Past momentum can't lift Raptors to a win as Pacers dominate fourth quarter

The Raptors were hoping to create some momentum after their impressive win on Friday against the visiting Phoenix Suns. But their act didn’t travel, and the Indiana Pacers looked faster, with more skill throughout their lineup and significantly deeper than the Raptors in what ended up being a 122-114 loss.

Indiana dominated the fourth quarter, dominated the bench scoring, and didn’t allow the Raptors to gain a significant edge in the turnover or offensive rebound categories.

Instead Indiana played fast - a 23-10 edge in fast break points - and at the rim, a 62-42 edge in points in the paint, sending Toronto home trying to figure out what they need to do different to beat Milwaukee on Wednesday night.

They also sent Toronto home with a reminder of why Indiana is in a playoff spot, sixth place in the East, and the Raptors are outside the play-in tournament looking in.

Is Fred okay?

Fred VanVleet gave his back a five full days to get right after leaving the game against the Los Angeles Clippers with spasms. He said on the weekend that it’s something he’s trying to do more this season: give nagging injuries a chance to rest and heal and then play at full strength, rather than try to tough games out while playing at less than full health.

But something doesn’t seem to be computing. Either his back is still not right or VanVleet is otherwise hindered, because it was hard to overlook how poorly he played down the stretch against the Pacers. He had two wide open, in-rhythm looks from deep down the stretch against Indiana when the Raptors were trying to keep a grip on the game and missed both. More concerning: twice he got beat off the dribble and his man’s penetration led to a wide-open three by Buddy Hield and a dunk by Myles Turner.

VanVleet’s offence has been a mystery this season — he was 3-of-15 from the floor and 3-of-12 from deep and is now shooting 32.7 per cent from three for the year — but he’s been showing slippage defensively too, especially when first Aaron Nesmith and then Tyrese Haliburton danced into the paint far too easily at a critical stage of the game.

How do you trade this guy?

When Gary Trent Jr. is shooting the way he has been lately, it’s hard not to fall in love with him all over again. The rhythm threes drop; the mid-range twos fall; the odd foray to the basket works out – it’s a nice package. Defensively he still seems to go blank every few possessions, but when he’s averaging 25 points a game on 51 per cent shooting (and 50 per cent from three) as he was coming into Monday night, it’s a lot easier to accept.

But with Trent Jr. widely expected to decline his player option this summer it’s been almost assumed Toronto will trade him before the deadline rather than have him walk for nothing. That’s not a guarantee, of course. The Raptors have shown a willingness to gauge the market and let their free agents hit the market confident that in the end they can and will make the best offer, a lesson Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet have learned in the past.

It’s risky game to play given the money that young shooters/scorers have commanded recently. But if you’re trying to win in the short term how do you deal a guy who can give you 35 off the bench or 35 as a starter – or 32 like he did against the Pacers – and expect to get better this season? Conversely, it’s hard to build for the future when you lose quality assets like Trent Jr. for no return. Tough situation.

The good, the bad, the shaking your head

Precious Achiuwa is a very exciting player. He’s the Raptors most athletic player – in the upper tier of the league, I would say – and someone who can legitimately guard point guards, centers, and all positions in between. Those qualities have been pretty constant during his year-and-a-half as Raptor, but the rest? Not so much.

Achiuwa turned heads with his showing after the all-star game last season when he averaged 12.2 points and 5.7 rebounds while shooting 39 per cent from three , but he was erratic at best before the break, starting the season shooting just 38 percent from anywhere on the floor in October and November. 

He was struggling badly enough to start this season that the game he ended up spraining his ankle he had been the subject of one of Nick Nurse’s ‘callouts’, in part for allowing his shaky offence – he was shooting 39 per cent and 18 per cent from deep through his first 12 games.

He saw his first action since Nov. 11^th in the second quarter. It was an action-packed three minutes. He fumbled the ball on his first chance and got confused on a cut leading to a turnover by O.G. Anunoby a moment later. But then he pinned Mathurin with a cut backdoor for an alley-oop immediately after that. He then collapsed on the bench, winded, as you might expect.

He got another dose of minutes in the fourth quarter and showed what makes him so special as he took on Tyrese Haliburton at the top of the arc and kept attached to the slivery Pacer guard all the way to rim where Achiuwa rose up for the block.

Not a lot of guards can do that, let alone 6-foot-8 guys who can defend centres too. All of which is to say: at the very least Achiuwa will make things interesting. How much will he change the Raptors trajectory very much depends on if he was the version finished the season a year ago, or the one who has started the past two.

Mathurin might be a star, but Nembhard is in the NBA to stay

In a league brimming with Canadian talent and playing alongside one of the leading rookie-of-the-year candidates in fellow Pacer Bennedict Mathurin, it can be easy to overlook Andrew Nembhard, who played four years of college (like that’s a bad thing) before being taken 31^st overall by Indiana, but don’t make that mistake.

Mathurin is going to have a really nice career and showed how explosive a scorer he can be when he popped off for 12 in the first half and was a Pacers’ best +8 as Indiana turned a 13-point first-quarter deficit into a nine-point lead at half. Mathurin kept rolling in the second half and showed some steel when he got into a bit of shoving match and with O.G. Anunoby and exchanged words with the Raptors bench.

That only seemed to ramp up Mathurin even more on his way to a 21-point night in just 27 minutes for the NBA’s leading bench scorer. Mathurin plays with fire, can shoot, and delivers blows when he attacks the rim. His ceiling his high, and it’s not hard to see why.

Will Nembhard be a star or lead a team in scoring? It’s unlikely – especially the latter – but he is going to be in the NBA for a decade or more, could end up making $100 million and will likely be a fixture on some very good teams.

He’s already had some huge moments – his game-winning three against the Los Angeles Lakers in LA and the 31-13-8 he put up against Golden State foremost among them. He didn’t have a big impact on the Pacers win – he scored five points and had three assists in 20 minutes.

But to me it’s the little things he does that will guarantee his success long term. He’s an excellent passer and showed it early with a clever lob to Myles Turner and the way his ball fake opened up a backdoor cut for Aaron Nesmith that Nembhard finished with a no-look pass.

But even beyond that it’s the deflections he makes at a high rate, the way he can dive into a crow and come up with a loose ball and the fact that in his 33^rd NBA game Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle trusted the kid from Aurora, On. with the responsibility of guarding Pascal Siakam, just another in a line of stars Nembhard has been tasked with defending.

He shoots it well – 38 per cent from three so far – he passes it well, he understands the game and defends. It’s a formula for a long, successful career.

Thoughts on the Raptors bench

One of the arguments for having Trent Jr. come off the bench is that he would give the Raptors some bench scoring. With Trent Jr. as a starter, the Raptors have almost none. Malachi Flynn showed why he’s struggled to gain or keep a rotation spot against the Pacers.

With VanVleet struggling, there were gobs of minutes up for grabs, but Flynn got cooked by Pacers back up TJ McConnell so routinely that Nurse was generous to give him the eight minutes he did get. Flynn was -11 in the first half and -5 in 1:22 of the third quarter as McConnell scored 15 points in his 21 minutes.

It should have been a perfect match-up for Flynn Jr., but he flubbed it. No one else on the bench was any better – Chris Boucher was scoreless in four minutes – with the exception of Christian Koloko who had some nice hustle moments. But in the final tally the Pacers bench outscored Toronto 54-7, and this with the Raptors near full health.

We know how this goes: Nurse will play his starters even more and chances are the injuries will follow and when they do, the Raptors won’t be able to back fill because they’re not deep enough. What more does anyone need to see?