TORONTO – An early-season meeting with the Sacramento Kings will always be a checkpoint on the Toronto Raptors’ road to respectability and beyond.
Next month will mark three years since the Masai Ujiri shipped Rudy Gay to Sacramento to start what was supposed to be a rapid rebuild.
Well, beware of the small sample size.
On a night when the NBA schedule was handing the Raptors a gift – a bruised opponent playing at the end of a long road trip and the second night of a back-to-back – Toronto gave it right back.
It’s hard to win when you can’t shoot and the Raptors’ 96-91 loss to the Kings was a direct reflection of Toronto shooting 7-of-30 from the three-point line, which is an emerging area of concern even though the Raptors are still 4-2 after the loss.
They came into the game as the worst three-point shooting team in the NBA – shooting 27 per cent – and will remain there until they can straighten things out.
“We were out of it the entire night offensively,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. “They did a good job sending bodies off of our young guys and onto DeMar [DeRozan] and Kyle [Lowry] and our shooters.”
DeRozan looked less like Michael Jordan and more like a guy seeing two or three defenders and yet can only watch as open threes are missed over and over again when he does move it.
Not having Jonas Valanciunas (knee) available and hoping a rookie frontline of Jakob Poeltl and Pascal Siakam can hold their own against Kings all-star DeMarcus Cousins is officially playing with fire.
The Valancuinas situation will need monitoring. The club is saying ‘day-to-day’ but it doesn’t take much imagination to see that stretching into ‘week-to-week.’
“The knee was kind of sore last week,” said Valancuinas. “I don’t remember anything that happened specifically … but every day it was getting worse and worse. It’s not about pain; there was liquid inside the knee, so it was swollen.”
Toronto has now lost three straight to the lowly Kings, dating back to last season but the distance the Raptors have travelled since the 2013-14 season never ceases to amaze.
Now, for the all the good that Ujiri has done while running the club he’ll be the first to tell you that how everything has transpired subsequent to that is due first of all to a great swath of luck.
The next step on the rebuild was supposed to be Lowry being traded to the New York Knicks for spare parts and draft picks. Knicks owner James Dolan – anxious having been burned by Ujiri on earlier deals – stepped in and nixed it.
It’s the best thing that has ever happened to the Raptors. The club has played at a 53-win pace every since the Gay deal and are building towards their fourth straight playoff appearance and possibly another run to the Eastern Conference final.
But the Raptors’ status as one of the best organizations in the NBA (sounds strange, but it’s true) is due to everything that has happened since that trade. Toronto is proof that stability, continuity and character can make you competitive in sports’ most talent-driven league. How far that can take you we have yet to find out for sure.
The Kings?
The Kings are a joke. Quite possibly the most dysfunctional franchise in the NBA, or at least on the short list. They are the anti-Raptors, an example of what not to do and proof that the Raptors have got things right.
The move to acquire Gay did nothing to change what will surely be an 11-year post-season drought by the end of this year.
Cousins is one of the most gifted players in the game – big, strong, quick, skilled and smart. He’s earned the reputation as a volatile hothead as the Kings have churned through six coaches in his seven years in the league. Yet stodgy, image-conscious USA Basketball has taken him in happily and he has an Olympic gold medal to show for it.
Where would a player of Cousin’s gifts be in a stable environment surrounded by competitive, hard-working players committed to winning?
Well, Lowry was once viewed as a destabilizing presence that was tough to coach. Those days are long gone as he’s developed over time a strong relationship with Casey who in turn has been backed by Ujiri who has consistently chosen stability and continuity over tumult while running the club. The contrast is evident.
The Kings have played at a 30-win pace for the past nearly three full seasons since Gay arrived.
On Sunday night they arrived at Air Canada Centre having lost four straight on the road, their newest head coach, Dave Joerger, feeling the need to remind his charges to stay positive, pointing out that there were still 75 games left to play after they were blown out by Milwaukee on Saturday night.
A strong first quarter showing might have put them to sleep early but that never really happened and instead the Raptors had to deal with a Kings lineup that gathered steam as the game went on. Gay had a good night with 23 points while Cousins was his usually overwhelming self with 22 points and 14 rebounds.
Lowry, DeMarre Carroll and Patrick Patterson were a combined 3-of-17 from deep, all the makes by Lowry, who was 3-of-10 but is shooting 28 per cent on the year.
“I know I have to play better and the team has to play better,” said Lowry after scoring 15 points and adding 10 assists. “It’s only one loss but there’s a lot of pressure on our team because we’re one of the better teams and I put a lot of pressure on myself because I’m one of our better players. We just have to play better as a group and myself individually.
And the threes?
“We have to shoot the ball better. It’s not a concern but we have to find a way to make the shots,” he said. “We have to shoot more and get in the gym and shoot even more, get extra shots up. But we’ll see what happens. Our confidence is there.”
DeRozan finished with 23 but on 20 shots. He looked a bit gassed at times. He missed a pair of three throws that would’ve tied the score with 2:14 left. Instead the Kings led 90-88 and never looked back.
He noticed how the Kings were attacking him off screen-and-rolls, forcing him to make passes. With Valanciunas out rookies Poeltl and Siakam were occasionally a beat behind when it came time to make the Kings pay by diving to basket or popping out. Add in wayward three-point shooting and it made for a long night.
“They’re going to make mistakes but they’re hard mistakes,” Casey was saying before the game about how his two rookies properly represent the Raptors style. “That’s how they fit in. Their motor, more than anything is how they fit into the culture.
“As an organization you want to find the kind of guys that fit the style and culture you have.”
But the key point is the Raptors have a culture. They have fought though injuries and slumps before. They have struggled and prevailed. They believe.
The three years since the Kings and Raptors crossed paths have proven eventful for both organizations. One has continued to struggle, lost at sea. The Raptors have a core they believe in and have allowed them to develop an identity.
The Kings – and several other NBA teams – should pay closer attention.