TORONTO – Despite having a one-night turnaround in between their G League quarter-final and semifinal game, it seemed like the Raptors 905 slept soundly Monday night.
Perhaps a little too soundly.
The 905 were historic in the regular season, scoring an incredible 118.6 points per 100 possessions and in their first playoff game against G League Ignite Monday they looked every bit the offensive juggernaut they were, scoring 127 in that contest on scorching 58 per cent shooting.
Tuesday night, however, proved to be a much different affair.
Shooting just 44 per cent from the field and going just 7-for-34 from three-point range while turning the ball over 26 times, the 905’s offence disappeared for the first time all season as they fell to the Delaware Blue Coats 127-100 in the G League semifinals, ending their season prematurely.
“You gotta give them credit,” said 905 head coach Patrick Mutombo after the game. “I think I said it at the beginning, they play with force, they are physical, they have good athletes in there and that we had to meet their force.
“We got sped up a little bit and got out of sync and kind of lost our swagger a little bit. I think we got it back but we just didn’t have enough to overcome their surges. It is what it is — disappointing, but you gotta give them credit. They competed and they beat us.”
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The 905’s offensive struggles started early as the team shot just 38 per cent in the first quarter and finished the first half, trailing by 13 after putting up just 49 points on 41 per cent shooting, including a dismal 3-of-18 mark from three-point range.
It was looking like it was going to be more of the same from the 905 in the second half, as they got down by as many as 19 early in the third quarter. But, thanks to a 15-4 run, they managed to cut the lead down to six and make a game of it. Alize Johnson was brilliant, scoring 13 of his 26 points in the period alone as Delaware carried just an 82-77 lead heading into the fourth quarter.
Unfortunately for the 905, the spark they found in that third quarter was all they could find. A 14-4 Blue Coats run to start the fourth pumped Delaware’s lead back up to 14 and the 905 just couldn’t recover.
Raptors 905 finished the regular season with a 12-3 record and entered the playoffs as the No. 1 seed on the strength of their offence and only their offence.
They enjoyed a league-best net rating of plus-9.2 because of their potent attack, but the 109.4 points per 100 possessions they gave up made them just the No. 15-ranked (of 18 teams) defence in the league this season.
The Achilles Heel of the 905 was always going to be their poor defence, but they were so dominant offensively throughout the season that it felt as if this weakness wouldn’t come about.
Unfortunately, they did finally go cold at an inopportune time and didn’t have the needed defensive backbone to weather the storm as the Blue Coats ended up shooting 53 per cent from the field and going 19-of-43 from deep.
No matter the level of basketball, being unable to get stops will eventually catch up to you — no matter how great your offence is.
But while the 905 didn’t reach their ultimate goal, the season they had was nothing to sneeze at.
Emerging from the insane sprint of a regular season as the best team in the league and winning a playoff game is still good work for a program that has established itself as one of the pre-eminent franchises in the G League since their inception in the 2015-16 season.
And when you consider all the adversity the team faced over the course of the 17 games it played, looking back at the season they had becomes all the more impressive.
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The 905 dealt with constant roster turnover with Malachi Flynn starting the season with them and then being recalled by the big club, key-rotation-player-turned-starter Breein Tyree was lost for the season with an ACL injury and the team even shortly had Donta Hall before he joined the Raptors proper because of their COVID situation.
Despite this, the team found a core with players like Henry Ellenson, Matt Morgan, Nik Stauskas, Gary Payton II and Matt Mooney mainly because all of these guys proved to not only be talented basketball players and worthy of an NBA shot, but because they led the way buying into the program the 905’s coaching staff presented them with.
“As we talked in the locker room one of the players said, ‘thank you for making me believe, thank you for making us believe.’” That’s what I’m proud of,” said Mutombo. “Getting a group of young people to understand that if you want to achieve anything of significance, you gotta go beyond mere interest. It’s gotta turn into an obsession to get better. An obsession to reach a goal. An obsession about your craft.
“Anybody that has ever done anything of significance has that mentality, and very few players understand that. And very few people are willing to be pushed to that extent. That was my aim. My motivation. We came up short, but man we tried like crazy.”
Mutombo said before the season started that he wanted to win while developing his players and he appeared to have done that successfully this season and is proud of the steps he’s seen his players take over the relatively short time they spent together.
“Progress is not easy. Growth is not easy. Growth is never done in a place of comfort. And that as leaders, it’s our job to get them out of comfort into unfamiliar territory to get them to do something that couldn’t get done on their own,” said Mutombo. “But then once they believe you, now it’s on us to make sure we teach them to do the right stuff and put them on the right path. And we have a lot of guys that grew. I’m so proud.
“I can go down the line: Nik Stauskas interested in defence and playing his heart out; Matt Morgan didn’t play and then he comes in and plays with so much confidence in spurts; Matt Mooney growing in his leadership; Gary Payton II, just his leadership and the effort and the selflessness he played with; Henry, just watching his growth and his confidence and having him out there just expressing himself.
“I’m just so, so proud of them because, truly, they allowed me to coach them — they allowed us to coach them. And that’s something that I do not take for granted.”
The glowing words Mutombo had for his players are a proper representation of the kind of team this 2021 Raptors 905 squad was: There was genuine care and compassion seen and heard from everybody on the team and their overall legacy shouldn’t be judged off one bad night.
Tuesday night, unfortunately, was just one of those nights.
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