TORONTO — If the Toronto Raptors are going to climb back to .500 and really and truly put their disastrous 2-8 start behind them, they’re going to need to do a whole lot more than what they showed Sunday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Facing the worst team in the NBA, the Raptors mounted a comeback attempt that just came up short as they fell 116-112, dropping their record to 12-15 on the season.
Then again, close-but-no-cigar games have kind of become the Raptors’ thing this season.
This Toronto’s sixth loss of five points or less this season and it’s developed into something of a troubling trend for the team.
“It sucks. Like, really sucks,” said Kyle Lowry of the Raptors giving away games late like they have done this season. “We had an opportunity and we had to make a push at the end. We understand that we can’t have those games given away. We’re three games under .500 and we could be six games over .500. It’s that small of a difference.”
Lowry was just about the only real bright spot for the Raptors Sunday as he finished with a game-high 24 points on 6-for-12 shooting. Half of his points came in the fourth quarter alone, where he very nearly willed the Raptors to a come-from-behind win thanks to some great defence and clutch shot-making.
The Raptors entered the fourth quarter trailing 91-83, but thanks to an 11-2 run sparked by a Lowry three — after he got freed up thanks to a wipeout Aron Baynes screen — the game evened up at 98-98 with 6:22 left to play.
This led to a seesaw battle between both clubs down the stretch, culminating with the Raptors potentially evening up the game on a point-blank layup that Pascal Siakam missed with 7.4 seconds to play just after the team played some fantastic defence to force a turnover and put themselves in position to steal a victory.
“It was great D by us to force the turnover. Gave ourselves every opportunity there,” said Raptors coach Nick Nurse. “Cleared it out, [Siakam] beat his man down there. I’m not quite sure how it came out because he was almost sticking it in himself and it’s just unfortunate. Feel bad for him that one rolled out.”
But as unfortunate as that blow layup was for the Raptors, they only have themselves to blame for even being in that position to begin with.
They surrendered 37 points to the Timberwolves in the third quarter, allowing them to shoot 75 per cent from the field. And for the game, they allowed one of the league’s worst three-point shooting teams to go 16-of-39 (41 per cent) from deep.
That simply isn’t good enough.
And it’s particularly frustrating because the Raptors have the potential to be solid defensively, as the eight turnovers they forced Minnesota to make in the fourth indicates.
“Pretty frustrated knowing that we can do it,” said Fred VanVleet when asked what his level of frustration was with the team’s defensive inconsistency. “So here we are. Here we are again.”
Coming into Sunday’s contest, this was circled on the calendar as a scheduled win. Toronto couldn’t manage that and now, as VanVleet alluded to, they once again need to go back to the drawing board, but even that may be too late at this point.
“We passed that point a long time ago,” said VanVleet of the point of the season when it’s been too many games that they’ve let slip away like they did Sunday.
And looking ahead at the Raptors’ schedule they have a tough road of it with a back-to-back against the Milwaukee Bucks and then, looking further ahead, games with the Philadelphia 76ers, Miami Heat and Houston Rockets.
None of those will be easy, unlike how Sunday’s affair was supposed to go.
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