Fingers crossed, the Toronto Raptors are going to make it out of this with their season still alive.
There is reason for optimism. Some of them were on the floor Tuesday night as the Raptors hosted the Philadelphia 76ers.
In the stands? Not quite so much at a not-even-close-to-half-full Scotiabank Arena. While 9,900 are allowed under COVID-19 restrictions in Ontario, only 6,960 showed up, as fans undoubtedly thought spending the money and the time while going without food or drink to watch fragments of a basketball team while a virus courses through the city wasn’t worth it.
But the Raptors are making progress. They had actual starters in their starting lineup, with Pascal Siakam and Gary Trent Jr. making their return from the NBA’s health and safety protocols. They were joined by second-year point guard Malachi Flynn — who has been on the fringes of Raptors head coach Nick Nurse’s rotation all season — but at least knows where to go and when most of the time.
Given the Raptors were playing their second game with a makeshift lineup — they still have as many players in protocols (five) than they do hardship signees (four) to replace them — and haven’t had a full practice in two weeks, every little bit helps.
And someone had to play point guard after it was announced before the game that Dalano Banton had bruised his knee in the Raptors’ blowout loss to Cleveland and wasn’t available.
The partial Raptors put in a full effort against a Sixers team that was missing only Danny Green, Andre Drummond and Shake Milton from their regular rotation due to Covid, with Green’s absence especially notable because Tuesday night was supposed to be the evening he finally got his championship ring from 2019.
Oh well, another time.
The Raptors’ 114-109 loss was tight throughout and a huge improvement on their 45-point blowout dealt to Cleveland on Sunday. They played with nine players — well after halftime when DJ Wilson finally cleared Covid screening — but it was a better nine.
A pair of buckets from Trent Jr. gave the Raptors a one-point lead with 1:41 to play and a Siakam layup helped keep it that way with a minute left. But an Joel Embiid put-back reversed that before Tobias Harris made a pair of free throws with 17 seconds left.
There were several exceptional efforts, Chris Boucher’s at the top of the list as the Montrealer bounced back from a dismal outing against Cleveland with 28 points, 19 rebounds and five threes on seven tries.
Siakam returned to action with 28 points, eight assists and six rebounds in 42 minutes, while hardship signee Wilson played well again, with nine points and six rebounds in 13 second-half minutes.
The loss dropped the Raptors to 14-17 while the Sixers improved to 18-16.
Siakam played one of his best quarters of the season with 14 points in the opening period and Trent Jr. had eight in the second quarter as five different Raptors contributed. They trailed 55-48 at the half. There was more hope in the third as Boucher got untracked for three triples on three attempts, water in the desert for a man shooting 21 per cent from deep this season. The Raptors even briefly took the lead after Svi Mykhailiuk hit a pair of consecutive threes — the first on a four-point play.
But it seemed the Raptors wouldn’t be able to hang. The Sixers responded with a 21-7 run that gave them a 12-point lead with 8:05 to play. Two more threes and a putback dunk helped Toronto get back into it.
But Embiid was a handful. He scored 24 of his 36 in the second half and nine in the fourth quarter, including a clutch three, the game-winning put back and a gorgeous dump off to Matisse Thybulle as the Sixers avoided what would have been a tough-to-explain loss.
Embiid has famously had his struggles in Toronto and against the Raptors. There was the second-round playoff series in 2019 when he shot 37 per cent from the floor over seven games. Or his first visit back to Scotiabank Arena in 2019-20 when the league’s most dominant centre went 0-of-11 from the floor and didn’t score a point in 32 minutes.
The Raptors would have trouble matching up with him even if regular centres Precious Achiuwa (protocols) and Khem Birch (out due to conditioning after protocols) were available, but otherwise?
Even the lingering ghost of Marc Gasol wasn’t a factor, not when the nimble 300-pounder from Cameroon only had to get through the wraith-like frame of Boucher to get to the rim. He did it at will in the second half and the third quarter in particular.
He was the one superstar on the floor and he reminded the Raptors of it every time he bulled his way to the rim.
The assignment was simple enough: “I would say one of our defensive things is you’ve got to stand in there,” said Nurse. “No matter if you’re out-heighted or out-weighted or whatever, if you’re the guy who is there at the end, you’ve got to stand in there. If you can’t stand in there and make a play, you’re gonna have to probably take a foul. That’s hard to convince them to do, I think.”
They did their best, there’s no argument there and there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
One is that the Raptors who have had Covid have come through it generally unscathed. Unlike last season when Fred VanVleet said it was something he “wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy” and the aftereffects of being sidelined lingered for weeks or even months in some cases, the fully vaccinated Raptors are hopeful that the effects this time around won’t linger.
“There hasn’t been anybody who has told me, ‘I feel awful,’” Nurse said as he went about checking in on the 10 different players. “They were all kind of like, ‘I’m good, coach. I’m good. Just waiting to get out.’ It wasn’t a super high level of concern there. The rest of it was as soon as we got them out, we got them to the gym and got them working and tried to get them some rhythm and some movement and some workouts in to get them as close as they can be,”
“… I am pretty confident (it will be easier)” Nurse added. “… I think it seems to me around the league you are not hearing the same things you were hearing a year ago like it was taking people a while. They are just not feeling as bad when they have it or as winded or whatever when they come out. So I’m confident once this thing passes here this week, we should be OK and get up to speed pretty quickly.”
More help could be coming as well. The Raptors don’t play again until Friday night, and there could be some leeway coming with how long players — and perhaps everyone else — will have to remain in isolation following positive tests.
The NBA has already relaxed its isolation guidelines from 10 days to six days for vaccinated players who are asymptomatic after the sixth day (players who were negative on two PCR tests 24 hours apart were already allowed to return sooner) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States has recommended reducing the isolation period to five days for those that are asymptomatic.
There is some expectation that the province could reduce the isolation period as well.
Can’t wait to get back with the guys again trying to make sense of all the protocols but it is what it is! Feeling good see you soon. Let’s go @Raptors
— Fred VanVleet (@FredVanVleet) December 28, 2021
Even using the 10-day guideline, any of the Raptors who went into protocols Dec. 22 or earlier should be cleared when the Raptors host the Los Angeles Clippers on New Year’s Eve.
If it all comes to pass the Raptors’ Covid crisis 2.0 will have been well-timed, with Toronto having only had to play two games with a drastically reduced lineup. It may have spoiled Christmas for a few guys — picture VanVleet’s little ones running around the Christmas tree with Daddy isolating somewhere — but the Raptors shouldn’t have their season cratered by events outside their control like when they got smashed by the virus last March in Tampa.
With a little luck, they might even be able to hold a practice one of these days.
