Finding purpose can be a challenge is a season that is about everything but the present.
But the Toronto Raptors are trying to keep their focus on what’s supposed to be important: winning basketball games.
“That’s why we’re here,” said Raptors wing RJ Barrett. “That’s why we’re here, is to win.”
They did it for the second time in a row, for the first time in six weeks on Wednesday night. After a promising victory over the Golden State Warriors on Monday, the Raptors responded with another impressive win — 110-97 — over the visiting Boston Celtics.
When you have won only 10 games through the first 41 of the season, the bar for ‘signature victory’ is pretty low, but for a Raptors team that had lost 16 of 17 before this week began, knocking off the defending NBA champions will qualify.
The win came to thanks to one of the best defensive efforts of the season. They held the Celtics, who arrived with the NBA’s third-rated offence, to under 100 points for just the third time this season Boston shot 39.5 per cent, just the third they Celtics have been held under 40 per cent on the year.
And as they did against the Warriors on Monday, the Raptors were especially good in the fourth quarter, as they limited Boston to 15 points on 30-per-cent shooting.
“We’re covering for each other, even if we get beat,” said Davion Mitchell, who set the standard defensively starting in place of Immanuel Quickley (hip) for the second straight game and contributed 10 points, five assists and two steals in 26 minutes in addition to his trademark on-ball aggression. “We were more physical. I’m glad I got those two early in the beginning because it kind of set the tone, like, we’re going to be physical throughout the game … like they can’t call every foul. We’re going to be physical and we’re going to be a more hard-to-play team.”
It helps too that the Raptors are nearly at full health — Quickley was the only regular on the injury report — while they’ve been hosting some teams that are stumbling. The injury-riddled Warriors have been in a free fall since starting the season 12-3, and while Boston was healthy, the Celtics are 7-7 in their past 14 games (though still second in the East at 28-12) and give every appearance of a championship team that has lost interest in the regular season, which is unfortunate because three months remain.
“We’re going through some (expletive),” said Celtics star Jayson Tatum, who had just 16 points on 5-of-15 shooting. Other than Kristaps Porzingis, who had 16 points on 7-of-11 shooting, the Celtics’ other four starters shot 32 per cent from the floor. Their best player was backup point guard Payton Pritchard, who added to his case for the Sixth Man of the Year award with 20 points on 7-of-11 shooting off the bench.
In contrast, the Raptors’ starters (minus Quickley) were superb.
Barrett had one of his best all-around games of the season and led the way with 22 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists, a steal, a blocked shot and just two turnovers. His offence came in the flow and even though he was 1-of-5 from three, he made up for it by going 10-of-13 from two-point range, scoring on the end of a number of opportunistic basket cuts.
Meanwhile, Scottie Barnes continued his All-Star level play — the Raptors’ record will make it hard for him to repeat as an All-Star this year — but he’s playing better than he did a year ago. He finished with 18 points, nine assists, two blocked shots and a steal. Barnes’ highlight came in the third quarter when he drove baseline and funnelled a blind drop pass behind his back to Jakob Poeltl, giving the Austrian big man another lay-up on his way to an 8-of-8 shooting night.
“I already watched that a couple times,” said Barrett. “That was nice.”
Nice also is winning for a change. The Raptors season may have hit rock bottom on New Year’s Eve when the lost by a franchise-record 54 points in Boston, but to their credit they haven’t stayed down. The losses have been more competitive lately and for a change, good efforts have translated into wins. The record loss to Boston was on their minds from the tip.
“We owed them one,” said Mitchell. “We’re not gonna get blown out (and) just lay down.”
Big picture, losing remains better — at 10-31, the Raptors still have the fourth-worst record in the NBA, which gives them a 12.5-per-cent chance of picking first overall and a 48.1-per-cent chance at picking in the top four at this year’s NBA Draft.
But losing over and over again comes with a cost. For a few days in January, the Raptors haven’t had to pay that price. Instead, they’ve been able to reap some rewards.
