TORONTO – After all of that, are the Toronto Raptors any better than they were a year ago?
You’d like to think that after firing their coach, trading their most identifiable player for an MVP candidate and one of the NBA’s best role players, and starting the season like a house on fire, we would have a good idea by now.
But we don’t. The new-look, Kawhi Leonard-era, Nick Nurse-coached Raptors are 37-16 after 53 games. Last season the old-look, DeMar DeRozan-era, Dwane Casey-coached Raptors were an identical 37-16 at the same stage.
On paper the old-look Raptors might even have been better, with more solid defensive (fifth overall) and offensive ratings (second) on their way to a franchise record 59-win season. At the moment the Raptors are seventh on offence, ninth on defence and on pace for 57 wins.
Not that any of that really matters. The standard for this group is a playoff breakthrough – a trip the Eastern Conference finals at least with reasonable expectations of Toronto’s first-ever NBA Finals appearance
That’s a long way off, but Thursday’s 105-92 loss at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks makes it tough to project an excess amount of confidence about any of that at the moment.
The loss dropped Toronto to 1-3 against the Bucks [37-13] this season and there were no handy excuses. The Raptors weren’t tired or unprepared, having come off a day off and two days of practice. They were healthy other than Jonas Valanciunas remaining out of the line-up (although his return to action from a dislocated thumb is getting closer) and they were playing at home where they had won 10 straight.
In Leonard they have one of the few talents in the league that can inspire as much fear in other teams as the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo does to the rest of the NBA.
The MVP showdown was largely a saw-off and a bit of a letdown: Antetokounmpo finished with 19 points, nine rebounds, four five assists and two steals while Leonard was an equally ordinary – these things being relative — 16 and eight with two assists, three steals and an unusual 7-of-20 from the field, hounded by the Bucks’ Kris Middleton and a bunch of long-armed helpers.
But elsewhere the Bucks seemed more together, more on point – going 14-of-38 from deep helps, and holding the Raptors to 39.8 per cent shooting helps even more. The only Raptor who really rose to the occasion was Pascal Siakam who was brilliant with 28 points – but that was off-set by another struggle from deep for now five-time all-star Kyle Lowry, as the point guard went 1-of-6 from three-point range.
Toronto simply got beat by a better playing team and, quite possibly, a better team overall as the Bucks increased their lead over the Raptors atop the Eastern Conference to 1.5 games and now own the tie-breaker by winning the seasons series. With 29 and 32 games to play, respectively, a lot can still happen, but if the best the Raptors can finish in the East is second overall they would play a deciding Game 7 on the road against the Bucks should they get that far.
And who is betting on the Raptors in a 2-3 or 3-2 match-up in the second-round of the playoffs against, say, Boston right now?
The Raptors fought back sure, but why were they so listless to begin with?
"I’m probably more concerned that there isn’t a little bit more solid play from our main guys than [pleased with] the fight," Nurse said. "The fight, that’s great. It’s great. But I’m more concerned with how we’re playing. I’m, again, I’m not even, well, I am concerned by the final score, but I want to go out and play well, and I don’t think we played well tonight. I want to go out there and execute, and be on a string on defence. Great communication. Be executing our offence and get the ball where it needs to go, and we just didn’t have that. We were a little desperate at times tonight."
The win also means that Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer and his staff will represent the Eastern Conference at the NBA All-Star game later this month as the Raptors can’t catch them before the Feb. 3 cut-off.
He deserves it.
The Raptors scrapped, but it was empty calories. After falling behind by double figures in the second quarter and 24 in the third, Toronto cut the Bucks’ lead to six with 1:59 to play before Milwaukee buried them.
As the Raptors struggle to find their rhythm around Leonard, the Bucks in some ways are having the season the Raptors could have hoped for. In hiring Budenholzer as their new head coach — widely reported as the Raptors’ preferred candidate to replace Casey — they have arrived at a very defined style of play on both ends of the floor and looking nothing like the group that stumbled along to 44 wins last season and another first-round playoff exit.
The Bucks are better than they were, there is no debating that. They are the NBA’s No. 1-ranked defence, No. 6-rated offence and are on pace for a 60-win season, a 16-win improvement year-over-year.
Through 24 games the same case could have been made about the Raptors under Nurse, who started the season 20-4 and seemed poised to run away in the East. But they’ve just been a more ordinary 17-12 since and Thursday was more of the same. You would be hard-pressed to find something about the current Raptors that is a clear improvement or departure from where they were this time a year ago.
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There are mitigating factors.
"I think we had some unbelievable rhythm [early in the season] and I think we have lost some here with a stretch of weeks with [injuries and absences]. Some of that rhythm that we had pretty early, maybe 20 games in, has come and gone a little bit. So I guess my answer would be I guess I see it coming back a little bit more than hopefully escalating further," Nurse said before the game. "… I think it is coming. Now we are back to the stage of stretching it out over more minutes. But I feel good. I think we have worked on some more things here in the practice days that I think will help us with some chemistry, some spacing, where people need to be when (Leonard) has got the ball. How to get (Leonard) the ball a little easier, all those things that we need to do because he is going to have the ball quite a bit. I expect the progress to start here tonight."
It started reasonably well early. After looking like a team that hadn’t played since Sunday – the Raptors’ longest break of the season – by making four early turnovers, Toronto played a solid first quarter, buoyed by seven quick points from Siakam, who was passed over by the coaches in the balloting for all-star reserves announced before the game.
But Toronto’s 25-22 first-quarter lead quickly disappeared in the second. The one area the Raptors have consistently struggled compared with a year ago has been their bench and it was the case again as they surrendered a 19-6 run to the Bucks when Budenholzer held Antetokounmpo back to play with the Bucks’ second group. The MVP candidate wasn’t the problem alone but he kept collapsing the defence and generating open threes around the perimeter.
The Raptors had no such luck.
Seventeen times they put up a three-point shot in the first half and 15 times they missed on their way to a 7-of-27 night from deep, a big reason the Bucks were able to push them aside down the stretch and stake a clear claim to the East.
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So the question remains: Are the Raptors better than they were a year ago? How much better can they get?
For now the answer seems to be: Not good enough.
"I was saying at the beginning of the season we need to get better," said Leonard after the game. "We still need to get better. But it’s not about the first unit. It’s about the whole team. That’s how you win games. Everybody being connected, linked together, having the same mindset, the same goals, the same energy. You can’t have your first unit clicking and have the second unit come in and play bad, or vice-versa. Or even three guys. Everybody has to be linked together… We’ve still got a long season. We’ve just got to play some games and be able to get better."
One game means little in the grand scheme of things but after four games against the Bucks it’s clear who the better team is at this stage.
The question now is what can the Raptors do to close the gap and keep their edge on the competition below?
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