They made it. And they crossed the finish line in style.
The NBA season is always long and full of challenges but there are inevitable stretches when a team feels like it’s running the gauntlet, where a misstep here or a bad bounce there can trigger an avalanche of losses that can bury a team. For all but the very best, very deepest teams, things always seem to be hanging in the balance.
That’s where the Toronto Raptors have been for about six weeks now. The intensity has been building.
It was New Year’s Eve when the Raptors finally got healthy and began to turn their season around with a six-game winning streak against soft competition. They needed it, given they were 14-17 at the time.
Then came a tough, competitive, loss to the NBA’s best team, the Phoenix Suns, followed by a five-game road trip that started poorly with a loss in Detroit to the lowly Pistons but was offset by an impressive win against the Milwaukee Bucks. Things didn’t get easier. Tough losses to the Miami Heat and surging Dallas Mavericks followed. But Toronto kept in it, digging in against the Washington Wizards to salvage a 2-3 trip.
It was all in preparation for the past seven days: five games in seven nights against elite competition – Miami, Atlanta, Miami again, Chicago and, Friday night, Atlanta again – this time with all-star Trae Young in the lineup, who was missing on Monday. It was a tough crowd. The Heat and the Bulls have been jockeying for the Eastern Conference lead all season, and the Hawks came to Scotiabank Arena as winners of eight of their past 10 as they try to get their season on track and repeat their run to the Eastern Conference Finals last year.
Could the Raptors come through the other side intact?
Turns out the Raptors didn’t just survive, they thrived. They outlasted Miami in triple overtime, swept both ends of a back-to-back and beat the Bulls Thursday night. And Friday they swept their second back-to-back in the space of five days, extending their winning streak to five games and improving to 28-23 for the season and a season-best five games over .500 with their 125-114 win over the Hawks.
It’s the kind of test that can make or break a team, and it has clearly encouraged the Raptors.
“I think we should feel pretty good,” said Pascal Siakam. “I think, definitely some tough games against really good teams in the East, those are the teams we wanna face. The games came at us pretty fast, so I like the way we responded every single game, the games looked different and each game we kept finding no matter what it is: back-to-back, whatever the case might be, continued to fight through as a team. I like that resiliency and just the fact that we go out there every single night and we fight.”
As has been the case recently, many hands made for light lifting.
Fred VanVleet followed up his all-star nod with 26 points and 11 assists, including a pair of assists for key buckets down the stretch — finding Scottie Barnes for a quick-hit lay-up and then hitting Gary Trent Jr. for triple that gave Toronto an eight-point lead with 1:56 to play, which was all they needed from there.
Siakam drove the Raptors’ offence from start to finish as he added a game-high 33 points to go with nine rebounds and four assists while Trent Jr. had 19, Barnes 16 points, nine rebounds and four assists while OG Anunoby had eight points, 10 rebounds and four assists and put the game out of reach with a reverse dunk on baseline cut 1:20 to play thanks to a crisp find by Barnes.
The Hawks got 22 points and 13 assists from Trae Young, while DeAndre Hunter and John Collins each added 23 as Atlanta slipped to 25-27.
The Raptors even got double-digit scores from two members of their bench unit, with Precious Achiuwa knocking in a pair of key threes in the fourth quarter on his way to 10 points and Chris Boucher finishing with 11 points and eight rebounds as head coach Nick Nurse has found some success using a line up featuring only players between 6-foot-7 and 6-foot-9 as a bridge to the starters in the fourth quarter.
It has all been quite impressive.
In a very short period — results aside — the Raptors have gone from wondering what their team might look like if they ever got them on the floor together to getting an increasingly good idea that they’re pretty damn good.
“I think where we are going now is just where we’d hoped we’d go,” Nurse said before the game. “We wanted to build this thing, figure it out, just keep getting better and compete with the great teams. Clean up late game offence and defence.
“I mean it’s all signs of us improving and that’s really what the object was this year: Develop these guys and build the chemistry and keep improving and then again being able to go out there and line up with anybody, look them in the eye and say, ‘Let’s go.'”
Before their game against the Hawks, the Raptors were 13-6 over their critical stretch beginning with their win over the Los Angeles Clippers on New Year’s Eve, leaving them tied for the third-best record in the NBA in that period.
The Raptors have improved in all areas, posting the league’s 11th best offence and 10th best defence, where they were 14th and 21st up to that point. Their defensive rebounding — a glaring weakness for most of the year — improved to adequate, jumping from 30th to 20th, and the Raptors — who had plans to play fast and hit on some early offence coming out of training camp, finally started executing on that promise. Prior to the New Year, the Raptors were plodding along at 26th in pace but are eighth over the past 20 games.
The question was if the heavy schedule and the Raptors starters’ heavy minutes — coming into Friday they were averaging between 42 and 44 minutes a game thanks to playing four overtime periods in their four-game winning streak — would catch up to them.
There was no evidence of that early on. Less than 24 hours removed from their overtime win over the Bulls on Thursday the Raptors jumped out to a quick first quarter lead over the Hawks with Siakam, who has carried the heaviest minutes load, leading the way.
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It’s no coincidence the Raptors’ surge has mirrored Siakam’s return to all-NBA form after missing training camp and the start of the regular season due to shoulder surgery. Siakam missed out on joining VanVleet on the Eastern Conference All-Star team, but he served notice he should be high on the list of possible injury replacements, if not at the very top.
Siakam knocked down three triples on three tries in the first 12 minutes on his way to a 21-point quarter, helping stake the Raptors to 39-28 lead.
The Hawks have one of the best benches in the NBA — and you would have to think the Raptors would love to snag the likes of sharpshooter Bogdan Bogdanovich at the trade deadline this coming Thursday — and they made themselves heard when Nurse when to his bench. A Bogdanovich three and a steal and a pair of free throws helped spark a 13-4 run to start the second quarter that cut the Raptors lead to one. Nurse went back to his starters and stemmed the bleeding, but the Raptors were only able to take a 60-59 lead into the half.
It was VanVleet who began to assert himself in the third quarter scoring 13 points and adding four assists. He hit a pair of threes late in the period and set up Boucher for another in a 90-second blitz later in the period that helped give Toronto a 96-86 lead to start the fourth and they held on from there.
It’s been a very good week and an encouraging six weeks.
“We’re going to try and play hard and see if we can compete as hard as we can,” said Nurse. “I’m happy with our compete level. I think the guys are pushing each other on that part of it. Let’s guard, let’s compete and let’s play hard and get on the glass, all things we have tried to emphasize. So all I’m really concerned about is we keep heading in that direction.”
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