Okay, that was miserable.
After all the heartfelt messaging about taking this recent run of blowout losses personally and standing up and fighting and sticking together and not just talking but going out and doing something about it and blah, blah, blah, things somehow got worse for the Toronto Raptors on New Year’s Eve in Boston. It seems impossible. After all, this is a team that in the space of a week set a franchise record for points scored by an opponent (155 by Memphis), a franchise record for turnovers in a home game (31 against Atlanta) and became the first team in 35 years to give up 430 points to opponents in a three-game stretch.
Let’s just say no one will be happier to put 2024 behind them than these guys as the Raptors set a new franchise low in a 125-71 loss to the defending champion Boston Celtics. The 54-point deficit is the largest single-game loss in franchise history.
The craziest part, this was one of the Raptors’ better defensive efforts in some time. They held Boston to 37.5 per cent shooting in the first half and 8-of-25 from three. They started out like they’d taken all that film session messaging to heart and were determined to prove that — as Scottie Barnes said after the Atlanta Hawks scored 136 on them on Sunday — ‘this is not us.’
The first few minutes of the game featured one textbook close out after another as the Raptors made a point of making life difficult for the Celtics and their bounty of prolific three-point shooters. It was impressive stuff. Boston missed their first seven threes in large part because Toronto rotated fiercely and closed out hard.
But one thing the Raptors have shown this season is an incredible level of creativity when it comes to losing. As their defensive intensity picked up, their ability to do anything offensively cratered. Perhaps watching the Celtics — who average a league-leading 50.9 three-point attempts per game — inspired the Raptors to follow suit in trying to get them up. The Raptors are second-last in the NBA in three-point attempts at 33.3 and third from the bottom in makes, but they put up 12 threes in the first quarter anyway. They missed all 12, which is how you trail by double-figures (23-12) after the first quarter even after holding Boston to 36 per cent shooting in the period.
The Raptors actually won the second quarter — 23-22 — and were still theoretically in the game at halftime, down only 10, but then the roof caved in, and Boston’s math advantage took over. The Raptors’ first three buckets of the second half were hard-fought twos, while Boston answered with threes. By the time Payton Pritchard hit Boston’s fifth triple of the quarter to put the Celtics up by 21, Toronto was 6-of-28 from three while Boston had made 14 threes on 33 tries, on their way to a scorching 14-of-18 from deep in the second half and 22-of-43 for the game, to the Raptors’ 10-of-40.
The final math: The Raptors shot just 31 per cent in scoring a season-low 71 points, have now lost 12 straight and are 7-26 on the season. They are 20-63 going back to Jan. 1, 2024 making the past 12 months the losingest calendar year in franchise history. They get a chance to start 2025 off on the right foot when they host the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday at Scotiabank Arena.
Still, just as everything seems impossibly grim — and even those who understand the importance of draft lottery success in a rebuild don’t enjoy this kind of losing — I thought it might be a worthwhile effort to think of five things the Raptors can be grateful for as we close the book on 2024.
It did take some effort.
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It’s still early to know for sure, but it seems that the Raptors have found a player with the 45th pick in the 2024 draft. How high his ceiling will end up being is too early to tell, but his floor suggests he’s an NBA player, even if he did go 2-of-10 and 1-of-5 from three with three turnovers against Boston.
Perhaps most encouraging is that his three-point shooting is coming along in a way that is downright exciting. Shead came into Tuesday’s game shooting 46.7 per cent from beyond the arc. The volume is low — just 2.5 attempts a game — but for a guy who shot just 29.6 per cent from deep in a four-year college career at Houston, it’s very encouraging.
The rest of his game is translating to the NBA, too: Physical, on-ball defence; the ability to get two feet in the paint at will; and a nice knack for getting the ball out of his hands quickly. He’s not a point guard who overdribbles or wants to make all the decisions. He attacks and moves it.
