PHOENIX — Like a big brother who finally decided he’d had enough of letting his younger sibling think they might actually get the better of him this time, the Toronto Raptors finally flexed their muscles in the second half against the host Phoenix Suns, and the result was consistent with big brother-little brother bouts since time began.
The Raptors trailed early and trailed at half but opened their four-game west coast swing by winning going away, the guts of their 107-98 win compiled entirely in the second half as they struggled to hit a shot, it seemed in the early going, and often didn’t seem too bothered if the Suns hit theirs.
That all changed as Toronto geared up their defence midway through the third quarter and into the fourth, and the offence followed.
“[There was] no screaming or yelling,” said Raptors guard Fred VanVleet about the Raptors bounce after the intermission. “But there were things we needed to talk about, right? It was a collective, ‘Lets get our stuff together and tighten up. Here’s how we can be better in the second half and go out there and execute.’”
Kawhi Leonard led Toronto with 19 points on 14 shots while adding six rebounds and five assists. He did leave the game with two minutes left after seeming to do something to his left foot, but said later it was not of deep concern.
“I think it’s going to be all right, nothing major,” he said. “I just pushed off on it and kind of rolled it and I wanted to get it looked at.”
Kyle Lowry had 11 rebounds and 12 assists — tying Damon Stoudemire for consecutive games with double-digit assists at six straight. The Raptors shot 50.6 per cent from the floor and ended up at 12-of-33 from deep as they hit six of their last 10 after shooting just 4-of-17 in the first half. They held the Suns to 44-per-cent shooting and blocked 10 shots and grabbed 11 steals.
The Raptors finally seemed to accept that they weren’t going to shoot the ball well enough to walk away comfortably into the night so decided to lock it down defensively like few teams — it’s beginning to emerge — can do.
Over a five-minute stretch in the third, the Raptors held the Suns to one fading, shot-clock beating three by the Suns’ Devin Booker. Otherwise the Suns found themselves going through a buzzsaw of blocks and deflections leading to three turnovers as the Raptors barely let them get a shot off, let alone score.
On the floor was Fred VanVleet, Kyle Lowry, OG Anunoby, Serge Ibaka and Kawhi Leonard, although others filtered through. By the time the quarter was over, the Suns had been held to 19 points, six of them of prayerful threes as Toronto held the Suns to 8-of-24 shooting for the quarter and led 77-71 heading to the fourth.
“I think as we build it here, it’s a late third- and fourth-quarter defence now where we really want to amp up and do what we can do with the most energy and high level concentration we can,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “And we want to be solid until we get to those points.
“We keep consecutive stops and I think we had a run of nine consecutive stops tonight and once we get in that mode, we kind of start to keep it cranking and go from there.”
VanVleet, in his first action since missing four games with a strained big toe, made his presence felt. He opened the fourth quarter with a three, stole the ball at half and scored a lay-up and later drove the ball deep in the lane before finding Norm Powell for a wide open three that pushed the Raptors lead to 91-75.
Then C.J. Miles chipped in with a pair of triples as part of a rapid-fire 20-8 run. Even better for Nurse, some of his team’s best play came from the bench unit which has struggled somewhat by their standards in the early going, but found its spark with VanVleet back, as he finished with eight points and six assists in 20 minutes.
“I think that was probably our best run as a bench unit [all season],” VanVleet said. “It’s going to take some time to figure out the rotations, who is playing and who is out, I think Nick just let us go there for a while and obviously we earned that with the way we were playing, but he kind of let us go on an extended run and we were able to build a lead and make some good things happen.”
It was dominant stuff and improved the Raptors record to a franchise-best 8-1 as they head to Los Angeles where they play LeBron James and the Lakers on Sunday, where the eyes of the entire NBA will be turned to them.
Typically heading west can mean navigating your way through a house of horrors This time around, it’s the Raptors that should be inspiring fear.
For them it’s a chance for some team building in some warm weather climes and continuing to prove that they have a team that — even in these early stages — can do significant damage on both sides of the ball, as in the second half in Phoenix. The more time they have together, you would think, the better they get.
“Cohesiveness, being together, meals together, doing things together, travelling all the time together, being on the bus together, doing all those types of things,” Lowry said about his hopes for the trip. “Just being around each other. That’s the part that you get from being on the road.”
The Suns are a team that one day might be good, but that day isn’t at hand. Even with draft lottery picks — this will be their ninth straight season is the draft lottery, odds are — they remain a team very much in flux.
This time a year ago they fired their head coach three games into the season. They then let go interim head coach Jay Triano in favour of rookie head coach Igor Kokoskov, and then they fired the general manager who hired him before the season even started. The first European head coach in NBA history looks like he hasn’t slept in a week.
There are pieces, but the puzzle seems like it’s been swept off the table and onto the floor at the moment. The Suns are young at their core, built around 22-year-old Booker and 20-year-old Deandre Ayton, the agile seven-foot-one Bahamian who was the No.1 pick in the draft in June.
Ayton came as advertised as he finished with 17 points and 18 rebounds, his signature play was an emphatic swat of a Jonas Valanciunas baseline turnaround. Booker, in his first game back after missing three with a hamstring pull needed 20 shots for 18 points.
They play fast — like everyone in the NBA today — and they play loose as their 18 turnovers a game would indicate. And like any young team, defence is a work in progress as they rank 28th in the NBA in that category.
In the early going, it was the Raptors who failed to take advantage. Lowry did what he could to get his steam rolling. He created points out of thin air as he soared through the paint to grab an offensive rebound that turned into an easy dunk for Valanciunas who started for just the second time this season over Serge Ibaka.
Later, after Danny Green missed a fast break lay-up — Toronto screwed up a couple of those — it was Lowry, playing his 800th career game, who stole the ball after the Suns rebounded it and pitched it out for a Green three.
But even with those swing plays Toronto seemed clunky. Through the first quarter they were shooting just 41 per cent against the porous Suns defense, and even though they forced six turnovers they were trailing 28-23.
Leonard, making his first road start of the season, was as guilty as anyone but he began finding his feet midway into the second quarter as Lowry found him for quick jumper in the lane and he came back with a wide-open three. He got to the rim with ease twice more, finally giving the Raptors a 46-45 lead with 1:55 to play after six-foot Isaiah Canaan made the mistake of trying to put his body on him.
The Suns finished the half on a 7-2 run, however, leaving Toronto some work to do
When it mattered, they got it done.
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