Raptors Takeaways: Getting harder to find bright spots after 0-5 road trip

The Raptors' chipper little rebuild couldn’t continue forever.

The plucky group that collected lottery balls while playing better teams right down to the wire has made the long gaps between Raptors win a little more palatable. But the air might be coming out of the tires a little bit.

Instead of pushing teams down the stretch or even into the fourth quarter, the Raptors have mostly been garbage-timed in the second half of their last two games, a loss in Los Angeles to the Lakers and then Tuesday night in Milwaukee.

The contest against the Bucks wasn’t as competitive as the 99-89 final score suggested. Toronto tied it early in the third quarter after an 11-0 run, but the Bucks responded with a 21-5 run of their own and led by as many as 21 early in the fourth quarter. The Raptors were able to save some face with a 12-1 run that cut the Bucks' lead to 10, but that was mostly cosmetic.

The Raptors made 21 turnovers and shot just 34.9 per cent from the floor, which meant that their 17-12 edge in offensive rebounds and 16-7 edge in free throws made went for naught. Gradey Dick clocking his fourth career-high of the season – 32 points – was the primary highlight.

The loss capped an 0-5 road trip and also dropped the Raptors to 0-1 in Emirates Cup play, and 2-10 on the season. The Bucks improved to 3-8, and 1-0 in Cup play. 

Some takeaways:

No IQ, again 

Immanuel Quickley became a Toronto Raptor on Dec. 30, 2023 when he was the focal point of the trade with the New York Knicks that also brought RJ Barrett to Toronto.

The deal made plenty of sense. Pairing an elite shooting point guard who can play on or off the ball seems like an ideal complement to Scottie Barnes, the Raptors' cornerstone.

It remains largely an idea.

The first anniversary of the trade isn’t all that far off, and yet through no fault of anyone, Barnes and Quickley have barely shared the floor. They played just 25 games together last season before Barnes’ season ended with a broken hand. This year, Quickley missed all of training camp and played in just one pre-season game due to a sprained thumb, and then he got inadvertently undercut by the Cavaliers’ Darius Garland 14 minutes in the season opener. That kept him out of eight more games with a bruised pelvis.

Sure enough, while Quickley was out, Barnes was hit in the face by Nikola Jokic, and so when Quickley came back in Los Angeles this past weekend, Barnes could only watch from the bench.

And now in the latest twist, Quickley will be out for another long stretch after the Raptors announced Tuesday he suffered a partial tear to the ulnar collateral ligament on the inside of his left elbow in the fourth quarter of a loss to the Lakers on Sunday. He’ll likely be out for another month.

It’s hard to fathom. Quickley played 78 and 81 games in 2021-22 and 2022-23, respectively. He was on pace to be in that range again last season before he missed six games due to a bereavement leave late in the year. He’s a reliable player hit with a remarkable run of bad injury luck

It’s not just Quickley and Barnes who haven’t been able to build on-court chemistry. Quickley, Barnes, Jakob Poeltl, Barrett and Dick, the Raptors' core starters, have played only four games together since March 1 of last season.

That hurts development, as does the number of reps as a starting NBA point guard that Quickley isn’t getting as a 25-year-old with a team to call his own for the first time. 

It’s not a crisis – the Raptors' horizon is long – but for the sake of Quickley and the team's core he’s supposed to be meshing with, here’s hoping this will be his last significant chunk of time missed for a while. 

Slumping Barrett

Barrett’s return to Toronto has been mostly positive. He played some of the best basketball of his career at the end of last season, leading Toronto in scoring and doing it with an impressive level of efficiency (55-per-cent shooting from the floor and 39 per cent from three) that had eluded him for the most part while with the Knicks.

Even after missing most of training camp and the first three games of the regular season with a shoulder injury, Barrett looked like his new game was built to last. In his first four starts this year he put up 28.9 points, 5.8 rebounds and 7.3 assists while shooting 49.4 per cent from the floor and 46.2 per cent from three. Star-J indeed.

But it only made sense that without Quickley and Barnes, defences would be able to load up on Barrett and truly test him. In the short term, it’s been a struggle. Coming into Tuesday night, he was scoring just 17.5 points a game while shooting 35.7 per cent from the floor and 19.2 per cent from three over his last four games. The five assists (his average in that span) were nice, but the four turnovers not so much.