On top of all that, Shead comes across as a smart, fun, and mature-beyond-his-years teammate. I like his chances to be a meaningful NBA player.
There is no way to quantify the value the 38-year-old Temple brings to the Toronto Raptors. Certainly, the statistics don’t. Temple, who is earning $3.3 million on a veteran minimum contract, has appeared in just 11 games and played just under 50 minutes on the season, but it’s uncanny how many times the Raptors’ crew of young players refer to ‘GT’ as a source of wisdom or advice as they try to figure out their NBA path. Gradey Dick, Ja’Kobe Walter, Shead and Jonathan Mogbo all routinely reference him.
When he does take the floor Temple throws his body around with abandon, determined to practice what he preaches. He keeps himself in impeccable shape, understands the business of the sport through his role in the NBPA, and shares it all without being too preachy or heavy-handed. At times like these, when it feels like everything is falling apart, Temple’s reasoned voice is even more important.
“You can be frustrated. You can have times in your life where you’re frustrated but that doesn’t mean whatever relationship you have or situation you’re in has to be fractured and broken,” he said the other day when I asked him about staying together through tough times. “…Teams go through this all the time, sometimes it can make you, sometimes it can break you, but there’s no denying that you will go through this in order to reach your ultimate goal.”
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Again, not the greatest game for the Raptors swingman as he missed a couple of bunnies around the rim and had a few passes slip through his fingers that ended up contributing to Toronto’s 20 turnovers. Agbaji finished with three bobbles on a 1-of-7 shooting night but he closes 2024 shooting 51 per cent from the floor and 41 per cent from three while scoring 11.3 points per game and leading the Raptors in total minutes. He’s turned into a nice find for the Raptors as they acquired him in the deal that brought Kelly Olynyk from Utah at the trade deadline last season.
I don’t think he’s a starter on a good NBA team — as a true 3-and-D type it would be nice if he was a little bigger than six-foot-five — but Agbaji looks like he can be a rotation player if his early shooting splits can hold up, so there’s something.
Darko Rajakovic
The Raptors head coach isn’t the most popular these days. When a team is 7-26 and has lost 11 straight, the last four in almost shocking fashion, it’s inevitable the head coach is going to feel it. And truth be told, it’s very hard to fairly evaluate Rajakovic’s fit as an NBA head coach. He’s been dealing with chaos beyond his control since this time a year ago when the Raptors rebuild started and any notion of roster stability flew out the window.
It would be easy to get sour and start pointing fingers, but Rajakovic has never blinked. He’s continued to invest in his players and can point to the positive progress made by the likes of Gradey Dick, RJ Barrett (who both missed the Celtics game due to hamstring tightness and illness, respectively) and this year’s crop of rookies as evidence that his approach works. Ultimately Rajakovic will have to show that he can coax the best out of Scottie Barnes and Immanuel Quickley if he expects to stick around longer term. But in the meantime you can’t fault the man’s spirit.
“It’s a roller-coaster season, and that’s what we’re going to understand,” he said before the loss to Boston. “There’s going to be ups and downs, and also improvement. Progress is never linear… at some point you get tired, you get bumped, you gotta learn how to bounce back. There is a lot of adversity, and we’re feeling that adversity, and it’s good. We’re gonna use that adversity to our advantage, to get information that we need to improve, to focus on the most important things, and to see the growth. That’s what this whole season is about, and to also learn who can rise to challenge and who cannot.”
The Eastern Conference
The nice thing about being in the East is that the potential of the play-in tournament or even a playoff spot doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. Not this season, or let’s hope not: It would be a shame to go through a start like this and somehow sneak into 10th place with a false-hope second-half surge and spoil your best chances at drafting near the top of the lottery. But big picture the Raptors don’t have to be horrible forever. They have some interesting young players. They hopefully will get lucky in the draft this June. Those two factors alone mean that in the threadbare East Toronto could start thinking about being competitive again next season, meaning 2025 could be a whole lot brighter than 2024 ended up being.
