After logging heavy minutes in back-to-back overtime games this weekend, the questions heading into Monday’s game versus the Milwaukee Bucks revolved around the stamina of the Raptors starters.
How would they fare in their fifth game in seven nights? Did Amir Johnson have the energy for his third straight 20-point performance? Having combined for over 160 minutes of action in their last two games, would Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan’s legs hold up down the stretch?
Turns out we never really got the chance to find out.
On a night when the Raptors failed to finish off an 18-point comeback and were held to a season-low 75 points, the Raps starters could only watch from the bench.
“We can’t make excuses for nothing, ” DeRozan told the scrum of reporters gathered around his locker after the game. “We came out flat.”
Yes, they sure did.
Well, everybody save for Jonas Valanciunas, who posted a loud eight points and seven boards (five offensive) in the opening frame. He was 4-for-7 from the field in that stretch, but the rest of the Raptors shot just 2-of-16.
The Raps also struggled mightily to defend the interior early — a troubling trend all season for Toronto — as the Bucks got 10 points in the paint and an 11-point 1st quarter lead.
Milwaukee, who came into the game having won three straight, never trailed in this one, despite missing their best player — Brandon Knight — and got key contributions from important members of their promising young core, namely Khris Middleton (25 points) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (12 points and 11 rebounds). Former Raptor Jerryd Bayless also had a solid game with 12 points, nine assists and seven rebounds, along with the game-icing jumper over Lowry in the final minute.
“It was a bad game. A bad game as a team. Overall, it was a bad game as a team.” Kyle Lynch Lowry told reporters, in response to three separate questions. He removed himself from the game early with what’s believed to be a re-aggravated injury to his finger, but returned shortly after and seemed OK.
The Raptors woke up briefly in the second quarter, where DeRozan got ten of his team-high 16 points, but came out of halftime as sluggish as the first. And after watching Milwaukee shoot 55 percent from the field and 57 percent from downtown in the third quarter, Casey had seen enough.
He yanked DeRozan, Valanciunas, and Johnson from the game before the period was over, and the three starters never returned, playing an exact combined total of zero fourth quarter minutes.
Those three may have been the Raptors three best players over the weekend, but it wasn’t enough for Casey, who gave his second unit some burn in the second half and, given the context, liked what he saw.
“The second unit came in and got 13 straight stops,” Casey said in his post-game press conference, in reference to a 15-0 run from the Raptors. “The first unit just didn’t have the energy, or whatever you want to call it, to get us going.”
He didn’t elaborate much. But he didn’t need to.
The five-man unit of Greivis Vasquez, Lou Williams, Terrance Ross, Tyler Hansbrough, and Patrick Patterson played nearly the entire fourth quarter. The only change came with 1:38 left to go, when Lowry checked in for Hansbrough — Casey’s lone substitution in the final twelve minutes.
That group were the catalyst behind the Raptors’ fourth-quarter comeback, at one point tying the game up at 75 with two minutes remaining, but also contributed greatly to their cold-shooting night. The shots weren’t falling for Williams and Vasquez, in particular, who were a combined 4-for-23, including 1-of-9 in the fourth. The Raps starting backcourt barely fared any better — DeRozan and Lowry combined for just 6-of-23 shooting from the field.
Valanciunas, however, looked sharp beyond just the first quarter. He finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds on 6-of-9 shooting, yet he only saw seven minutes of action in the second half — all in the third quarter.
The Bucks small lineup in the fourth — which allowed Patterson to comfortably slide to the centre spot — may have negated Valanciunas down the stretch. Or he was just a casualty caught in the crosshairs of his coach’s scope on Monday.
If Casey wanted to send a message to his starters — that no winning streak can excuse an overall lack of “focus” (which he raised as a concern more than once after the game) — he certainly wasn’t subtle about it.
The luxury of the Raptors cushion in the standings — practically guaranteed home court in the playoffs given the sad state of the rest of the Atlantic Divison — means the Raptors can survive a poor night like this. It allows Casey to keep his reserves on the floor in crunch time while his best players occupy their seats on the bench, win or lose — all for the purpose of ensuring this team is where it needs to be come playoff time.
But it’s up to those players to respond the next chance they get. And so we’ll have a much better sense of how clearly Casey’s message got across on Wednesday when Brooklyn comes to town, and later in the week when the Clippers and Spurs visit, too.
For now, the Raptors won’t dwell on this, their first loss in seven games. For now, it’s on to the next one.
