Raptors' slim NBA Cup hopes all but squashed after loss to Pistons

TORONTO — The way the season has gone and the way the season likely will go, the Toronto Raptors won’t be playing any games of consequence, or at least where winning is a good thing.  

The Detroit Pistons might, however. The playoff picture in the Eastern Conference is such that even a team averaging less than one win per week so far this season can dream of homecourt advantage in the play-in tournament, if not the first round of the playoffs. 

But otherwise, Detroit hasn’t played any important games for a long time, unless you count their win over the Raptors on Dec. 30 last season that halted their NBA record-tying losing streak at 28 games, saving them from the shame of holding the record all on their own. 

The second iteration of the in-season tournament — now known as the Emirates NBA Cup — was in some ways made for teams like the Pistons and maybe one of these years for the Raptors.

Detroit is miles from being a championship contender and the Raptors are years out. 

But here in the middle of November, two teams a combined 11 games under .500 at tipoff could briefly convince themselves that they had something to win and something to lose on a Friday night when the only real losers would be whoever didn’t get out of the arena in time to avoid the post-Taylor Swift crush from the nearby Rogers Centre.

“The plan is not to play an overtime game so we can get out,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. 

It was pretty close. The Raptors, in the end, fell 99-95 to Detroit to drop to 2-11 on the year, while Detroit improved to 6-8. It was Toronto’s sixth straight loss and pretty much ends the team's faint hopes at playing any meaningful games in the NBA Cup. The Raptors at one point missed nine straight field goals in the fourth quarter but were still somehow in position to have crack to both win the game and extend it to an extra period. The Pistons shooting 8-of-38 from three helped with that. 

First RJ Barrett (22 points and seven assits) drove the lane and made a great pass to Gradey Dick, who was open in the right-hand corner for a three but couldn’t knock it down with 21 seconds left. He then had a look to tie the game with 10 seconds remaining and missed that too. 

“It’s just threes I shot my whole life. I suck right now,” said Dick, who finished with 16 points on 4-of-17 shooting and was 1-of-10 from deep. “But in the grand scheme of things, it happens, players miss shots that can be game-winners, but I’ve shot those shots a million times. In my head, it’s short-term memory and move on.”

Said Barrett: “If I see Gradey open for a corner three, that’s a shot we want him to take. We’ll 100 per cent live with that shot.”

It wasn’t Dick’s, or many of the Raptors', night as they shot 35.7 per cent from the floor and 8-of-31 from three, and that’s with big man Jakob Poeltl shooting 12-of-21 for 25 points and career-high-tying 19 rebounds. 

To their credit, the Pistons came out with a purpose and have now won six of their last 10 games and are at 2-0 in Cup play, and also have some meaningful games coming up. Under new head coach JB Bickerstaff, the addition of some useful veterans like Tobias Harris and Malik Beasley and some progress from former No.1 pick Cade Cunningham (23.8 points, 7.2 rebounds and 8.5 assists per game heading into Friday), Detroit has been consistently feisty this season and has rebounded nicely after a 0-4 start. 

The Pistons showed it on Tuesday night when they hosted Miami and scratched out a dramatic win in overtime that brought them to 1-0 in Cup play. 

“I think the guys are into it,” said Bickerstaff. “I mean understanding that we're fortunate enough to win our first game. You only play four of them (in pool play) so each of the games matter even more. So, the intensity rises. So when you got an opportunity tonight where you can go 2-0 if you win, it kind of sets the tone for the rest of the tournament. So our guys are into it, and I expect them to come out and compete.”

Which was the NBA’s first order of business when they introduced the idea of an in-season tournament — give the long regular season a spark in November and December. 

A year in and it’s got more familiar — six pools of five teams, the winner in each pool advancing along with two wild-card teams to an eight-team single elimination knockout tournament with the winner crowned in Las Vegas, earning the Cup and a $500,000-per-player first prize. 

“It’s been positive,” said Raptors wing Garrett Temple, who is vice president of the NBPA, the players' association which had to sign off on the Cup and any iterations of it in the future. “We knew it was coming for a couple of years, but now that it’s here, we’re definitely fans of it.”

Which — like rebuilding Raptors and Pistons — doesn’t mean the Cup can’t improve. 

Some suggestions from me that no one asked for:

• The in-season Cup tournament games should be separated from the NBA schedule. It would give the league a window to shorten the regular season, let’s say to 72 games (three games against each in-conference opponent, two each against out-of-conference teams). Even teams that went to the tournament final would play 80 games. It doesn’t sound like much, but it could eliminate two back-to-backs, which isn’t nothing. As well, making the Cup games separate opens up the opportunity to experimentally introduce a four-point line perhaps, eliminate corner threes or use the Elam ending, all ideas the league has toyed with.

• Make the Cup something you qualify for. Want to make the regular season meaningful for teams that are on the fringe of the playoff picture? Cut the Cup field to 24 teams, with admission granted to the top 12 teams in each conference based on standings from the previous season. It’s impossible to have a relegation system in the NBA like they do in European soccer — no NBA team is going to spend a season in the G-League — but there’s no reason teams can’t be relegated from the NBA Cup.

As an added benefit, how about further flattening the draft-lottery odds so that teams that push for 11^th and 12^th place and a spot in the Cup — rather than tanking to improve their draft chances, as is so often the story at the bottom of the standings late in the season — don’t hurt their draft prospects by competing to the end of the season. To incentivize the players — some of whom won’t be on the same team the next year — those on teams that finish in the ‘top 24’ automatically get a $100,000 Cup bonus to take into the summer. The final weeks of the season become both about improving playoff positioning and trying to avoid finishing in the bottom three of the conference and being relegated out of the tournament the following year.

• Next, make the Cup the about the Cup. This coming Monday, for example, the Raptors host the Indiana Pacers, who are in Group B with them, but that game isn’t a Cup game, so no fancy court and I guess it doesn’t matter as much? The Pacers and Raptors play again on Dec. 3 though, and that is a Cup game, so in theory it means more, even if the Raptors' Cup chances might be over by then. Too confusing. Instead designate a 10-day period in late November and make all the games in that stretch Cup games. Give the league’s entire focus to in-season tournament play and let the tension build of over a short period to see which teams advance or not.

• And finally, expand the number of teams that qualify for the single-elimination format to 16 — the top two in each pool and four wild cards — which would make the pool play more interesting and provide the chance for the NBA to hold its own version of an NCAA-style single-elimination knockout tournament. All 16 teams travel to Las Vegas, with the round of 16 on Monday, the quarterfinals on Wednesday, the Final Four on Friday and the Finals on Sunday. It would be great theatre, an entire week of Game 7s featuring the best teams in the NBA at that moment.

• Oh, and one more thing: how about the winner of the NBA Cup faces the winner of the EuroLeague Cup at the end of the pre-season the following year? You want an international-style tournament, make it international.

Who says no?