“The goal of rebuilding is to win,” said Barrett. “And the point of rebuilding is to get to the point where you’re winning. And so you try to win every time you’re on the floor, no matter what.”
GRANGE FOR THREE
Shead impresses
It’s only the season’s halfway point, but to this stage you would have to say drafting Jamal Shead with the 45th-overall pick is an unqualified success.
Figuring out how to make an impact as a rookie point guard, and coming off the bench, all while on a team that has lost twice as many games in three months as Shead did in four NCAA years at Houston isn’t easy, but he has made it look that way. He came into the game at the six-minute mark and scored on his first touch and had another bucket on a tough step-back three to beat the shot clock.
Shead hit another three in the fourth quarter that put the Raptors up by 14. It’s been a common theme the past month or so. Going back to mid-December, Shead is averaging seven points, 4.7 assists (and just 1.6 turnovers) and a steal in 20 minutes a game over the 13 games he’s seen action.
Perhaps most importantly, Shead — whose shooting was a question mark coming out of college — is shooting 50.7 per cent from the floor and 45.5 per cent from three. He said that Barrett “cussed him out” for passing up threes earlier this season. Barrett might have been on to something: among Raptors who have shot at least 2.5 threes per game since Dec. 13, only Chris Boucher (52 per cent) has been more accurate than Shead. The Raptors identified a flaw with his mechanics — his follow-through was a bit too exaggerated to the right, resulting in some off-line shots — and have been working with him steadily to clean it up. So far, so good.
Gradey Dick’s minutes
Two years ago as a freshman at Kansas, the eventual Raptors lottery pick played 36 games and was on the floor for 1,177 minutes in a season that stretched five months. Last season as a rookie, Dick played 1,268 minutes, but they were accumulated over 60 games and the full length of an NBA season from October to April.
In his second NBA season, Dick already had racked up 1,045 minutes before playing 25 against Boston, this in 36 games squeezed into five months. On a related note, after a strong start Dick has faltered lately, shooting just 35.2 per cent from the floor and 35.4 per cent from three in his last eight games before Wednesday.
But maybe the legs are returning. Dick started the game with a tough drive in the lane and drew the foul. He had four assists, including a couple of really crisp reads to find a cutting Barrett. He cooked Celtics star Jaylen Brown on a pump fake and side-step three in the third quarter. He finished with 12 points on nine shots and added four assists.
Dick was proud of his defence as he helped hold Derrick White to 2-of-9 shooting. It was as lively as he’s looked in weeks.
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“You gotta go through it. Games just keep coming at you and you gotta learn what the season feels like,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic of Dick’s adjustment. “Last year it was a little bit easier for him because he was on less minutes, he was able to really work out quite a bit, to use 905 assignments.
This year, he’s going for real. He’s a starter. Last year, he was coming off the bench quite a bit, it’s different when you go against starters every single night and you go against the best athletes in the world and he just needs to go through this to learn what it takes to prepare for the game, what it takes mentally, physically, what are the tools for his recovery, how to prepare himself mentally and physically for every game. We’re going to figure it out together with him.”
Barnes pokes the bear
Late in third quarter, Barnes found himself high on the floor, matched up with Tatum. Barnes got low in a defensive stance and clapped his hands as if to say, ‘let’s go.’ The crowd roared in approval.
For all the Raptors’ positive plays on the defensive end, this wasn’t one of them. Tatum calmly waited for Boston reserve centre Luke Kornet to wall Barnes off with a screen. No one helped Barnes, and Tatum turned the corner and used the lane as a runway. He was cocking the ball back for what would have been a highlight-reel dunk and potentially a momentum-changer as Boston headed into the break.
Luckily, Boucher slid over and seemed to get a piece of Tatum’s arm, but not enough for the refs to call foul. Tatum missed the dunk and Barnes’ defensive challenge didn’t backfire on him and his teammates.
