Quick Reaction: Raptors 103, Nets 115

It seemed like O.G. was just off his game today. He struggled to get it going in the first half, playing 18 minutes but scoring 0 points. For this team to secure the win, they needed him to start converting. O.G. started to pick it up a little in the second, but it just wasn’t enough. It just seemed like he would pick and choose when to have the energy on both offence and defence.

Siakam has to stop settling for threes, he’s better when he plays in the midrange/post. He hasn’t proven to be a reliable shooter enough to do that. As soon as he started driving, and shooting the midrange in the first quarter he was effective. I was curious to see what Siakam would do in the fourth, but it just seems like he doesn’t have a reliable move to go to when it comes down to crunch time. He would just vanish at points.

Poeltl had a great first half, his game was flowing is the best way I can describe it. Fighting for boards, scoring on the pick and rolls and had an incredible pass to Pascal. Other than that, he should’ve had more than 6 points in 25 minutes of play, but it didn’t look like they were running too many plays to get him involved.

Scottie started off the first quarter slow, passing up some open shots and not taking it to the rim when he could. He did manage to get the first three of the game, but as one of the best players on the team, he had to assert himself a bit earlier on. He had a decent first half, but like the rest of the team struggled to get his scoring going, only hitting 2 out of his 7 shots. Scottie started to pass the ball more in the second half, this was probably due to him realizing his shot wasn’t falling so he had to get others involved. Other than that, his offence just wasn’t that great today, taking some ill-advised threes. Hopefully, he bounces back next game.

Dennis seemed like the only one of the players that wanted to play aggressively early in the first, he just was having some trouble converting his shots. I’ve said it before, but Dennis plays his best when he slows down the tempo and just lets the game come to him and this is what he started to do in the second half until he unfortunately went down with an injury and wouldn’t play until late in the fourth. However, it looked like the injury did have an effect and his legs just weren’t under him.

I liked Gary’s energy as soon as he checked into the game, immediately hitting a floater, and then getting a steal right after. Gary got hot late in the fourth and hit some well-timed shots in the fourth for the Raptors. Going forward Gary just has to be more consistent from three, it is one of the big things really holding the team back.

Some lazy defence in the first led to the easy score and he also 3 first-half fouls. Come on now Precious. It just seemed like he was out there getting cardio sometimes.

Flynn wasn’t very active throughout the game, until the fourth where he had to step up due to a Dennis injury. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like he could really get anything going tonight.

McDaniels was solid in the second quarter a nice block with a three. Whenever McDaniels comes into the game, he provides some great energy, like fighting for the offensive board for the score. I generally believe with more time and development he can really be something special!

Boucher had a great second quarter, scoring 8 points, one rebound and one steal in just 3 minutes! The only thing that was questionable was leaving a man open and struggling to rotate. Other than that, he was big-time tonight! Hitting shots when needed and providing the Raptors with some quality spacing.

Darko just made some questionable decisions tonight. Why substitute Precious back into the game when he just had nothing going? It seems like he’s also just having a hard time figuring out how to make the Scottie / Siakam duo work, we’ve seen flashes of it but there are times when one person will just get all the touches and the other won’t.