In theory, the NBA invented the in-season tournament for nights like this.
We’ll see if the marketing muscle the league has put behind its latest brainchild – a tournament played within the regular-season schedule – will pay off and deliver a new property that captures fans’ imaginations during the sleepier part of the schedule.
Because let’s face it, Raptors-Wizards on a Monday night in November, a contest between two road-weary teams that look poised to churn through the lower half of the standing for most of the season, can only move the needle so much.
But hey, then the game starts and after roughly 30 minutes of turgid basketball the home team mounts a comeback from down 22 points midway through the third quarter, holds the visitors without a field goal and just a single point for the final seven-and-a-half minutes of the game and squeezes out a win that seemed they seemed determined to give away and, well, good times were had.
The Raptors 111-107 win over the Washington Wizards lifted them to 5-5 on the season and gets their four-game homestand off to a good start the Wizards fall to 2-8. Pascal Siakam was a one-man offence when Toronto needed him most as he scored a season-high 39 points while adding 11 rebounds and seven assists. The Raptors defence finally showed up in the fourth quarter after going missing for most of the game. It’s not a formula that’s sustainable but it was entertaining.
The Wizards coughed up 22 turnovers on the night. The Raptors overcame a 4-of-19 night from three by winning the possession battle, looking a lot they like they did a year ago at times.
They had little choice. O.G Anunoby, who cut one of the fingers on his shooting hand doing “household chores” on Sunday sat this one out, as did Gary Trent Jr. who missed his second game with plantar fasciitis in his foot. The Raptors clearly missed them, but that they struggled so mightily against Washington while missing one starter and a key reserve speaks more to the Raptors lack of depth than any other factor.
The Play-In Tournament was invented to keep hope alive down the stretch for weaker teams. That’s been a success. With the ninth and 10th place teams now having at least a puncher’s chance of a playoff spot, the stretch run at least engages more markets that the strict top-eight (in each conference) format that was in place forever before that. The Raptors benefited from the faint hope race to ninth place last season. That might be the high-water mark this season too.
But the in-season tournament has some heavier lifting to do.
The NBA’s 30 teams are divided into six groups of five, three groups in each conference. The six group winners along with the teams with the next best record in each conference will advance to a sudden death round, with the ‘Final Four’ in Las Vegas in December. All the players on the winning team will get $500,000.
The Raptors get their first taste of it this coming Friday when they host the Boston Celtics start the pool play segment of the tournament.
Who knows, it could end up being fun.
In theory more games in the 82-game regular season that can be assigned additional meaning should make for more fun games to watch. But the flip side is games like Monday’s seem even more orphaned that before. In theory a win or a loss could matter at the end of the year, but in practice the end of the years seems like a long time away.
In the meantime, no amount of marketing oomph can put a charge in an evening like Monday’s Raptors-Wizards not-so extravaganza.
The game ended up being a fun watch almost by chance. Spotting teams 22-point leads is miserable when you don’t complete the comeback, after all.
But the entertainment value of the game itself is almost accidental. The league’s challenge is that there will always be nights like this, contests between a team like the Wizards who are in limbo as they begin the process of a long overdue rebuilding in earnest and the Raptors, who are limbo as they try to forestall what might end up being a rebuild for as long as possible.
Each team arrived on the floor at Scotiabank Arena with some glaring flaws – the Raptors are one of the NBA’s worst halfcourt offensive teams while the Wizards are among the worst defensively. The Raptors were playing their first game at home after an 11-day road trip, the Wizards were on the second game of a back-to-back. The stage was not set, let’s just say that.
Perhaps the most excited people in the building were the pro scouts from other teams on hand monitoring two rosters that could be end up as sellers at the trade deadline in February.
The first half unfolded as you might have guessed, if not necessarily expected. One of the qualities the Raptors want to hang their hat on this season is their team defence. They have the personnel, they believe, to both protect their paint and still be disruptive enough to cause turnovers and run off other teams’ misses and mistakes.
“We’re showing signs of greatness, and we are also showing areas that we need to improve and get better,” was Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic’s optimistic assessment. “It really goes from game to game. I think our constant is that we’ve got to do a better job of protecting the paint … because we’re not great at changing shots at the rim and blocking shots. So that’s why we got to do our work on the front end of all our defence.”
The first half was very much in the ‘needs improvement’ category, maybe even the ‘maybe we should quit kidding ourselves’ category. The Wizards made eight of their first nine shots, all of them on dunks or lay-ups or open threes. It was – technically – perfect offence from the Wizards but realistically what defence looks like when a team isn’t prepared to compete. Toronto trailed 32-25 after the first quarter and if you thought they might take the hint and tighten up defensively at that point, well, you’d be wrong. The Wizards shot a blistering 62 per cent from the floor in the second quarter while making four of their six three-point attempts.
So fine, maybe it’s one of those nights, it’s going to be a shootout. Surely there are points to be had against the Wizards came into the game ranked 29th in halfcourt defence, per cleaningtheglass.com.
Turns out, no. Missing their two most prolific three-point threats in Trent Jr. and Anunoby, cramped the Raptors already suffocating floor spacing even more and Toronto’s offence ground half anytime Washington was able to square five bodies to the ball. The Raptors shot just 8-of-20 from the floor in the quarter, missed all six of its three-point attempts and turned the ball over six times, often while trying to make passes in spaces tighter than the slots in a toaster. Put another way, against one of the worst defensive teams in the league, the Raptors offence managed just 70 points per 100 possessions in the halfcourt when league average typically hovers around 95/100.
Toronto finally began to turn things around in the third quarter and – not surprisingly – it was their defence that did. Trailing by 22 midway through the third, the Raptors held Washington to four field goals in the next six minutes and were able to generate offence in transition off misses and turnovers. The result was a 23-11 run to finish the quarter that allowed Toronto to start the fourth with a reasonable hope of reeling the Wizards in given they trailed ‘only’ by 10, 91-81.
Siakam was the primary driver of the offence, relaying mostly on drives. He kept forcing his way into the Wizards paint and was rewarded. He scored 22 points in the period, even with missing four of his 10 free throws.
The momentum carried over into the fourth. Trailing by 10 with 5:34 to play, the Raptors forced the Wizards to miss four straight lay-ups – two of them blocked by Chris Boucher who provided a spark of the bench. Boucher’s dunk in transition on the last of the four misses pulled Toronto to within four with 2:59 left and another dunk by Boucher on a break sparked by a Barnes 5th steal tied the game with 51.6 seconds left.
The Raptors forced one more missed lay-up – this time by Jordan Poole with 30 seconds left – and when Siakam’s fallaway jumper fell over the front rim with 7.6 seconds to go, Toronto had its first lead since they went up 5-4 at the 1:35 mark of the first quarter. The Raptors forced one more Wizards turnover at that point. Dennis Schroder got fouled as he tried to run out the clock, made his free throws and the Raptors escaped with a win that was as unlikely – at least from the midway point of the third quarter – as it was entertaining.
Mid-season tournament for what, you might say.
