Raptors' playoff hopes may be fading, but Anunoby's rise is unmistakable

Nikola Jokic had 19 points and 11 rebounds in just three quarters to lead the Denver Nuggets past the Toronto Raptors 121-111.

The Denver Nuggets have the likely league MVP this season in the form of Nikola Jokic, a global gift to those who believe push-ups are an overrated measure of athletic ability.

The loosey-goosey, herky-jerky seven-footer with the vision of an impressionist painter can make any play you can think of — as long as it doesn’t require jumping — and most of those you can’t imagine either.

But whether the Toronto Raptors manage to qualify for the play-in game or not — and it’s looking less likely all the time — the strange brew of the 2020-21 season has yielded one inescapable truth: OG Anunoby can really play.

If Jokic is the NBA’s MVP, is Anunoby the MVP of the Raptors or signalling that he might be soon?

He keeps making his case, even as the Raptors’ ship keeps drifting further from shore.

“OG’s got a chance to be special,” said the Raptors’ current MVP, Kyle Lowry, after his fourth-year teammate put together another strong effort in a losing cause against Jokic and the Nuggets. “Me and him talked the other day and I remember he said after his rookie year ‘I want to be an all-star next year.’ And I said, hold on, young fella, you know, be patient, let it come, it’ll get there. But you know, he's worked extremely hard to get where he's at and all he's going to do is continue to get better.”

For now, Anunoby’s better might not be good enough as the Raptors’ season keeps slipping away.

Toronto put in another respectable effort but, as has been the case all too often this season, they didn’t quite have the horse power to get back on course once the drift set in.

Toronto led by two after the first quarter, trailed by five at half and were only down 87-85 to start the fourth quarter.

And then the Raptors stopped scoring, their offensive droughts as much a story of their season as playing in Tampa or dealing with COVID.

Denver kicked off the final quarter on a 15-0 run and had pushed their lead to 21 after 4:53 of the fourth and that was it as Toronto fell 121-111.

Part of that was on Raptors head coach Nick Nurse, who tried to buy his starters some extra minutes by going with an all-bench unit featuring Malachi Flynn, Freddie Gillespie, Rodney Hood, DeAndre Bembry and Yuta Watanabe.

It was not a successful experiment and Nurse owned it.

“It turned the tide of the game, got [Denver] feeling pretty good, and they didn’t stop from there. Yep. It was not a good lineup, they didn’t get any stops and they didn’t get any scores,” said Nurse, who called a timeout when the run got to 9-0. “… I probably should have pulled the plug a little earlier than that. I waited probably one possession [too long].”

The loss dropped Toronto to 26-37, kicking off a brutal four-game road trip that sees them visit the West-leading Utah Jazz Saturday, the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers Sunday and the red-hot Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday.

They are now 12th place in the East with nine games left to make up 2.5 games on the 10th place Washington Wizards for the final spot in the play-in tournament.

The Nuggets are 42-21 and a half-game behind the Clippers for the third seed in the West.

So in that context, Anunoby’s recent play has been a silver lining for Toronto.

The 23-year-old was coming off a five-game stretch where he’d averaged 23 points, 4.6 rebounds and three assists while shooting 46 per cent from three on over seven attempts a game, and he just kept rolling against the Nuggets.

He finished with 25 points — his career-best sixth straight game topping the 20-point mark — and while he’s typically been more efficient than his 8-of-21 line, that Anunoby was willing to assert himself to that degree bodes well.

“I would say it’s just aggressiveness, taking the opportunity that’s presented itself to me and just the preparation and hard work throughout the years to be ready for this,” Anunoby said about his recent stretch of high-end offensive play.

Is it fun?

“Yeah, it’s fun.”

And it should be noted that for the second straight game against Denver, Anunoby held Jokic in check — his 19 points and 11 rebounds and just two assists a below-average night for him.

Denver got a boost with 45 points from their bench, however, dwarfing the 11 points the Raptors’ reserves provided before garbage time commenced.

That disparity offset a strong night from Lowry, who finished with 20 points and seven assists, and a career night from Khem Birch, who scored a best-ever 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting while grabbing seven rebounds and dishing four assists. That he made both the threes he took bodes well too for the pending free agent. And Flynn, the rookie point guard starting in place of Fred VanVleet (hip), was solid again with 16 points, four assists and six rebounds on 6-of-9 shooting in his 32 minutes.

But the Nuggets won pulling away anyway.

The only question is if the production Denver is getting from Jokic will be enough for them to return to the Western Conference Finals, given the Nuggets are trying to do it without Canadian standout Jamal Murray, who tore his ACL in a non-contact play against the Miami Heat on April 12.

The emergence of Michael Porter Jr. (23 points on 8-of-19 shooting last night) as one of the most efficient scorers in the NBA will help, but it won’t be easy.

Murray was in the midst of a career-season, matching the extraordinary levels of play he’d risen to during the Nuggets' run to the Western Conference Finals in the bubble at the end of the 2019-20 season. In his last 25 games before the injury, Murray was averaging 24 points, four rebounds and five assists with shooting splits of 50/46/94. It’s hard to do it better.

Factor in the moves the Nuggets made to add to their core — trading for Aaron Gordon at the deadline to add some size and defensive punch on the wing, and adding JaVale McGee for depth behind Jokic — and Denver was arguably a favourite in the West.

Murray’s teammates haven’t seen him since he went down. He stayed in Los Angeles for surgery and hasn’t been able to fly. The Nuggets travel to Los Angeles for games against the Lakers Sunday and the Clippers Monday.

“All I know is that we’ve all been staying in touch with him, but nothing like seeing him, giving him a hug and letting him know how much we miss him,” said Nuggets head coach Mike Malone.

“He has not been around the team since he had the surgery. He stayed in L.A. to this point. At some point he’ll be cleared to leave L.A. to come back to Denver to continue that rehab process. But I think I speak for everyone that we miss him and can’t wait to see him.”

But the Nuggets have managed without him so far. Denver is now 8-1 since Murray got hurt and were 8-2 in 10 games before that. Add it up and Denver is the hottest team in the NBA since the middle of March.

Jokic is a big reason why. He’s the presumptive MVP, given he’s averaged 26.3 points a game along with 8.9 assists and 10.9 rebounds while shooting 57 per cent from three and 41.7 from deep — while playing 20 more games so far than the Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid.

“I think they've got a little bit of everything,” said Nurse. “They’ve certainly got the scoring, they can play through Jokic from the inside and the outside …so that shrinks your defence quite a bit, it makes you have to play a little softer going one direction so they don't beat you to the basket, which means when those guys go the other direction, you're going to be off their bodies a little bit. So it lets them move more freely. Right? I think pressure-release cutting like that is always something that makes basketball, offensive basketball, easier to run.”

The Raptors have pieces — and the play of Anunoby suggests he could be a bigger one in Toronto’s near future than anyone might have guessed a year ago — but they don’t have enough to put it together, that much is clear.

The Nuggets and Jokic — even without Murray — make it look easy while the Raptors’ road only gets more difficult from here.

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