The Toronto Raptors got challenged twice on Sunday night in Cleveland.
They didn’t rise to it either time.
Just before halftime, high-scoring Cavaliers guard Colin Sexton got into a battle of words with first Fred VanVleet and then Norm Powell.
Both Raptors guards rarely get into nose-to-nose encounters with other players. They each play tough, but don’t waste their time with extracurriculars. But something Sexton did brought it out of VanVleet, and Powell was over there like he was shot out of a cannon, eager to get his two cents in.
Shortly after halftime, it was Raptors guard Kyle Lowry who challenged his teammates as a group, calling a timeout to try and pull them together. The reeling Raptors were trailing the lowly Cavs by nine and you could see Lowry imploring his teammates to play harder, to pick up their defence, to make a difference.
Nothing worked.
Despite an eventual spirited fourth-quarter push that proved too little too late, the Raptors dropped their eighth straight and 10th in their past 11, falling 116-105 to the Cavs, who are 14th in the East.
Sexton certainly wasn’t rattled about getting into it with a pair of veterans with championship pedigree. He scored 23 of his game-high 36 points in the second half. He had 14 in the third quarter alone.
If there was a gauntlet thrown, the Raptors missed it. A team that has created an identity around always being ready for the fight took the third quarter off. Trailing by two at the half, Toronto was down by 22 barely 12 minutes later.
“The only thing I will say is that is probably our biggest problem because that is demoralizing … I mean, we lost this game on spirit alone, you know what I’m saying?” said Fred VanVleet who scored 16 of his 23 points in the second half. “Collin Sexton was the best player on the floor tonight, and he had the most spirit, the most swag, the most confidence. And he inspired his team to go out there and do what they did in that third quarter, and we were trying to get it back after that.
“When you feel like you’re playing as hard as you possibly can, and then you turn around and the next guy next to you isn’t, or he is, or whatever, and they make their three, or they get an offensive rebound, that is the snowball effect that we’ve been having a little bit too much.”
Indeed, it’s a sign of how deep a hole the Raptors are in that neither being tested by one of the league’s up-and-coming young guards or having their undisputed veteran leader trying to get them to snap to attention lit a fire under Toronto, at least right away.
“I just felt like we needed it,” said Lowry of his decision to call a timeout on the floor without consulting Nurse. “I tried it and it didn’t work so I’m a bad timeout caller. But I just felt like we needed to like be together a little bit more. I thought we needed to have a little bit more energy. I feel like we needed to do a little bit more and we just weren’t playing as hard as we possibly could, at that moment.
“It wasn’t about anything but just, ‘Hey, let’s get back on the same page, let’s, like, let’s not let this get out of hand, we still got an opportunity to win this game,’” added Lowry, who finished with 18 points, eight rebounds and four assists in 40 minutes. “We’re playing like we’re down 50 already, we got to find ways to just chip back at it and get it done. I don’t do stuff for the camera, I do stuff to try to win games and to help our guys get better.”
And even after Lowry’s exhortations, Cleveland kept rolling, pushing their lead to 17 at the end of the third and then 22 after a Sexton three with 40 seconds gone in the fourth quarter.
At that point, the Raptors finally dug their heels in. Nurse went to a ‘defence first’ lineup with heavy doses of Pat McCaw – in just his fourth game of the season after missing time due to knee surgery and more recently health-and-safety protocols – and Stanley Johnson at the expense of Pascal Siakam and Powell. He was rewarded, as Cleveland was held to just 5-of-16 shooting from that point and Toronto forced eight turnovers.
It wasn’t enough, though. The closest the Raptors got was within five points on a leaning triple by VanVleet with 53 seconds left. Sexton iced it at the line with 23 seconds to play. The Raptors held Cleveland (16-26) to 23 points in the first quarter and 25 in the fourth quarter but allowed the Cavs 68 points in the ones in between.
Cue the soul searching. The Raptors have certainly struggled this season, but it’s hard to believe they’re this bad. With five players in either their third game back after missing nearly three weeks due to COVID-related health-and-safety protocols or – in the case of OG Anunoby – just their second, it could just be that they don’t have the legs to keep up with a young, energetic club like the Cavaliers.
It could be that Lowry and Powell, who had to carry such a heavy load when the Raptors were short-handed, are starting to feel the weight of that.
Or maybe it’s the trade deadline fast approaching this Thursday that has somehow cast a pall over this group, with Lowry and Powell widely rumoured to be among candidates to be on the move.
(For his part, Lowry who turns 35 on Thursday, says it’s not a factor: “It’s my birthday week. I don’t care what happens. It’s my birthday, that’s all I know. The 25th is my birthday, so whatever else is going on that day, I wouldn’t know … I’m turning 30. Still young, fellas.”)
Or it could be their chronic rebounding woes – Toronto got outworked by a 47-28 margin – or their lack of quality depth as the Cavs bench outscored Toronto 25-10.
It could be Toronto’s inability to play consistent defence all of a sudden – Cleveland shot 51 per cent from the floor and an uncharacteristic 17-of-33 from deep.
Or it could just be a little bit of all of the above, and then some, but as they fly from Cleveland to Houston to take on the Rockets Monday night and then play their third game in four nights back in Tampa against Denver on Wednesday, they need to figure something out. One thing they have figured out is that a turnaround isn’t going to happen if they only wish it so.
After seven straight playoff appearances, a championship and almost uninterrupted regular-season success, this is new territory. The Raptors haven’t lost eight straight games since the 2012-13 season.
“I would just say I think we’re all learning it’s a lot harder than we thought it was to flip that switch,” said VanVleet. “It’s because we’ve been there before. A lot of us have played some amazing basketball at some of the highest, pressurized moments of our lives. We’ve reached the pinnacle of basketball, in the basketball world. And so, you always have that in your back pocket. But it doesn’t save you every night.
“You’ve got to go out there and earn that every possession, every day, every practice, every workout, every shootaround. You’ve got to earn that every single day. And I think as a group, sometimes, as a collective, we’re looking around [thinking] what the hell is going wrong here? We’re not trying to be that, but we’re not playing good enough, and it’s just as simple as that.”
The fallout from the pre-halftime skirmish is interesting, in retrospect. Sexton certainly backed up his words and VanVleet, who scored 16 of his Raptors’ best 23 points in the second half, let his play do the talking. Powell? Not so much. He was red hot with 14 points on nine shots in the first half, but scored four points from that point on.
The loss dropped the Raptors’ record to 17-24, the first time this season they’ve been that far under the .500 mark, as the Raptors remain mired in 11th place.
The challenges will only get bigger from here.
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