Weird, wild game ends with same old result for slumping Raptors

The Toronto Raptors needed to take advantage of the start of a season-long, six-game homestand in the worst way.

Instead, they kicked it off by playing basketball in the worst way possible -- for very long stretches offensively at least. The Raptors started out miserably -- somehow missing 28 of their first 30 field-goa attempts -- before they briefly showed signs of life and then seemingly were about to get shoved off the floor in the fourth quarter by the Milwaukee Bucks.

Er, hang on a second.

All the bad stuff happened -- the Raptors lost 104-101 in overtime, and we’ll get to that -- but Toronto did finish regulation with an improbable 28-7 run in the final four minutes that wiped out a 21-point Bucks lead in a blink of an eye, seemingly.

The fans in Scotiabank Arena who hadn’t left already went predictably nuts. It was the most fun stretch of basketball seen around here this season -- easily. That it came on the heels of one of the worst stretches of basketball ever played by Raptors team was all the more fitting.

It was capped by a Gary Trent Jr. triple with 0.8 seconds on the clock -- his second bomb in the final 30 seconds --  to send the game into overtime after Toronto had trailed Milwaukee by 11 points with 43 seconds to play. Scottie Barnes provided two hoops of his own in the frantic finish to regulation.

But then came the overtime period, and like so many other moments in this strange, confounding season, all the optimism went splat.

After matching the Bucks bucket for bucket, Toronto – and most egregiously Fred VanVleet, who ran over from the weak side corner to help -- collapsed on a driving Giannis Antetokounmpo. The instinct is understandable, but it backfired when the Bucks star whistled a pass through traffic to a wide-open Grayson Allen -- VanVleet’s man, naturally. He nailed the wide-open game-winning triple with 10.8 seconds left. It was Antetokounmpo’s 10th assist and finished off a triple-double that included 30 points and 21 rebounds.

That he had 12 turnovers to compete the quadruple double, well, that’s just how this game went.

VanVleet had a chance to send the game into a second overtime in the final seconds but his three was wide and the euphoria was replaced by the realization that the Raptors had dropped another game they probably needed to have.

VanVleet finished with 28 points and 12 assists (on 8-of-23 shooting and 4-of-14 from three) while Trent Jr. added 22 points and Barnes scored all 19 of his points in the fourth quarter and overtime, but it was – even with the wild end – not enough.

“It’s worse playing it than watching it,” VanVleet said of the Raptors' frigid start. “… Just the energy and the mojo and the air in the building was weird. It was a weird game, especially to start off like that. And they weren’t much better. What was it, 12-13 after the first quarter? We just kept fighting. It was 39-38 at half. We were in a dogfight and I was proud of the way we competed at the end. We’ve got to hang our hats on that, never giving up, digging in and playing together.”

Now, losing to the Bucks, a perennial championship contender led by two-time MVP  Antetokounmpo is hardly the worst thing that can happen to a team, even on your home floor.

But the way the Raptors lost -- with their season-long offensive woes laid bare in the first 44 minutes and to a Bucks team playing for the second time in two nights and missing two starters and two rotation players – is hard to swallow for a team that knows the clock is ticking if they are going to change the trajectory of their season before it’s too late.

The loss -- the Raptors' second straight, fourth in five and 10th in their past 13 -- dropped Toronto to 16-22 for the season while the Bucks improved to 25-13.

In contrast to the hot-shooting finish, Toronto missed its first 15 shots and didn’t score a field goal until 7:24 had been played in the first quarter. Even with their late surge, the Raptors shot 32.8 per cent from the floor and 9-of-46 from deep. They forced the Bucks into 28 turnovers and still lost, which is really hard to do, but the Raptors have almost done it twice now in the space of a week, having barely scraped past the Phoenix Suns after forcing 25 turnovers.

But the Raptors offence in the half-court is so suspect that even taking an astounding 28 more shots that the Bucks – who shot only 39.8 per cent from the floor and 33.3 per cent from three – wasn’t enough.

