It’s been years since you’ve been here. Your hands shake and your head lolls as you watch what you’ve seen a thousand times, but has felt like a lifetime since you’ve seen. A loss, a death, that matters. You try to light a cigarette, fail. Just give up and stare.
The Toronto Raptors have been losing for a long time. Scottie Barnes has been mired in the depths of a rebuild, and the team finally peeked its head above water this season and took a breath of cool, fresh air. Second in the East! Top-10 offence and defence! Only to plunge back down under the surface, to sink, to drown. The Raptors drowned against the New York Knicks in the NBA Cup. Are drowning.
Drowning.
And, look, the Raptors have been drowning already this season. And they resurfaced not to float but to fly. But how many times in a season can your lungs fill with water before you just roll over and accept the inky black depths?
The last time you were here, Toronto was losing in the playoffs because it was too small, too unskilled, had too little shooting. It blew up that roster, Barnes the only one left.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the Raptors’ loss, death, massacre was that they spent an entire first quarter going punch for punch. Winning on the scorecard. They absorbed an explosion from Jalen Brunson, spat out some blood, said, ‘is that the best you’ve got?’ and delivered an uppercut via Brandon Ingram. Oh, you’ve got a nuclear bomb? We’ve got one of those too.
Toronto’s offence requires remarkable focus and intent. Cuts are precisely timed, angled, paced. And there are many of them. Screens have to come at just the right moment. Players have to push pace, always, even after opposing makes. For a quarter, that was all there. Barnes pushed after a make, received a screen from Ochai Agbaji, and then threw a no-look rocket to Agbaji as he slipped the screen. And-1. Ingram hit his pull-ups as well as drove for layups. Barnes and Jakob Poeltl battled for offensive rebounds, while Ingram cleaned the defensive glass with ferocity. Ja’Kobe Walter came in off the bench to throw liquid fire through the rim. Jamal Shead blasted past his defender for a laydown pass.
Then Barnes and the bench entered the game to start the second. This is usually when the Raptors build their lead. They are the best one-starter team in the NBA.
Instead, the Knicks plaster them.
First the Raptors miss some open shots, then stops creating them. They let go of the rope. They stop defending, then stop rebounding. Then Brunson comes back into the game and piles on. Poeltl forgets how to play basketball in addition to his bad back, and Barnes stops playing downhill and starts throwing wayward jumpers at the rim. The intentionality goes as the team starts sending two cutters through the same window, or none at all, or multiple screeners to the same side of the ball. Toronto’s offence requires Swiss-watch precision, and instead the Raptors give it Kmart chucklefuckery.
The Raptors foul Mitchell Robinson intentionality to make him shoot free throws. He misses many, grabs his own rebound at the line. Brunson hits another three. This is not how Toronto wanted to perform in facing an NBA Cup game with stakes.
You look up and see one of the killers standing over the body of the Raptors. OG Anunoby. Not running away, not celebrating either. Just looming. He was on the team the last time around. His strength, his defence, his ability to turn whatever half of the court he’s on into a no-drive zone: they are missed. Especially when they’re turned into knives that plunge repeatedly into the flank of the Raptors.
There are no moral victories, not for this team. There is only the glimmer of hope, enough, just enough, to make the eventual plummet all the more sickening.
The season isn’t over, far from it. The NBA Cup is over, but the season drags on. The Raptors have reinforcements coming. But the lack of two starters can’t be an excuse because if it is, then what was Toronto’s winning streak? So many of their opponents during that stretch lacked stars, lacked starters.
But the season is starting to lurch off the edge of a cliff. The Raptors can’t score, not for a full 48 minutes. They can’t defend. They can’t give a full game the level of focus and intention that a Raptors’ win requires. If they can’t rediscover that, Toronto’s head will sink further and further beneath the water, the taste of air and hope forgotten. The drowning will become nothingness. And the hurt that comes from a real loss, an important loss, will eventually numb to nothing at all.