It was more of the same against the Bucks on Tuesday as Barrett finished with seven points and five turnovers while shooting 3-of-14 from the floor.

There’s a stubbornness to Barrett that is admirable, but when the turnovers mount and the decisions get iffy – no, trying to drive into 14 feet and 500 pounds of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez at once is not a good decision – he can look miles from the player he’s shown most often as a Raptor. Slumps are nothing new to Barrett – his month-by-month shooting splits can look like a roller-coaster. Hopefully his next stage of development will be to keep this skid short.

Bucks struggling, but Giannis rolling

You can’t blame the two-time MVP for the Bucks' woes so far this season. The 12-year veteran has lost no steps.

Antetokounmpo came into Tuesday’s game averaging 31.6 points, 12.8 rebounds and 5.2 assists on 60.2 per cent shooting for the Bucks. For reference, he averaged 28.5 points, 13 rebounds and 5.8 assists on 56.6-per-cent shooting over his MVP years in 2018-19 and 2019-20. He wasn’t his typical dominant self offensively against the Raptors, but the Bucks didn’t really need him to be.

He still finished with 23 points, seven assists and four blocks, so not exactly an off night. But what stood out was his willing passing, leading his teammates into open looks or orchestrating dribble handoffs that would make Jokic proud, and also his defence.

After the Raptors tied the game with an 11-0 run after halftime, Antetokounmpo recorded four blocked shots in the space of five minutes, which was all the time it took for the Bucks to go back up by 13. Who knows where the Bucks' season goes or how it ends, but Antetokounmpo remains one the NBA’s singular two-way forces. It would be nice to see him compete for a title again, it just might not be in Milwaukee.

Fearless sophomore

I’ve written this before, but I’m convinced it’s true: a big part of Gradey Dick's success is that he’s got two older brothers – Brodey and Riley, eight and four years ahead of him in the family pecking order. Both are big, both played basketball, and both showed no mercy to their little brother when he played with them and their friends.

So when Gradey drives the lane and tries to dunk on Lopez, and the Bucks centre clobbers him, and then Gradey tries to dunk on him again and Lopez sends him flying once more, it’s not that surprising. The Raptors' second-year wing grew up being thrown around by relative giants who were relatives.

It’s just another way to express that for all of Dick’s basketball IQ and tremendous skill, perhaps the element that is surest guarantor of him reaching his considerable potential is that he’s fearless. He plays at full speed, all the time, and has no concerns of being knocked on his butt. It’s a certain kind of relentlessness that belies the floppy hair and goofy grin.

Dick became just the fourth player to score at  30 points at least three times in the first 12 games of a season at age 20 or younger, per Sportsnet Stats, joining Bernard King, Luka Doncic and LeBron James. Fittingly, his final bucket came with another drive on Lopez after which he was put on the floor again. Dick looked like he might have got tired in the second half – he shot 3-of-13 from the floor after going 4-of-7 in the first half – and missed some great looks, otherwise he could have put up a really big number.

Tough start for Trent Jr.

You have to feel for Gary Trent Jr.

It was only a few seasons ago that his profile – a near 40-per-cent three-point shooter in his early 20s who could play a smidgeon of defecse – indicated he was about to get paid. His comparisons – optimistic maybe – were Jordan Poole, Anfernee Simons and Tyler Herro, who collectively are earning $85million this season.

But the summer before last, the free agent market looked a little dicey, so Trent Jr. opted into the final year of his three-year, $54-million deal with Toronto, hoping that a good year in 2023-24 would open up more opportunities this past summer.

Instead, it was the opposite. The Raptors won just 25 games and Trent’s year was mostly ordinary. The best offer he could get was a starting role with the championship-aspiring Bucks on a veteran’s minimum. Trent was thinking that next big deal would materialize with a good year on a winning team.

Instead, Trent is shooting just 23.1 per cent from three and 29.5 per cent overall and has lost his starting job after just seven games on a Bucks team that is off to a miserable start.

Trent is streaky and has shown the ability to catch fire in a hurry. If he gets on a heater and the Bucks turn things around, Trent could put himself in a good position next summer, but he and the Bucks will have to pick things up. Trent Jr. – who missed the last two games with back problems – was scoreless in six minutes last night.