It’s fitting—almost poetic—that the Raptors hopped on a flight from Houston to Memphis last night. In the wee hours of the morning, in the city that gave us Elvis Presley, Toronto checked-in to their own version of “Heartbreak Hotel” after losing in double-overtime to Dwight Howard and the Rockets.
Looking back you’d be hard-pressed to find many positives about the Raptors’ fifth loss of the season (3-5 overall). But if you dig deeper, you’ll see a team that held Houston to 44 percent from the floor—including 7-of-19 for sniper, James Harden—and overcame a 17-point deficit to force a championship contender into two OT sessions. There was also the game-tying three-pointer from Rudy Gay in the first overtime; a shot that tied him with Carmelo Anthony for most game-winning or game-tying buckets in the fourth quarter or overtime in the last three years. It was a clutch play from a clutch performer but it ultimately couldn’t save an otherwise forgettable night for Toronto.
The Raptors, as a team, shot a woeful 33.3 percent from the field on a whopping 114 attempts. They were ‘led’ in those categories by Gay’s 11-for-37 and DeMar DeRozan’s 6-for-25. Throw Kyle Lowry into the mix, and Toronto’s top three scorers combined to shoot just 29 percent (23 of 78 FG).
As if the shooting wasn’t bad enough, ball distribution and the effectiveness and flow of the offence were glaring issues as well. Lowry, the starting point guard, had only two assists in 48 minutes of action, and the team overall managed just 10… total! According to Basketball-reference.com, the Raps are the only team in NBA history to put up 114 field goal attempts and tally 10 or less assists in a single game. The second-highest single-game FGA total for a team with 10 or less assists is 98 by the Denver Nuggets—and you have to go back to Dec. 12, 1991 to find it. After last night, the Raptors are now dead last in the NBA in team assists, averaging just over 16 per game.
So which Raptors team is for real? The one that sits in the assists-per-game basement and ranks in the bottom five in team shooting percentage (oh, and the bottom ten in 3PT shooting), or the team that is seventh in total rebounding (no. 1 in offensive rebounding) and gives up the seventh-fewest turnovers per game?
Perhaps we don’t know the answer yet. The 2013-14 NBA campaign is only two weeks old and Toronto, like a lot of teams, is likely still trying to figure out its identity and style. But if last year’s 4-19 start taught Toronto anything, it’s that Dwane Casey and Co. will have to get things on track sooner rather than later. They can’t afford to bury themselves before Christmas for a second-straight season.
“We’ve still got to get that cohesion we had throughout the last part of last year,” says Casey. “I don’t think we’ve gotten that back yet. That’s something we’re still striving for.”
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Jeremy Lin torched Toronto for 31 points off the bench last night—including nine points on 4-for-5 shooting in overtime alone.
Prior to the game he had this to say about his friend—and former New York teammate—Landry Fields.
“He’s gone through a lot. People don’t understand how lingering his elbow injury is. He still deals with it and he was dealing with it all summer. He’s had to fight through a lot and I think he’s doing a great job with it.”
Fields had ulnar nerve surgery on his right elbow last November and one year later he’s finally starting to show glimpses of the player Toronto thought they were getting when Bryan Colangelo signed the Stanford man to a free agent deal in the summer of 2012. After suffering through a horrific season last year, Fields was forced to rehab his shooting arm—and his shooting stroke—and get his mental edge back as well. He admitted to me (in an exclusive interview that can be heard on the “Hoops” show, Thursday night at 11pm ET on Sportsnet 590 the FAN) that his confidence was almost entirely gone, but he drew inspiration from his new wife and newborn child.
“Elaine, my wife, was there with me every day. She could see the struggle and how taxing [the injury] was on me—both mentally and emotionally,” Fields says. “At one point or another in our lives, we [all] go through a furnace, and the furnace can either destroy or you can come out much better. You look at gold; you put gold in a furnace [and] the impurities come out and you scrape them off and you’re much better than before. Or [the furnace] could just destroy it.”
“So I looked at it as ‘I’m going to go through this, learn a lot of things and just grow from it.’ Not just on the court, but also in life and in the way I approach my family and my outlook on everything.”