TORONTO — There have been a lot of nights this season when the Toronto Raptors needed Serge Ibaka. Vintage Ibaka; Oklahoma City Ibaka; 20 points and eight boards Ibaka. The stretch four who protects the rim, fights for rebounds, blocks shots, shoots threes, drives, spaces the floor — that Ibaka.
Some nights they’ve gotten it. Some nights they haven’t. But if there was ever a night the Raptors truly, desperately needed that Ibaka — or any semblance of the productive and dependable player he’s been throughout his career, really – it was Thursday. You know where this is going.
“Serge wasn’t having his usual game. He was struggling,” Raptors head coach Dwane Casey said, not long after the Cleveland Cavaliers took a sickle to his team on their own floor, 128-110. “Serge hasn’t been himself. I don’t know what it is.”
That is an extremely kind reading of Ibaka’s play in Game 2 of this series, and of his current situation in general. Signed last summer to a three-year, $65-million deal to be Toronto’s starting power forward, the 28-year-old has been at times absent, astounding and abysmal over the last two weeks.
Of course, Casey can’t get up on a podium after his team’s latest demoralizing loss and say things like that. Good coaches — coaches who command respect in their dressing rooms — don’t drag players publicly. But Casey can tell you exactly how he feels through his actions. Through minutes. Through the players who play and the players who don’t.
And it says it all that after Ibaka began Thursday’s second half the same way he did the first — with an unforced turnover, before bricking a jumper on the ensuing possession — Casey lifted him from the game. It was only a minute and 43 seconds into the half. And Ibaka never saw the floor again.
Not when the Raptors were still within single digits late in the third quarter. Not when the Raptors opened the fourth with an 11-point deficit trying to fight their way back into it. Not at any point down the stretch as Casey played his rotations like a sliding puzzle, searching for any offensive spark he could find.
Ibaka spent the final 22 minutes and 17 seconds of Game 2 seated on the Raptors bench — red, long-sleeved warm-up shirt over his jersey, elbows on his knees. At the buzzer, as the Raptors filed back to their dressing room, he walked solemnly up the tunnel by himself, head down, watching his feet beneath him.
“I feel horrible,” he said later, standing in front of his locker, eyes still trained on the floor. “I just didn’t play good enough. I didn’t play hard enough. That’s it.
“I didn’t play well. I don’t know how to describe it. I just didn’t play good enough to help my team.”
A stat line that reads minus-10 in 12 minutes, with two points on 0-of-5 shooting, supports that. A look back at the video doesn’t tell a better story.
Just 15 seconds into the game, Ibaka flat out dropped a pass, resulting in a backcourt violation. A minute later, he badly missed a three. A minute after that, he air-balled a hook shot from seven feet. Only 40 seconds later, Kevin Love beat him on a drive and finished a reverse at the rim.
There was not much good to report. Ibaka did grab six rebounds; he did find a cutting OG Anunoby for an assist; he did draw a foul on Kyle Korver and hit both his free throws. He didn’t do much else. And for the majority of the second half, he got to sit on the bench and think about it.
“I’m just so disappointed in myself in that moment,” Ibaka said. “It’s those moments where you start thinking, you know, I just wish I could be out there playing my best game I can — like I always have, to help my team. It sucks, man. It sucks.”
The Raptors very much wish that, as well. With Love going off for 31 points and 11 boards, and James pacing himself like a marathoner before breaking into a second-half sprint, scoring 27 of his 43 points after halftime, the Raptors needed Ibaka desperately.
They needed him on the defensive end. They needed someone who could guard Love while the rest of the Raptors tried to figure out James. They needed Ibaka’s three-point shooting. They needed another offensive weapon beyond Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, and Valanciunas.
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And it wasn’t just Thursday. It’s been two weeks now since Ibaka has looked like himself. The last time we saw that was the first two games of Toronto’s first-round series against the Washington Wizards, when Ibaka was great. He put up 23 points and 12 rebounds in the opener, and followed it up with a plus-32 performance in a Game 2 romp.
Since? Ibaka limped through the end of the Washington series with four consecutive games on the wrong side of plus/minus, scoring 20 points and grabbing 21 rebounds combined. For the sake of comparison, Valanciunas put up 21 points and 21 rebounds in Game 1 against the Cavaliers alone.
The Raptors won the Washington series in spite of him. He needed to be better. And while his 9-point, plus-seven night in Game 1 against Cleveland wasn’t anywhere near what the Raptors brought Ibaka in to do, it was at least a step in the right direction. It was at least better than he’d been.
But Thursday, Ibaka was unplayable. And Saturday, when Game 3 tips off in Cleveland, it’s possible he won’t be on the floor to start the night.
“We’ll find some answers, whether we change the lineup, whatever it is, to keep the offence moving, keep the game moving, and keep the pace going,” Casey said. “That’s the main thing on the offensive end.”
Having dropped the first two games at home, and now heading to Cleveland where they’ve lost nine of their last 10, the Raptors are facing extraordinarily steep odds of winning this series. But those odds become even more insanely vertical if Love’s going to continue playing like that, and Ibaka’s going to continue playing like this. He has to be better. And he knows it.
“If you can not really help your team, that means you didn’t play hard enough or you didn’t play good enough. It’s only those two things,” Ibaka said. “Mentally, I have to stay strong and not give up. And just be ready for the next game.”
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