protector, drive-and-kick chances and open threes for opposing teams have become commonplace. Even Draymond Green, who came into Sunday shooting just 29% on 1.5 three-pointers per game, opened the game with three straight three-pointers with Toronto’s defense leaving him wide open for easy looks. And for a team that’s always been so determined to take away primary options, Jordan Poole certainly didn’t have any trouble. Instead, the 23-year-old set a career-high with 43 points on 14-for-23 shooting.

What’s so strange about this recent skid is how nothing seems entirely different from last season’s group. It’s virtually the same team that went toe-to-toe with the Philadelphia 76ers in last year’s playoffs that can’t seem to get out of its own way this year.

“Obviously we haven’t been healthy the whole way. That could be something. I don’t know if we play well enough in these games to win,” Siakam said. “We have to figure out a way to come together and get wins. At the end of the day, I don’t care about the schemes or this or that. We’ve just got to win. That’s the only thing.”

Raptors drop fifth straight game in lacklustre defensive effort against Warriors | Toronto Sun

Even had Curry played, these are not the Warriors many have come to expect. Like the Raptors, Golden State has been struggling. But you wouldn’t know it the way the Warriors unloaded on Toronto in a 126-110 win.

It started about as bad as it possibly could with Draymond Green — the guy the Raptors planned to help off of as they attempted to contain Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole — who couldn’t seem to miss.

Green hit three consecutive three-pointers and had 13 points on the board before half of the crowd had even taken their seats. As Fred VanVleet would suggest after the game, it gave the Warriors early juice that sustained them the rest of the night.

Raptors head coach Nick Nurse was asked if the recent results and defensive struggles warranted some kind of tweak, either to his revamped rotation or to the schemes the team is employing.

“Well, I think we are going to have to guard better, first of all,” Nurse said. “I don’t think we have shown that this group of guys can play the way we want to play. We certainly had a tough time tonight. It wasn’t very good. There wasn’t a whole lot of positives to take out of the defensive side, especially.

“We were just chasing them all night and not playing our schemes very good, but we have certainly shown we can, so we have to dig in and make sure we are putting that effort forward.”

VanVleet, who once again put some distance between his shooting struggles of the past couple of weeks with a solid 22-point night, said as poor as Sunday’s showing was and coming on the heels of four losses, there remains a belief that this, too, can be overcome.

“In the course of an 82-game season, this is certainly a terrible stretch,” VanVleet began. “You don’t want this, you don’t expect this, and you can’t accept this. But this is where we are and there’s a lot of basketball left to be played and there’s a lot of time to fix it and we got to start that tomorrow.”

In Curry’s absence, and with the Raptors refusing to give Thompson much breathing room, the onus fell on Poole who answered the bell in a big way, leading the Warriors to the rather easy-looking victory.

Poole had 25 points in the first half, two shy of his career high for a half set in Boston last season and just 13 shy of his career high for a complete game. He clearly had that mark in mind heading into the second half as he was already up to 34 points by the end of the third.

He would set his new career high with a three-pointer just under four minutes into the final frame and finish the game with 43 points, along with six assists.

Pascal Siakam did his thing with 27 points and six assists, taking 20 shots, while VanVleet hoisted up 18 shots on his way to that 22-point evening.

Scottie Barnes, much better these past few games in terms of being engaged offensively, had 17 points on 16 shots.

As a team, the Warriors shot 53% from the field and were good on almost half of their 39 three-point attempts settling for a 46% success rate from deep.

Sports can help us grow, how the league gets its fine money and more in Ye Olde Mailbag | The Star

Q: Hi, Doug. Last week you replied to me: “The defence is inconsistent because the players’ attention to detail and execution is all over the map and that has to get fixed, too.”

How much is that on Nick Nurse and his staff? I understand that the players are all pros and should understand the problem, but I have always considered that a sports coach and staff are more important to the mental part of the game than to the X’s and O’s.

I’m certainly not implying that Nurse should go but somehow he has to fix this ongoing concern.

Happy holidays,

Michael K.

A: Oh, there’s all kinds of responsibility on  Nurse, and by extension his staff. If the schemes are too complex they need to be simplified or limited, or maybe different groupings are necessary to make them work.

One of the key components of Nurse’s coaching philosophy is the willingness to change and experiment. Now might be a time for that.

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