TORONTO – At some point you have stop looking the gift horse in the mouth and saying, “Meh, I’ll think about it.”
Of the many themes that have defined the Toronto Raptors‘ first 20 games, that might be the most irksome. Well, that and their habit of blowing double-digit halftime leads.
The Raptors’ 126-113 win over the Charlotte Hornets addressed one of those issues, but not the other.
The San Antonio Spurs, Washington Wizards, Boston Celtics aren’t the same teams without Kawhi Leonard, John Wall and Kyrie Irving, respectively. And yet the Raptors, having being gifted four games – two against the Wizards — without having to deal with some of the NBA’s very best players, are just 1-3 in those games, tossing away opportunity after opportunity.
Hornets point guard Kemba Walker may not have the resume of Leonard, Wall and Irving, but the NBA all-star may be even more important to his team than any of those stars are to theirs.
Walker, averaging 22.3 points and six assist for the offensively challenged Hornets, is the blender that makes the smoothie. And he kills the Raptors, averaging 29 points against them last season in four starts.
But guess what? Walker wasn’t playing, scratched due to a bruised shoulder.
Another gift — the fifth — for the Raptors.
This time they didn’t bicker on price or otherwise overthink it, as Toronto improved to 13-7 on the season and 7-1 at the Air Canada Centre with the win. Their starters – sparked in part by Jonas Valanciunas and Serge Ibaka of all people – put together a 12-2 run in the first quarter and handed their bench a 10-point lead.
It was trending positively.
For once the Raptors bench didn’t run away with it, but that was OK. The Raptors starters finished the second quarter even stronger than they did the first quarter as hot-shooting Kyle Lowry dropped a pair of late triples as part of a personal 8-0 run. Toronto led 71-62 at half.
It was a about time the Raptors put their stamp on a game they had no good reason to lose.
Now, about those third quarters.
Toronto has the NBA’s third-best net rating — plus-7.4 — trailing only Golden State and Houston, but they are 21st in the third quarter alone.
It’s cost them games – they blew healthy halftime leads against the New York Knicks and Pacers on their most recent road trip – and was an issue again against Charlotte. Leading by 19 the Raptors surrendered an 18-2 run to the Hornets in the first four minutes of the second half and their lead was just two.
Not surprisingly, Raptors coach Dwane Casey was livid about it.
“The way you come out and let a team go [10] straight points to start the quarter, that’s totally unacceptable,” Casey said. “We’re not going to win anything if we come out with that attitude, if we don’t fix it.
“Again, we’ve talked about, I don’t know, start another five [players] to start the second half? It’s just mind-boggling.
“And on top of that, we give them 38 free throws. We’re playing defence, fouling, reacting, not be proactive defensively. We’re happy we won the game, but not happy with the performance.”
Said DeMar DeRozan of Casey’s post-game address in the locker room: “It was loud.”
The Raptors came into Wednesday night’s game at the ACC rested, healthy (apart from Delon Wright, who remains out with a shoulder injury), and in the early stages of a cushy section of their schedule where they play only three games in 12 days and 10 of 11 games against teams that are currently under .500.
The rest seemed to suit DeRozan. The Raptors leading scorer followed up his Eastern Conference player of the week award last week by scoring just 33 points in his next three games.
He missed a practice due to a sore knee he banged when the Indiana Pacers’ Lance Stephenson bodychecked him on Friday.
Nothing to see here, said DeRozan.
“We’ll figure it out tonight,” DeRozan predicted — correctly — before the game. “I always understand. It happens. For me, as long as we win, that’s my main priority, but everything else will come back around when it comes to me. There are not many things I worry about, but scoring is the last thing, for sure.
Because?
“You do something all your life. You’re known as a scorer. That don’t away just because you didn’t get a certain amount of points in one, two, three games. It’s always good.”
DeRozan, who had a streak of 113 consecutive games with at least 10 points snapped in his two-point outing against Atlanta on Saturday — just one game short of his pal Kyle Lowry’s club record streak of 114 — took about five minutes to start another. He scored 10 of his 30 points in the first quarter.
Perhaps most importantly, he had eight in the third quarter, all of them after the Hornets had nearly swallowed up the Raptors’ halftime lead whole.
“I think the big thing for us is getting stops,” said Lowry. “That’s when we’re at our best. I think we try to get off to a fast start offensively, but I think we just have to get going defensively. That would help a lot.”
After DeRozan stopped the bleeding, it was Lowry who made sure the patient survived unscathed. He finished with a season-high 36 points, including 8-of-11 from three as Lowry is now shooting 47 per cent from deep over his past 10 games. Lowry made four of his five three-point attempts in the fourth quarter.
A smart pass from Lowry to a hard-cutting DeRozan ended up as a highlight-reel dunk that gave the Raptors a 12-point lead with six minutes to play.
Two more triples by Lowry in the final minutes kept the Hornets from getting any ideas.
So yes, the third quarters definitely remain an issue, but the Raptors did get the win. In the story of their season, coming out on top of an undermanned and struggling Hornets club won’t be headline material. But when the NBA schedule grants you a gift, a wise team takes it, no questions asked.
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