Not too long ago, NBA teams would play seven or eight preseason games to get ready for the season. Nobody enjoyed it. It was longer than necessary to make decisions on end-of-roster battles, and in the era of being particular about player workloads, undue strain as players ramped up for the real games.
On Friday night in Chicago, the Raptors and Bulls offered a reminder of why there was, back in the day, a justification for an extended exhibition schedule.
The Raptors came up on the wrong end of a 104-103 overtime decision, though both teams will probably forget the game and burn the tape. Both have games to play on back-to-backs tomorrow, and while film can be a helpful learning tool, these 53 minutes skewed a little too close to a gory scene from the Saw franchise than is appropriate even at Halloween. Chalk it up to an in-season tune-up and promise yourself it can’t get any uglier Saturday.
Unfortunately, the Raptors don’t have the luxury of flushing it. They are a young-ish team espousing newness under rookie head coach Darko Rajakovic, and there are lessons to be learned. Painful ones, that need to be heeded quickly if the Raptors are to survive a difficult early-season schedule with the positive energy of training camp still in tact.
For long stretches of Friday’s game, it looked like the Raptors were firmly in control. They opened the game on an 8-0 run that sent the Bulls – fresh off a pseudo-players-only meeting after their season opener – to an early timeout and then swelled to a 14-2 run. Later, they held the Bulls scoreless for nearly nine minutes spanning the end of the second and start of the third. They led by 17 with five minutes to play, and still by seven with 102 seconds remaining.
So how, exactly, does a game that includes 14-2 and 62-29 runs end in a heartbreaking loss for the visitors?
The reasons are surely familiar, even if counter-tuns of 40-9 (after the hot start) and 22-5 (to end regulation) are not.
Toronto’s bench was at a loss for how to score in their initial first-half stint, necessitating Rajakovic to change his substitution patterns and, once both his centres were in foul trouble, tag in Chris Boucher as an 11th man. The four-minute stretch that included Malachi Flynn saw the Raptors lose by 14 points, and while that’s not entirely on him, it’s notable that the Raptors went without a point guard in any bench lineup from there. Precious Achiuwa struggled at both ends, Jalen McDaniels missed all four of this three-point attempts, and Gradey Dick’s cameo was more good process than helpful result.
That explains why two dominant stretches didn’t have the game out of reach for Chicago late. Had the bench held up better, maybe Toronto ends this thing early in the fourth, opening the door for Billy Donovan to use the depths of his bench and save minutes for the Pistons on Saturday. Those shaky bench stretches also have a way of bleeding into minutes as starters
return, and it took the halftime reprieve to recalibrate an offensive gameplan. Bench players, of course, don’t close the game out, except in special circumstances.
The Raptors did run into two of those caveats, only one of which was in their control. OG Anunoby left the game in the second hald with muscle cramps that had him limping off the floor, removing the team’s best individual defender and the likely DeMar DeRozan assignment in the clutch. Achiuwa and Jakob Poeltl both also fouled out, opening the door for a quickly resurgent Boucher to play 17 pivotal minutes.
The final 10 minutes of the game were, to be kind, a comedy of mistakes, and Toronto was fortunate to even get overtime. They sent DeRozan to the free-throw line on four different occasions in the final 21 seconds, two of which came on players who should know better biting on DeRozan’s patented pump-fake.
First, it was Boucher leaving his feet with DeRozan angling for a game-tying three. Then, after Pascal Siakam committed an offensive foul on an inbound play to lose the right to extend the lead at the line, DeRozan was back to work. With under a second to go, Siakam kept his composure guarding a DeRozan mid-range game-winner attempt, but aggressive help from Scottie Barnes sent DeRozan back to the stripe instead. Games between the Raptors and the Bulls of course require poor free-throw shooting, and so DeRozan missed three of his final six freebies, maintaining the window for an overtime period.
The extra frame included a little bit of everything, including a pair of missed free throws for Siakam, to maintain the narrative thread of this non-rivalry. Barnes did what he could, knocking down a big three and adding a 10th assist to give him his second-career triple-double. Boucher, too, hit a pair of free throws after a big offensive rebound and finished a nice dump-off from Dennis Schroder.
It should have been enough. Instead, what had been an excellent defence all game bent with a couple of fouls, poor coverage in transition to allow Alex Caruso to find Zach LaVine for a dunk, and an open Caruso in the corner for the game-winning triple after LaVine sucked the defence into the paint. It was Caruso, too, coming up with a pivotal stop on a final drive from Siakam, a bit of a curious attack decision from Toronto with so many lesser defenders on the floor to target.
All of that is to say, you can have your pick of reasons the Raptors dropped this one.
It’s worth noting, too, that even in their stronger moments, it was not the new offensive principles leading the charge. The Bulls did a good job limiting advantages off of high-post and motion sets, and it was only when Toronto went to more rote mismatch-hunting that offence flowed.
Barnes, Siakam, and Anunoby all had turns drawing switches in Schroder pick-and-rolls to attack Coby White in the post, whether as a scoring option or to open up cutting and kick-out opportunities.
The Raptors still managed 25 assists, but they came with 21 turnovers and flowed from more traditional sets. You can be patient there, and there were a handful of pretty plays where you saw what the new offence can grow into in time, it’s just going to be slow to come around when the team shoots 9-of-36 from outside and can only rely on their cadre of reserve power forwards in depth units.
Scoring just under 0.75 points per-half court possession is a tough way to live, even with their defence and transition offence as excellent as they are, and were.
It’s especially notable in late-and-close situations where defences are more keyed in and the Raptors’ hierarchy is not quite established yet. It will be interesting, for example, to see if more runs through the hands of Barnes the next time the Raptors are in this spot, or if they simply funnel the play to where anyone other than an All-Defensive player like Caruso is.
For a second game of a new-ish era – “ish” because despite the dramatic contrast in energy and a new bench boss, most of the rotation pieces have carried over – you can live with the growing pains. It was a very winnable game, but Toronto’s need to rely so overwhelmingly on their defence and easier transition buckets will leave little room for error against capable opponents.
If nothing else, the spark from Boucher and an excellent Barnes game (late foul aside) leave plenty of room for encouragement. So, too, could a positive update on Anunoby heading into a Saturday meeting with Nick Nurse, Joel Embiid, and the Philadelphia 76ers. A win-while-developing in-between season won’t see them pull out every tight game; they’ll probably need more than the extended preseason of old to completely find their footing on nights like Friday.