Raptors find themselves in early hole after loss to rebuilding Trail Blazers

TORONTO — The fourth game of the season against a team that is playing on the second night of a back-to-back, features a 19-year-old point guard, a 20-year-old shooting guard and also has ‘playing for the lottery’ pulsing from it in neon, should not be a must-win game.

It should be a game you win on your way to getting more wins, an opportunity to build some momentum.  

But the Toronto Raptors aren’t in a position to be taking anything for granted. With a rookie head coach trying to implement a new system and maintain the buy-in of some essential veterans who are in contract years, every step forward or step back is magnified. 

So fumble a game at home to the winless and youthful Portland Trail Blazers at your peril. 

Well, the Raptors fumbled it as Portland out-duelled Toronto down the stretch after owning most of the second half on their way to a 99-91 win. It was the Trail Blazers' first victory of the season as they improved to 1-3 in a year that will be very much measured in development rather than actual victories. The Raptors are 1-3 and officially on a losing streak, having not won since their season opener last Wednesday.

The Raptors scored just 17 points in the fourth quarter, missed all eight of their three-point attempts and made just one in the second half. It was a one-point game after Raptors guard Dennis Schroder hit a pull-up jumper with 3:25 to play, but Toronto made just two more shots from there along with a costly turnover. The Blazers weren’t much better in crunch time, scoring 19 points in the final period, but they’re not supposed to be, frankly. The Raptors managed just 74 points per 100 halfcourt possessions for the game, per cleaningtheglass.com, and are last — well behind 29th-place Portland — in that category for the season.

It's an area the Raptors' new approach is supposed to remedy but hasn’t so far.

“We're trying to apply the stuff that we do in practice to the game,” said veteran centre Jakob Poeltl. “We're trying to have this like drive, kick, swing offence — play through the elbows, trying cuts, different split screens, stuff like that. But at times we get in this mode where — I don't think we're really doing it on purpose — but it seems like everybody's just trying to make something happen almost randomly. We're not on the same page and then we just dribble into a crowd, try and kick out [and] the next guy's dribbling into a crowd. We're not really getting any advantages out of it.”

Toronto needs to sort things out quickly. Their three-game losing streak could spiral given how difficult their schedule is in the first few weeks of the season. After losing to the team that traded Dame Lillard, on Wednesday Toronto gets to try and right their ship against the team that acquired the superstar to help Giannis Antetokounmpo win a title in Milwaukee. They then have a rematch against Philadelphia to start a four-game road trip.

The Trail Blazers were led by Malcolm Brogdon, who scored 13 of his 21 points in the second half and sealed the game with a pair of lay-ups into the teeth of the Raptors' defence in the final two minutes, the last putting Portland up by six with 26 seconds to play. 

The Raptors were led by Scottie Barnes and Pascal Siakam, who each had 20 points for the night. But offence continues to be a problem as Toronto shot just 40.4 per cent from the floor and 4-of-29 from three and struggled — as a result — to score effectively by any other means than in transition. 

“I thought that over the course of the game we did not have enough pace in our halfcourt offence,” said head coach Darko Rajakovic. “Every time… in transition and with open court we were getting good looks [but] every time we’d become a halfcourt team our pace and our cuts and our screening, that has to be much faster.

"A lot of times we’re entering our offence very deep in the shot clock, 14 seconds left on the shot clock and that’s something we have to address and get better at.”

Portland shot 44.7 per cent from the floor and 31.4 per cent from three.

Second-year guard Shaedon Sharpe, the 20-year-old from London, Ont., had some nice moments on his way to 14 points and three assists. Rookie point guard, 19-year-old Scoot Henderson had 11 points and seven assists before fouling out late in the fourth quarter. 

Before the game Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups heaped considerable praise on Sharpe, who is hard to miss with his combination of an athletic six-foot-six frame, effortless leaping ability, comfortable three-point range and crafty finishing at the rim.

Billups said he’s got high hopes that Sharpe can be an elite defender and compared his offensive skill set to that of Phoenix Suns star Devin Booker.

“I’ve got great hope that Shaedon can be a great player in this league… I don’t just say those things,” said Billups. “We just got to keep teaching and keep teaching and I think the world will know when he gets there.”

Told of Billups' comments, Sharpe — who had about 25 friends and family at the game — said they were motivating.

“I don’t think it puts pressure on me,” said Sharpe. “It’s good to hear Chauncey, the whole coaching staff, say that my game relates to some of the top players in our league. But the whole goal is to do whatever I can to help my team win.”

The game had a slightly out-sized importance because the Raptors — if not fragile — are still a long way from being fully baked. 

What the Raptors are trying to do — adopt a more egalitarian offence that relies on more ball movement and cutting and so far has meant fewer touches for pending free agents Siakam, Gary Trent Jr., and O.G. Anunoby — has been well documented. And there has been a lot of air given to the notion that first-year head coach Rajakovic has both the tactical chops and the bridge-building abilities to sell the program to a group of pros who might want to reserve judgment. 

In that context, a loss at home to a team that projects to be one of the weakest in the league? It can’t happen. This was a game the Raptors needed to have both in the standings and for the spirit of the whole thing. 

“When you win, you're getting that positive feedback. That what you're doing and all the time and investment that you're putting in, it's giving you that positive feedback,” said Rajakovic. “When you're winning games, you're recovering better. When you're winning. It's much easier to learn new things, to be open to new things. So it is important. But everything comes for young guys, for young teams. It's coming with time, and the time they're putting in to do the work.”

But winning games that should be winnable — on home court no less — is part of the recipe too. Perhaps even the essential ingredient in a new approach that might have long-term benefits, but requires avoiding falling into the kind of hole they might need the rest of the regular season to dig out from.