TORONTO — Let’s do the Kobe stuff first because, really, this was Kobe Bryant Appreciation Night at the Air Canada Centre—an unofficial celebration of all things Bean on the occasion of the curmudgeonly star’s final professional game in Toronto.
They cheered literally everything he did. They cheered when he attempted slow motion crossovers. They cheered as he bricked fade-away jumpers. They cheered when he walked to the scorers’ table mid-play to check back into the game.
And they really cheered when he made a series of Vintage Kobe shots in the fourth quarter—”I thought Kobe had a flashback,” said an impressed Dwane Casey—temporarily delaying his team’s inevitable loss, and temporarily displaying the take-over-the-game ability that once made him one of the most feared scorers in the NBA.
And that’s fine. They should cheer him—both because he’s one of the greatest 15 or so people to ever play the sport and he’ll forever be tied to the Raptors franchise.
Perhaps you heard that he once dropped 81 on them? There was certainly that. But there’s also the fact both Bryant and Raptors came to be in the league at exactly the same time. If you became a fan of NBA basketball around the time of the Raptors inception in 1995—as many a Canadian millennial, like current-Raptors Cory Joseph and Anthony Bennett, did—that means you only know an NBA that has been consistently dominated by Bryant. You missed Jordan’s pre-baseball years; missed Magic and Bird completely. But you saw Kobe from day one to now, when he’s far from peerless, preeminent Kobe, but still confident, grouchy, shoot-from-anywhere Kobe nonetheless.
“Hopefully I’ve had a great impact, and have been able to inspire kids out here to play the game of basketball, and help them find the beauty in it that I found when I was a kid,” Bryant said when asked about the impact he’s had on the fan base in Toronto. “[The reception Monday night] felt absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing.”
So, in a game that was, atmospherically speaking, truly strange, as it featured more jerseys in the stands that said Bryant on the back than ones that said Raptors on the front, and also a game that was truly poor in terms of a basketball exhibition, as it featured two teams that couldn’t buy a stop, Toronto fans got what they wanted. They got an opportunity to shower Bryant with praise at every turn, even chanting “we want Ko-be, we want Ko-be,” in the second quarter; and they got a Raptors victory, 102-93. And that’s not bad for a Monday night in Toronto.
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So, about that Raptors victory. It wasn’t what you’d call pretty. And while fans got what they wanted, Toronto head coach Dwane Casey did not.
He wanted his team to play 48 consistent minutes defensively against a Lakers squad they should have had a much easier time shutting down. He also wanted to have the luxury of resting some of his starters, which didn’t materialize as the Lakers hung around and forced Casey to play both DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry for more than 35 minutes in a game they would have ideally checked out of early in the final quarter (DeRozan in particular has been leaned on heavily of late, playing more than 35 in each of his last eight games).
“These are some dangerous habits we have,” Casey said. “Defensively, we all have to be better. That’s where the slippage came. That’s how they got back into the game. I thought we got loose a little bit offensively, over-handled a little bit—and that allowed them to get back into the game.”
One particular frustration of Casey’s is his team’s tendency to relax on defence, especially when covering pick-and-rolls; he doesn’t feel his defenders are consistently riding over screens to get to the ball and trap the dribbler. Another is rebounding, which the Raptors struggled to do against the Lakers, getting out-worked on the boards 47-38, and allowing L.A. to come down with 14 rebounds under the Raptors basket.
Of course, there were bright spots Monday evening, particularly the work of Terrence Ross, who got a start in place of the injured DeMarre Carroll (more on that later) and ended up leading the Raptors with nearly 39 minutes on the floor, contributing 22 points on 8-of-12 shooting. Ross is a point of consternation for many Raptors fans—and likely Raptors management—but it’s games like this that demonstrate what so many see in him.
“He was great. That’s the Terrence we need on a nightly basis. If he can do that, he can make our job a lot easier, especially when it comes to scoring,” said DeRozan, who added 16 points of his own. “We need him. We stress that to him all the time. He understands that. And he came out and did his job tonight.”
Speaking of polarizing Raptors having productive nights, Bismack Biyombo notched a double-double with 15 points and 13 rebounds, proving a handful for the Lakers under their own basket where he managed to get to the foul line 11 times. Cory Joseph also provided solid work off the bench, as he does. He fought through a cold virus to put up 14 points in 31 minutes while the Raptors played plus-16 basketball with him on the floor.
