Takeaways: Raptors lack fight with playoffs slipping from grasp

On paper, one of the reasons the Toronto Raptors' remaining strength of schedule was deemed relatively easy — the 21st easiest before play Wednesday, according to Tankathon.com — is that they had two games left against the New Orleans Pelicans.

But are those really 'easy' games? Certainly Wednesday’s match-up wasn’t. The Raptors arrived at their New Orleans hotel just before 1 a.m. after flying in from Houston, where they were knocked around in the fourth quarter (again) in their loss to the Rockets.

There are tougher NBA trips than the hour-long flight from Houston to New Orleans, but in the meantime, the Pelicans were at home and chilling in the Big Easy. 

Just as significant, the Pelicans aren’t your average 21-win team. For the first time in what seems like forever, the top of their rotation is entirely healthy. Zion Williamson (remember him?), Trey Murphy III, Herb Jones, Dejounte Murray and Saddiq Bey is a lineup of quality NBA players. And they have some pop off the bench in rookies Derik Queen and Jeremiah Fears, and second-year bigs Yves Missi and Karlo Matkovic. 

And while the Pelicans' 6-3 record in their past nine games features wins over Sacramento, Washington and Utah (twice), they have beaten the likes of Minnesota, San Antonio and Houston in the past three weeks, something the Raptors can’t claim.

Would the Raptors be able to dig deep and get a win for Brandon Ingram, who played nearly seven seasons in New Orleans before being traded to Toronto last February? 

Would the Raptors continue building their playoff push based on dominating teams that languish in the bottom 10 of the standings?

Or would a loss to the Pelicans see the Raptors' hold on a top-six spot — uninterrupted since Nov. 14 — slip out of their grasp? 

In the end, there were plenty of excuses available to the Raptors on Wednesday and — consciously or not — they took every one of them in a 122-111 loss that lacked fight down the stretch.

The Raptors fought back after an uncharacteristically poor third quarter to trail by two with 10:15 to play, only to end up on the wrong end of a 24-8 surge over the next eight minutes. A weird play with 1:25 left where Murray — who looked fantastic as he continues to ramp back up from an Achilles tendon tear — hit a three after sending Jamal Shead sprawling to the floor and then stood and taunted the Raptors guard sort of symbolized the night. It was an ugly moment that could have gotten out of hand in a different circumstance, like if the Raptors were paying attention? 

Instead Immanuel Quickley was the only Raptor to take offence. In the end, Murray got a technical foul, but it’s a tough image to shake: the other team putting the Raptors on their back and Toronto having no real answer for it.

On paper, Ingram had a good night in his first game back to New Orleans after being traded to Toronto last February as he had 22 points, six rebounds, five assists and four steals (along with four turnovers). But he only had seven points in the second half and his two sloppy turnovers early in the third quarter sparked the Pelicans to open up a double-digit lead after they had led by just two at half. He was 0-of-5 in the fourth quarter.

Playoffs? How about play-in

On one hand, if someone said in training camp the Raptors would be 36-29 and a half-game out of sixth place in the middle of March, most people would have taken their chances from there. But it feels different with the Raptors sliding down to this position, displaced by Orlando, which beat Cleveland Wednesday. The knowledge that they are hapless (4-18) against the NBA’s top 10 teams doesn’t help.

All of their issues were on display against the Pelicans, but none more than their inability to hit open threes. For the season, the Raptors are now shooting 34.4 per cent from three which is 25th in the NBA, but it’s the quality of shots they miss that makes it hard to take them seriously.

Toronto shot just 13-of-43 from deep (the Pelicans made 14 but needed only 29 shots to do it) but of their 30 misses it seems like the vast majority were wide-open, in rhythm, pass-and-catch looks. I have at least five in my notes during the meaty part of the fourth quarter, taken by the likes of Scottie Barnes, Ingram and Quickley. All clangs. They are backbreakers.

All that said, with 17 games left it’s too early to say the Raptors' playoff hopes are doomed. But the teams around them — Orlando (five straight wins), Miami (six straight) and Atlanta (seven straight) — are playing well. The Raptors will need to find another gear just to keep pace.

Kings of the third quarter

Depending on how you look at it, the Raptors' offensive struggles in the fourth quarter aren’t all that weird. Should a team featuring all-stars Ingram, Barnes and (when healthy) three other experienced starters be 29th in fourth-quarter offensive efficiency? Absolutely not. Is it completely inconceivable given the Raptors rank 18th in first-quarter efficiency and 21st in the second quarter? I’d say probably not.

