TORONTO – Two teams with championship aspirations were on the floor at Scotiabank Arena Tuesday night.
Only one left the floor feeling like their goal is getting closer and it wasn’t the Toronto Raptors.
After losing game 65 of the 82-game regular-season marathon 107-95 to the visiting Houston Rockets, the Raptors sounded like a team still searching for answers, and the list of questions doesn’t seem to be getting shorter.
Who’s starting?
Who is running the second unit?
Is Kawhi Leonard resting today or not?
And what are the plays, anyway?
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Continuity was the Raptors calling card the last few seasons. A year ago, they won a team-record 59 games and made their fifth straight playoff appearance with a 10-man rotation that missed 55 games – combined – over the course of the season.
As the Raptors head down the stretch, only four of those 10 players from a year ago were even on the roster and with Fred VanVleet (thumb) out, only three were available to play. As the Raptors opted for talent, pedigree and hoops IQ over familiarity, the hope is they can figure it all out on the fly.
Against the Rockets – who came within a game of the NBA Finals a year ago and look every inch a team that can get over the hump this season – the Raptors looked like they have a long way still to go.
The starters came out flat, the second-unit got man-handled and a single near-perfect quarter – the Raptors out-scored Houston 34-14 in the third to storm back from an 18-point half-time hole and briefly stake their claim to the game – was undone by a tentative fourth as the Rockets quickly reasserted themselves and left the Raptors reeling.
With the trade deadline a month in the rear view and the playoffs still a month ahead, the Raptors sound like a team coming out of training camp, trying to figure things out, with centres Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol flipping back and forth as starters and the ever-present Leonard load management questions adding an additional element of complication.
“Just the chemistry, lineup changes – one time Marc is in, one time Serge is in there, some guys are hurt, guys are in and out, still figuring it out, some guys still learning the plays,” said Raptors guard Danny Green. “So many different lineups, so many different faces, trying to gel together is a big part of the reason why but at this point, no excuses. We still have to find ways to play better regardless of who is on the floor, we have to find ways to pick each other up.”
It’s hard to knock the Raptors’ hustle too much at this stage. They made the big move to acquire Leonard in the off-season and then doubled down at the trade deadline when they acquired Marc Gasol on Feb. 7. Jeremy Lin has picked up major minutes after being bought out by the Atlanta Hawks. Leonard has sat out 18 games. They’ve managed all that change well as their 46-19 record suggests.
But with 17 games left to play, the race is on to see if they can get themselves organized in time to have everything locked down for the playoffs.
Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said from the opening moments of training camp that he wanted a team that could manage a fluid lineup and adjust to uncertainty. He has made a point of de-emphasizing the regular season with an eye towards building toward the playoffs. Even with James Harden and his 37.6 points per game scoring average in town, he resisted the urge to come up with a game plan specific to the Rockets superstar, choosing to employ a more generic defence they can draw on against other opponents in the future.
It worked. Sort of. Harden needed 30 shots to get his 35 points and only got to the free-throw line eight times – well below his league-leading average of 11.1 a game. But then again, Harden scored 19 points on 6-of-7 shooting in the fourth as the Rockets pulled away from Toronto after trailing 71-69 after three quarters.
“I liked a lot of what we were doing, I thought we were unlucky even not to do better,” said Nurse. “We tipped a lot of balls around, they were shaky out of some of the traps and stumbling around and somehow still getting something out of it.
“Again, it was good to see us go at a prime-time scorer like that and figure out different ways we can play our defence. Good learning experience for us.”
Which is a good way to frame it. Another way is that the Raptors band is still learning their notes with the playoffs just a month away.
Contrast their experience with the Rockets, who stumbled out of the gate at 11-14 due to injuries and suspensions and roster turnover over. But thanks to Harden’s heroics – he averaged 40.6 points over a 34-game stretch that ended just last week – and the return of the likes of Chris Paul and Clint Capela from injury and pick-ups like Austin Rivers and Kenneth Faried, the Rockets are on a mission and Tuesday’s win – their sixth straight – was another step on their path.
Rockets are looking like a championship threat again and came to Scotiabank Arena as the hottest team in the NBA, improving their record to 28-11 since their low point while sweeping the season series from Toronto.
They want more.
“We need to make a move,” said Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni before the game. “We’re in fifth right now and we need to try to get up and try to get home court advantage. We came back from the dead. James carried us for a month-and-a-half and now we have everyone healthy … we can make a run and we want to. The biggest thing to have everyone healthy and ready for the playoffs, but at the same time we’d like to finish off really strong.”
They did against the Raptors. After nearly blowing Toronto out early – Houston led 55-37 at half – the Rockets withstood a furious Raptors rally in the third quarter as Toronto jumped out to a 23-4 run to take the lead on a Siakam turnaround in the lane with 4:28 to play in the third. But the Rockets’ bench pushed back against the Raptors’ bench early in the fourth – a theme all night – and then two triples by Harden sandwiched a three by former Raptor P.J. Tucker midway through the fourth period put Houston up with less than six minutes to play and the Raptors had no answer.
The win moved the Rockets into third place in the West and for the moment in position to push off a potential rematch with the Warriors to the Western Conference finals.
That’s the Rockets’ short-term goal and it’s giving them a focus for the close of their regular season.
It’s not clear what the Raptors’ goal is at this stage, other than to get better and stay healthy, which is lacking in specifics. A focus like the Rockets have and Toronto might have won games on the road against Detroit and at home against Houston, which in turn would have coincided with the Milwaukee Bucks’ first consecutive losses of the season. The Raptors would only be a half-game out of first in the East. Instead, they lost both and are 2.5 games down and playing without a clear focus.
“I don’t know. Not much energy,” said Pascal Siakam when asked why the Raptors came out flat against the Rockets as they trailed 23-19 after the first quarter. “They switched a lot [defensively], but we didn’t attack with force. We didn’t do anything like we always do. You could see the difference in the third quarter, it was just two different games. That’s how we got to start the games. We can’t play like that.”
Not if they expect to crash the party a team like the Rockets are working to get themselves invited to in June.
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