Takeaways: Raptors fall short against another top team

You’ve heard this before, so we’ll keep it brief: the Toronto Raptors had some very good moments against one of the better teams in the NBA, but lost. 

Toronto was trailing by just three points to the Houston Rockets to start the fourth quarter, but the NBA’s 29^th-ranked fourth quarter offence could muster just 16 points in the final period and ended up losing to Houston by double figures, 113-99. 

The loss dropped the Raptors' record against the top 10 teams (by winning percentage) in the NBA to 4-18 and was the eighth straight game they’ve lost to a top 10 team. For a team hoping to make the playoffs, it does not bode well. 

The Raptors were playing without big men Jakob Poeltl (illness), Collin Murray-Boyle (thumb) and Trayce Jackson-Davis (finger), which was not an ideal situation given the Rockets lead the NBA in offensive rebound rate. 

Things don’t get much easier as the Raptors head to New Orleans to play Wednesday night, which, on paper, seems like a winnable game given the Pelicans are just 21-45 this season and the Raptors have been dominant against the NBA’s bottom 10 teams (17-4). But the Pelicans don’t have their own draft pick this summer, so they have no fear of winning games and hurting their draft position. They are as healthy as they have been all season and are 6-3 in their last nine games. They were at home resting (!) while the Raptors will get to New Orleans sometime in the wee hours for Wednesday night’s game.

The takeaways: 

1.  Same team, different game, same result: One of the lines former Raptors head coach Nick Nurse used all the time was that there were ‘a million ways to win a basketball game’. Or lose one, presumably. The Rockets and Raptors last met on Oct. 30, when Toronto got blown out in its home opener. You look back and wonder, ‘how’? The Raptors shot 21-of-40 from three (tied for the most threes they’ve made all season and the only time this season they’ve made at least half of their attempts when putting up 35 or more), had a 15-10 edge in turnovers and got a combined 60 points on 22-of-34 shooting (9-of-14 from three) from Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram. But the Rockets had a 17-4 edge in offensive rebounding and a 23-11 edge in second-chance points and won going away. 

Things weren’t quite so weird on Tuesday night, though the Raptors did have an 18-13 edge in turnovers and got an efficient 49 points from the pairing of Barnes (24) and RJ Barrett (25). But other than that, the Raptors' loss covered a lot of familiar ground this time. The Rockets had a 15-7 edge in offensive rebounds and a 22-5 edge in second-chance points. Oh, and this time the Raptors shot just 9-of-36 from three. 

2.  Wilt, Kobe ... now Bam? Are the Raptors off the hook for being the team that gave up the second-highest scoring game in NBA history? Well yes. Given Kobe Bryant’s status in the history of the NBA and his tragic death six years ago, it’s unlikely that the 81 points on Jan. 22, 2006, will ever cease to resonate with NBA fans. But from the Raptors point of view, at least it’s only the third-highest scoring game in NBA history now.

Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo rocked the basketball world Tuesday night when he dropped 83 against the hapless Washington Wizards. While Bryant’s performance was a masterpiece — 28-of-46 from the floor, 7-of-13 from three and 18-of-20 from the line as he helped engineer a Lakers win after being down 14 at half by outscoring the Raptors 55-41 on his own in the second half — Adebayo’s was a little more workmanlike. The three-time all-NBA defender, whose previous career-high was 31, shot 20-of-43 from the floor and 7-of-22 from three, but shot 36-of-43 from the free throw line (a new single-game record for both makes and attempts). 

3. But more importantly... Adebayo’s big night came in a Heat win, their sixth straight, improving their record to 37-29 while the Raptors fell to 36-28 with their loss to Houston.  The Raptors remain in fifth place in the Eastern Conference, both on the strength of having a 2-0 record in the season series against the Heat and a slightly higher winning percentage.

But more practically speaking, they are now tied at 10 games behind first-place Detroit. The Heat and Raptors play a two-game set in Toronto in the last week of the regular season, but the way things are trending, those games might not be as consequential as they should be.

The Raptors will need to build some momentum in the final 18 games of the season to avoid getting passed in the playoff race not only by the Heat, but by Orlando (one game back in sixth-place winners of four straight), or even Atlanta, which has now won seven straight games and is suddenly just two-and-a-half games behind the Raptors (and Heat) while sitting in ninth place. You’d think the eighth-place Philadelphia 76ers could be slept on a little bit because of their injury issues (the latest: all-star guard Tyrese Maxey is out for three weeks with a finger injury), but they won Tuesday and are just one-and-a-half games behind the Raptors.  

4.  Gradey Dick lacking on defence: There was a glimmer of hope the other day when the third-year wing scored 10 points in 13 minutes in the Raptors' win over Dallas. It was an encouraging sign after Dick had been supplanted in the rotation and played minimal minutes for a stretch of five games. But in four first-half minutes against Houston, that positive energy dissipated quickly. On one of the Rockets first possessions with Dick in the game in the first quarter, Amen Thompson broke off the Rockets set to call Dick’s man into a pick-and-roll and then drove, scored and was fouled by Dick before converting the three-point play.  

To start the second quarter, Dick got switched onto Alperen Sengun and offered little resistance as the Houston big man dropped a jump hook over him. And on a fastbreak following a Raptors turnover, Dick got shoved under the basketball by Sengun, who got the offensive rebound and kicked it out for Reed Sheppard three. Dick was pulled after that. It’s not all Dick’s fault that he was directly involved in plays that generated seven Rockets points in three minutes, but the reality is the NBA is full of bigger and/or faster guys. To stay on the floor, a player in Dick’s situation has to be way more competitive in all areas defensively or hit A LOT of threes. Ideally both.

Right now, Dick isn’t excelling in either area, which makes him hard to play. It was Jamison Battle who took the ninth spot in the rotation in the second half. Dick did get one more brief look in the third quarter and scored on a fastbreak after a Raptors steal, but on the whole, he and the rest of Toronto’s bench were ineffectual, which has become a pattern.

5.  Kevin Durant … still chasing LeBron: You would think Kevin Durant, who came into Tuesday night’s game averaging 26.1 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists with a True Shooting percentage of 63.2, would be having the best season by a player aged 37 or older in NBA history. Well, not really. In 2021-22, James put up 30.3 points, 8.2 rebounds and 6.2 assists on 61.9 True Shooting in his age 37 season. But then again, James played just 56 games that year, while Durant is at 61 and counting, so Durant gets credit for that.

OK, well how about James’ age 39 season in 2023-24 when he averaged 25.7 points, 7.3 rebounds and 8.3 assists on 63.0 True shooting while playing in 71 games. Bananas stuff. By the way, Durant scored 29 on 12-of-16 shooting against the Raptors, who had no answer for him.