Now, the Bucks are an excellent defensive team with a fairly simply formula. They rely on Brook Lopez to guard the paint while the rangy Antetokounmpo uses his speed and size to cause havoc elsewhere. Everyone else chips in and does their part, using their size and athleticism.

But for a team like the Raptors, Lopez causes problems. Consider this moment midway through the second first quarter: Siakam pump fakes Antetokounmpo from the three-point line and gets the Bucks star to bite. Siakam puts the ball on the floor and gets to the paint, but sees Lopez waiting there, patient as a mountain range. Siakam tries to ball fake the broad-shouldered seven-footer, who doesn’t bite, before dumping it off to Barnes, who can’t handle the pass and fumbles it out of bounds.

Early in the second quarter, O.G. Anunoby turned the corner on Antetokounmpo but again began hesitating as Lopez shuffled back to the rim, matching the Raptors forward's speed. When Anuonby finally got into his lay-up, Antetokounmpo had followed him down the lane and swatted away the shot from behind.

Some version of those plays happened over and over again as Toronto either tried to drive the lane and got stymied or didn’t even bother trying and missed contested twos and threes on the perimeter, as the Bucks pressed up, confident that Lopez would protect them if they got beat.

It got to the point where Raptors head coach Nick Nurse  changed his rotation to try and keep Barnes away from Lopez as the Bucks centre was barely guarding the Raptors forward, who in turn couldn’t or wouldn’t shoot enough to draw Lopez away from the basket. Eventually, Nurse went with the more shot-happy Chris Boucher to keep Lopez occupied.

How the game ended made the Raptors' early struggles all the more frustrating. Barnes only attempted three shots through the first three quarters, seemingly completely flummoxed by the idea that Lopez wasn’t going to guard him. But he scored his first field goal on a dish from Pascal Siakam with 6:45 to play and exploded for 19 points from that point, all of them at the rim, all of them with the second-year forward challenging the veteran centre and coming out on top. How that didn’t happen sooner is anyone’s guess.

“We need him to be more aggressive from start to finish,” said Nurse, who would seem to be the person who can encourage that to happen.

Still, when players are making teams adjust their rotations on the fly, you know they’re having a defensive impact, and it’s just one reason the 14-year veteran is a favourite to be named defensive player of the year.

There is no defensive package more guaranteed to emphasize Toronto’s jump-shooting ineptitude in the half-court than a giant, smart rim protector and a squad of rangy active defenders flying around the perimeter.

When Siakam scored the Raptors' first point on a made free throw with 5:12 remaining in the opening quarter, the sold-out crowd at Scotiabank Arena cheered like they’d won the lottery, or a free slice of pizza. Of course, Siakam missed the second free throw. Toronto finally broke through when Lopez and Antetokounmpo went to the bench. First VanVleet and then Siakam scored lay-ups in transition.

But that was it. Toronto missed its next six shots and finished the quarter having not scored a single half-court basket. Then then missed their first seven shots of the second quarter.

The only good news is that the Bucks were almost as bad, shooting 5-of-24 for the period and making eight turnovers, which how your lead is just 13-12 when you’ve held your opponent to 8.7 per-cent shooting. Somehow the Raptors were trailing just 39-38 at half.

On the other end, the Raptors may have caught a break given that Antetokounmpo and the Bucks played in Washington on Tuesday night and were in Toronto on the second night of a back-to-back. The Bucks star set a career high with 55 points in a win against the Wizards, capping a seven-game stretch where he’s topped the 40-point mark five times, including the previous three. Maybe he was lagging just a little.

The Raptors had plans for him -- to over-simplify, the intent was to build a ‘wall’ off defenders between Antetokounmpo and the rim, both in the half-court and especially in transition. It’s the same strategy most teams use -- and one the Raptors popularized with their (relative) success against Antetokounmpo during the Eastern Conference Finals in 2019 – but in his 10^th season the Bucks star’s game continues to grow.

He showed how on the game’s final play, finding his teammate for the game-winning three. Meanwhile, the Raptors are left to figure out what worked in an incredible finish and diagnose what went wrong otherwise.