The hole the Toronto Raptors have put themselves in through the first quarter of the NBA season is not so deep that they can’t see daylight.
But neither is it so shallow that they can assume fate will intervene and inevitably see them rise to their accustomed position among the Eastern Conference’s elite.
Baby steps are first steps, and for the Raptors that means separating themselves from the bottom feeders in order to move up the food chain.
And they need any available hand to grab a shovel.
That’s what Toronto’s 115-102 win over the Orlando Magic Sunday night was about, as much as anything.
The Raptors might have the best record in the Eastern Conference over the past seven years, but they were a half-game behind the 10th-place Magic when the ball went up and in 12th place through 19 games — not to mention they were trying to avoid losing their fourth straight for the first time in three years.
Now they’re a half-game ahead of the Magic and in 10th place in the tightly-packed East, and just a game out of eighth as they get set to travel to Orlando for a return meeting on Tuesday night.
As wins go it is nothing to frame — if Toronto can’t win against a short-handed Magic club that has lost 11 times in 13 games, the Raptors' problems might run deeper than first realized. But it was the task at hand and now it’s complete.
“We just came out ready to go,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “You could see it right from the defensive stand at the start, really good execution offensively, and just kind of played pretty solidly throughout. There were really no dips in effort or energy or any of that kind of stuff, just a solid workman-like performance tonight.”
Or as Pascal Siakam — who led all scorers with 30 points and added 10 rebounds — put it: “Losing three games sucks, we have to get back to winning and I think we did that.”
Toronto (8-12) controlled the game from the opening moments and never let up in the fourth quarter despite being without Norman Powell (thigh bruise) for the second-straight game and OG Anunoby (calf strain) missing his third start.
Toronto led by 16 in the third quarter and the Magic cut that to eight with 8:33 to play, but the Raptors — who have blown more than their share of double-digit leads this year — responded with a 20-7 run to bury their injury-ravaged opponent, who fell to 8-13.
Siakam played his second strong game in a row as he followed up a 32-point effort in a loss Friday to the Sacramento Kings, once again forgoing the three-point line — he’s taken just three triples over the past two games — for attacks on the rim, and was rewarded with six trips to the free-throw line as a bonus, bringing his total to 20 over the past two games.
“For me [it’s] just continuing to play the game,” said Siakam, who added that he’s feeling better after struggling with some nagging injuries that kept him out of the lineup for two games last week. “If I take shots, I’ll take shots. If it’s attacking the rim, do that. I haven’t really thought about at all, ‘I’m gonna be driving every single game.’ I just think my body is feeling good and I take the game as it comes and I’ll continue to get better.”
Kyle Lowry posted a season-high 15 assists while Aron Baynes added a season-high 16 rebounds and did more than his part to keep Orlando big man Nikola Vucevic wishing the Raptors didn’t exist — Toronto once more held him well below his season averages as he finished with 15 points but went 5-of-18 from the floor, a big reason why the Magic shot just 40.2 per cent for the game.
Which isn’t all that surprising — the Magic are a poor offensive team. But the way the Raptors have been defending lately — giving up an average of 123 points a game over their losing streak — they'll take it.
The most interesting moment of the game might have come midway through the second quarter when the Magic’s Aaron Gordon blindsided Lowry with bodycheck away from the play as the Raptors were transitioning from defence to offence.
It wasn’t an accident. When the Raptors and Magic met on Aug. 5 in the bubble, Lowry took a hard foul on Gordon as the Magic forward was launching for a dunk. Lowry never came close to the ball and instead seemed to grab Gordon’s arm and send him awkwardly to the floor. Gordon strained his hamstring on the play and the two exchanged words as he left the floor. Never one to shy away, Lowry had possibly gotten under Gordon’s skin again Sunday with a hard box out the play immediately before.
Regardless, Gordon was assessed a Flagrant 1 foul for his hit on Lowry but maybe deserved some credit for injecting some life into a game between a pair of sub-.500 teams on a Sunday night without any fans in the building.
The Raptors got on a roll early as they jumped out to a 27-15 lead mostly on the strength of their defence as they held the visiting Magic to 28 per cent shooting in the first quarter and forced four turnovers. It was a group approach, which is how it has to be for a short-handed team that is still figuring out how to defend without the luxury of their big-man tandem of the past two years — Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka — directing traffic behind the defence.
Nurse’s rotation had gone nine deep before the game was 10 minutes old as he made sure to get the likes of Yuta Watanabe, Stanley Johnson and DeAndre' Bembry on the floor early. Those three were part of the crew that put the clamps on the Kings as the Raptors’ fourth-quarter comeback fell short.
The Raptors' defensive effort carried on into the second quarter and they got some offensive punch from their bench, too. Bembry had seven points in 10 first-half minutes and Watanabe — who is making a strong argument to have his two-way deal converted to a full NBA contract — hit a corner three. Paul Watson also hit a pair of threes in his six-minute stint — including one just before the half that allowed Toronto to take a 58-44 lead into the locker room.
On a team that is deep in quality players but that lacks a clear hierarchy past the top-seven in the rotation, making the best use of minutes that become available is critical and Bembry and Watanabe — who followed up his career-best 12-point night Friday with 11 points on four shots as well as an out-of-nowhere block of a Vucevic dunk attempt — have shown they need to be at the forefront of Nurse’s mind when he's looking down the bench, even after Powell and Anunoby return.
“We know we need to stay confident and try to keep working and get better until our opportunity is called,” said Bembry, a four-year veteran who signed a one-year deal in the off-season. "I think we've been ready, at least tried to be ready, every time our names were called. We're just going to go out there and try to play the right basketball. And I think that's what we've done so far. We're confident. We're just looking for moments to get out there, and I think the past few games, we've got out there and tried to make the right plays.”
It's exactly what the Raptors needed. Even while short-handed Toronto didn’t take a step back. Given the way their season has gone so far, that in itself is a big step forward.