But what has to be disappointing for Casey and his players is their inability to truly extinguish an inferior Lakers team who got out to a seven-point lead early in the first quarter and had the game tied at the end of the third, despite at no point projecting the aura of realistic candidates for a victory.
With a far more dangerous opponent coming to town on Wednesday in the San Antonio Spurs, injuries beginning to pile up, and developmental projects like Bruno Caboclo, Delon Wright and Anthony Bennett nailed to the bench in close games, it would have been optimal Monday night for the Raptors to get their starters some rest and their bench some run. But that’s just not how things seem to work for this team.
It’s completely bizarre, really, that these Raptors can provide the epic, Tarantino fight scene of a performance they did in Saturday’s instant-classic against the best-in-basketball Golden State Warriors, and then follow it up with whatever that effort was against the Lakers, who reside firmly at the opposite end of the NBA’s talent spectrum. It stands to reason that this lack of focus and consistency, which creates an unfortunate byproduct of the team’s best players logging such heavy minutes early in the season, will be unsustainable over an 82-game campaign, let alone a playoff run. Which brings us to DeMarre Carroll.
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So, two weeks ago the Raptors played the Los Angeles Clippers at the end of a five-game road trip, and as Carroll chased J.J. Redick through a DeAndre Jordan screen he bumped legs with the screen-setter, which left Carroll’s right knee sore and swollen. He didn’t think much of it at the time and played through the injury for six games, until Sunday afternoon, when he told the Raptors it wasn’t getting any better. The team sent him off to see a knee specialist who said he was surprised Carroll had been able to play through it, diagnosing him with a knee contusion that will sideline the Raptors forward for an indefinite amount of time.
“What’d they tell you it is? A contusion? I don’t know—I’m not a doctor,” Carroll said, accurately. “I can take the pain. But it’s just one of those things. I’ve been playing on it for like two and half weeks and it hasn’t gotten any better.”
Neither Carroll nor the Raptors offered any suggestion as to how long he could be out of action, but it doesn’t sound like the kind of ailment that will heal particularly quickly. That, coupled with the fact the emerging Lucas Nogueira also missed Monday’s game with a sprained left ankle, has to be concerning for a Raptors team already playing without crucial paint presence Jonas Valanciunas. When you consider the lack of finish against inferior opponents, the heavy minutes being logged by the team’s best players, the defensive inconsistency, and the mounting injuries—it’s not hard to see trouble brewing for the Raptors if they don’t improve or get some good news from the injury ward soon.
For Carroll, who estimates he’s played just four of his 18 games as a Raptor at full strength after battling through plantar fasciitis last month, this first season in a Toronto uniform is testing his patience.
“It’s very frustrating—very unfortunate,” Carroll said. “Out of my six years in the league, this is the most injuries I’ve ever had. Two injuries back-to-back. But, you know, you’ve just got to stay positive. I just know myself. I always want to get out there, even if I’m hurt. But two and a half weeks playing hurt—it’s not the best idea. I think it’s just time for me to get back healthy.”
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Okay, one more thing on Kobe.
On March 8, 2013, the Raptors travelled to Los Angeles to play the Lakers. This was a frustrating iteration of the Raptors to watch—Rudy Gay played 41 minutes that night and shot 7-of-26, for example—but they did roster a promising rookie by the name of Terrence Ross.
The then-22-year-old didn’t play that night (coach’s decision, presumably), but it’s a game that sticks out prominently in his head because he watched a very special player do some very special things.
“It was like a front row seat to the Laker Show—and Kobe killed us. He killed us bad,” Ross says. “He hit a couple threes in clutch moments; he dunked on us to take it into overtime. This was like, vintage Kobe.”
Ross is from Portland but his mother, Racine, made the trip to California to sit courtside and see her son ride the bench while Bryant scored 41 with 12 assists, including a key four points in overtime which helped the Lakers win, 118-116.
“She was looking at me the whole time,” Ross says, imitating her sheepish yet impressed expression, “like, ohhh, I’m feeling bad for y’all, but uh…”
Flash forward four seasons to Monday night, and Ross is not only on the floor against Bryant, but going back-and-forth with the someday Hall of Famer. During a three-minute stretch in the fourth quarter, Ross and Bryant scored 16 of the 18 points their teams combined for, taking turns nailing long range threes and pull-up jumpers. By the end of the night Ross finished with 22 points, Kobe 21; and the pair shared a long embrace after the final buzzer.
“It was fun,” Ross said, cleared delighted by the chance to go toe-to-toe with the retiring legend. “It was really, really fun.”