Starting games well hasn’t been a strength of the Toronto Raptors so far this season. They’ve made some nice comebacks and it’s been fun to watch when they have, but the NBA is hard enough without playing uphill all the time.
Well, what happens when you start perfectly?
The Raptors put that theory to the test on Friday night when they hosted the Chicago Bulls. They used a fast, textbook start to a overcome a somewhat sluggish finish (though not without some spice at the end) coming away with a 121-108 win to improve 8-8 on the season while the spiralling Bulls fell to 5-12.
Under new head coach Darko Rajakovic, the Raptors' goal has been to pass the ball more and involve more people in the offence.
At times it’s worked well: the last time the Raptors played at home they walloped Detroit and set a franchise record with 44 assists. At other times? Well, all that passing can lead to mistakes, and the Raptors made a season-high 23 turnovers when they were blown out by Orlando on Tuesday.
But rarely has it worked as well and as early as it did on Friday night. The Raptors' start was a perfect encapsulation of how Rajakovic wants them to play. Not until Gary Trent Jr. made a steal at midcourt and score on the ensuing lay-up did the Raptors score without a teammate earning an assist.
Prior to that helpers had come in all forms: simple swing passes for open threes; drop-off passes to cutters; hit-ahead passes on the break. It all added up and the Raptors had assists on 11 consecutive field goals to start the game and 13 assists on 16 field goals for the first quarter.
Not coincidentally, the Raptors led 36-22 and were shooting 70 per cent from the floor.
It was exactly what Rajakovic was looking for.
“Obviously that first quarter was high-level basketball, and we really moved the ball and we were finding each other in that first half,” Rajakovic said. “Pascal [Siakam] himself had seven assists. I thought we did a really good job there. We are always trying and targeting to have 30-plus assists and try to always get more than 32 deflections and tonight we hit both. We had 33 deflections and 32 assists. I thought we played together.”
The box score confirms: Six Raptors had at least 13 points even, though only one took more than 14 shots. The assists were spread among eight different players, led by Siakam’s eight.
"It just shows our focus out there on the floor,” said Scottie Barnes. “… I feel like we get some good offence that way. Sometimes we get stagnant, but we keep trying to get back to it.”
The primary fireworks in the game came in the final moments when it was decided on the scoreboard, at least. But when Siakam took a pull-up three with the Raptors up by 12, Bulls star (and former Raptor) DeMar DeRozan took offence, gesturing and shouting at the Raptors bench before eventually being ejected. Shooting with so little time on the clock in a game that’s been decided is considered bad manners, but the Raptors defence is that in the NBA’s new In-Season Tournament format, point differential is a tie breaker. The problem is that the Raptor had already been eliminated from contention when the Orlando Magic beat the Boston Celtics in an afternoon game.
The Raptors claim they didn’t know they had been eliminated. DeRozan’s position?
Not buying it, or caring: “I don’t care about no In-Season Tournament points, none of that. Just respect for the game. If the score was flip-flopped and I had the ball, hold it. It is what it is … Just everybody was yelling at him, ‘Score, score, score.’ Take the win. Get out of here. Like I said, if roles were reversed, needing In-Season Tournament points or not, just for the respect I have for my opponents, I hold the ball. Especially if there’s no shot clock. That’s just me.”
In the Raptors effort to be the best version of themselves, they’ve had to figure out how to avoid falling behind early in games so often. Even in their impressive win over the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday, the Raptors were down by 13 in the first quarter. The Raptors have a -6.9 rating in first halves overall this season, which was 23rd in the league heading into Friday night. It’s nice that the Raptors have a healthy +3.6 net rating in the second half this season, which is 11th, but it would be nicer if they didn’t need to mount all those comebacks.
Why do they, though?
“Those swings are a natural thing in a game,” said Rajakovic. “There is a theme that maybe we don't start the game with the focus and energy that we need to have. And we're finding it over the course, during the game. Our conversations every day are how do we prevent those? What do we need to do better or differently, offensively, and defensively? How do we slow down our opponents and how do we continue scoring on [the] offensive end as well?”
The Raptors had no such problems early on against the Bulls. After a promising first quarter, Toronto’s bench unit helped keep the momentum going and pushed the lead to 20 with 8:36 left to play in the half.
Now, a caveat here. The Bulls limped into Scotiabank Arena for what was ostensibly an In-Season Tournament game – both teams were winless in the new format and had already been eliminated, having lost five times in their past six games. Zach LaVine, the two-time all-star who has led the Bulls in scoring four of the past six seasons, has already told management he wants to be traded and is off to one of the worst starts of his career. No one thinks the Bulls are going to stay together as put together, which is not typically the formula for cohesive team basketball. Everyone is expecting changes because – as one source close to the situation put it – “this [stuff] ain’t working.”
LaVine helped the Bulls at least stay in touch with the Raptors while simultaneously reminding everyone why is one of the small handful of NBA players to average at least 25.1 points per game over the past five years. The high-flying shooting guard scored 12 points on six shots in the second quarter, with four of his five buckets coming on solo efforts.
He ended up with 36 to lead all scorers, but the Raptors had six players with at least 13 points, led by O.G Anunoby, who had 26 points and held DeMar DeRozan to 19 points on 7-of-16 shooting. The Raptors had 32 assists and six players with at least three of them as they shot 53 per cent from the floor. The Bulls had 20 assists and 51.7 per-cent shooting.
LaVine’s ability to score unassisted and from deep would seem to fill a need for the Raptors, which is why some rumours have attached LaVine to Toronto as a possible trade destination, but there’s plenty of ‘careful what you wish for’ inherent there. The Raptors are in the early stages of trying to build a system where moving the ball to help each other is the first priority; bringing in a shoot-first scorer – even one as talented as LaVine – would run counter to their plans. That combined with LaVine’s record as a so-so defender and iffy passer with three years and $140 million left on his contract and a history of knee trouble would seem to make the Raptors an unlikely destination.
The situation in Chicago should make for a frustrating season for Raptors all-time leading scorer DeRozan, who is a free agent this coming summer at age 34. It’s easy to read his ejection in the final seconds as the product of accumulating frustration. Still, DeRozan is playing as well as ever in his 15th season. If the Bulls decide to break up a core that has a single play-in win (of the Raptors last season) to show for three seasons together, DeRozan will attract some interest, as will Bulls defensive stopper Alex Caruso.
LaVine will have a market, but even for as good a scorer as he is, his game is an acquired taste, and hasn’t been shown to translate into a wining environment yet.
The Raptors are working hard to create just that, and a night like Friday helps. The Bulls did make things interesting down the stretch. Trailing by 17, they mounted a 10-0 run to pull within seven. The Raptors offence hit a dry spell, failing to score for three minutes in the middle of the period.
But after a timeout, Rajakovic brought Scottie Barnes back into the game and they picked up where they left off. Barnes drove the lane and pitched out to Anunoby for a three to put the lead back to 10 with 4:22 to play and Dennis Schroder scored on a lay-up the next time down. The clinching basket came when Anunoby hit a hard-charging Jakob Poeltl for a lay-up and the Raptors were up by 14 with 2:24 to play.
The Raptors started well and finished much the way they started.
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