For three out of four quarters, the Raptors are a below-average to poor team offensively. So, how do you explain the third-quarter Raptors, who rank fourth in the NBA in offensive efficiency by putting up 120.4 points per 100 possessions? To put that in perspective, if the fourth-quarter Raptors — which put up 108.4 points per 100 possessions — were to play a full game against the third-quarter Raptors, they’d lose by nearly 50 points.

Greater minds than mine can likely comb through the data to pin down exactly why a below-average first-half offence becomes the equivalent of the league-leading Denver Nuggets for 12 minutes before becoming the 15-win Indiana Pacers down the stretch. I know the Raptors coaching staff is trying to figure it out. The minutes distribution doesn’t change all that much — three minutes less for Ingram in the fourth (seven) than the third, when he plays 10 minutes.

But then again, is that why Ingram is one of four Raptors regulars to make 40 per cent or more from three in the third and none in the fourth? Why Ingram shoots 48 per cent from three in the third quarter and just 33 per cent in the fourth?

As a team, the Raptors shoot 39.1 per cent from three in the third quarter, which is third in the NBA, and 28.5 per cent from three in the fourth quarter, which is last. The Raptors were 5-of-11 from deep in the third quarter against the Pelicans (though they were still beaten 33-25 due in part to five turnovers in 12 minutes) and 4-of-14 in the fourth.

SGA for 101 

If you’ve ever seen Williamson at full throttle you’d believe any basketball tall-tale someone tried to offer up. Someone could ask me, "Did you see Zion scored his 50th point on a game-winning two-handed dunk from the foul line?" I would be like, "I saw him do one of those at the Paramount Fine Food Centre in Mississauga before his freshman year at Duke." (True story.) 

But 101 points, breaking Wilt Chamberlain’s record? No.

Williamson has had a nice year (21.5 points, 5.9 rebounds and 3.4 assists) mainly because he's now played 50 games and is on pace to crack 60 games played for just the third time. His size and power were a problem for the Raptors as he finished with 19 points, six rebounds and four assists in 32 minutes. But if anyone is going to pass Bam Adebayo’s 83-point explosion from Tuesday night and make a real run at Will Chamberlain’s 100-point game from 1962, I think it’s Luka Doncic.

Could Shai Gilgeous-Alexander do it? Absolutely. To make it happen, I figure you need to score 25 points from the line, shoot about 12-of-20 from three and then get up another 30 shots and make 20 of those. It’s hard for me to envision Gilgeous-Alexander being in a situation where the Thunder need him to more than triple his season average of 31.7 points per game, or the Thunder signing off on him taking a run at it just for fun. Doncic? He’s made nine threes in a game twice. His career-high for free throw attempts is 22 and his career high for shot attempts is 37. He scored 73 points in a game before. When I was on the Raptors show with Blake Murphy earlier Wednesday he had a good choice: Anthony Edwards with the Timberwolves — elite volume three-point shooter, can draw fouls at will and just crazy enough to try. I do think 101 points is a record that will fall, though. 

Shead woes 

For most of Jamal Shead’s brief Raptors career, everything he’s done has been welcomed. His tenacious defence and selfless playmaking combined with a magnetic personality have made him a fan and team favourite.

But it’s hard to be an effective NBA player and not be a scoring threat at all.

Heading into Wednesday’s game against New Orleans, Shead was shooting just 20 per cent from the floor in the month of March, which is an outlier, but he shot 40 per cent for February, 38.5 per cent in January, 33.9 per cent in December and 36.4 per cent in November. He shot 46.2 per cent from the floor over six games in October but just 31.2 per cent since. Even with his recent run of turnovers (nine in his past five games), his assist-to-turnovers ratio remains well over 3:1, but he’s got to find a way to put the ball in the basket even a little bit for the rest of his game to shine. He showed some signs against the Pelicans, knocking down a pair of threes in quick succession in the third quarter on his way to nine points, three assists and no turnovers in 20 minutes — his best game in March, to say the least. 

Up next 

Having lost four of five and six of their last eight, it’s hard to see where the Raptors can gain some traction and stop their slide. They host Phoenix (38-27) on Friday and the East-leading Pistons on Sunday before heading west for a five-game road trip that starts in Chicago and includes stops in Denver, Phoenix and Utah before wrapping up against the Clippers. Can they go 4-3 in that stretch? Anything less and all the good work they’ve done to this point in the season might go up in smoke.