BOSTON — On a sunny Friday morning in Boston, OG Anunoby was putting on his socks and sneakers courtside at TD Garden getting ready to start a workday that would last well into the evening.
The Toronto Raptors‘ ugly season-opening loss Wednesday seemed like a month ago.
The recipe?
“Watch the tape, see what I can learn from it,” said Anunoby, who shot a miserable 3-of-17 in his first regular-season game after shooting a blistering 54 per cent from deep in a brilliant pre-season. “I saw some missed shots, some rushed shots, some passes I could have made.
And then?
“Look at the tape and then forget about it.”
That was the plan as the Raptors ventured to the road for the first time in the 2021-22 season: Put their home opener behind them.
Or at least: Keep doing the good stuff — attacking and swarming defensively, creating turnovers, and crashing the offensive glass — and forget all those misses and hope they can make enough shots to compete.
That’s the plan for the season as a whole — create enough chaos and score just enough to paper over any weakness that a more conventional approach might expose.
And hey, if a promising, 20-year-old rookie wants to have a huge night in the second game of his career?
That would be welcome.
The Raptors flushed the memories of their home opener with a remarkable outing at TD Garden where they ruined the Boston Celtics‘ first game at home with a punishing 115-83 win that had the favoured Celtics getting booed off the floor in the third quarter.
It didn’t get much better in the fourth as each team got even more locked in defensively, trading five-minute stretches without a field goal. But Toronto found a way.
The Raptors were led by Scottie Barnes who seemed to be in the middle of everything offensively and defensively as he finished with 25 points and 13 rebounds. Fitting it was his lay-up in transition off a Celtics miss that put Toronto up 21 with 4:27 to play that finally sent Celtics fans streaming for the exits. They were wearing masks — most of them — but you could only assume they had sour looks on their faces. The way the Raptors play can make your team look bad.
Toronto also got a spark from Gary Trent Jr. — who started in place of Goran Dragic — as well as Precious Achiuwa, the key piece Toronto acquired from Miami in the sign-and-trade arrangement for Kyle Lowry.
But it was a team effort — emphasis on effort. It’s hard work to snare 21 offensive rebounds and force 25 turnovers, box score totals that made up for another night of sub-optimal shooting. The Raptors shot just 42 per cent, a figure that got a boost from some garbage time minutes.
Still, if the Raptors are going to get to where they want to go they need to be a little tidier doing something other than scoring off misses — their opponent’s and their own.
They need the likes of Anunoby to play closer to his potential and — at least until Pascal Siakam is sidelined while recovering from shoulder surgery — carry more of an offensive load for a team desperately in need of some punch.
Raptors head coach Nick Nurse feels Anunoby left a lot on the table in the opener, which was one of the worst shooting performances (31 per cent from the floor) in franchise history.
“I thought they were just OK shots,” said Nurse of Anunoby’s approach. “I think he needs to get downhill a little bit more. He’s got that in his game. Unfortunately, he didn’t make any early. But he’s got get into the paint a little bit and create not only for himself but for his teammates a little bit.”
Anunoby struggled again. He finished with 14 points on 4-of-18 shooting and was 0-of-5 from deep. Fred VanVleet’s offensive woes carried over from opening night too, as he scored just 11 points on 3-of-10 shooting, though he added nine assists
But if Barnes is going to play like this, maybe the Raptors’ margin for error gets a little bigger. He hit his first NBA three but was generally everywhere he needed to be all game long. Trent Jr.’s breakout was welcome too as getting 20 points on 7-of-13 shooting is the kind of lift the Raptors will need on many nights. That Trent Jr. was so active defensively — he led the Raptors with four steals — is the kind of added value that will keep him starting indefinitely.
Achuiwa’s energy almost sunk the Raptors early — he was a little lost on the defensive end — but he settled down and ran his way into 15 points, 12 rebounds and two steals.
The Raptors’ offensive struggles continued early. They were shooting just 9-of-31 — the same woeful 29 per cent they shot in Game 1 — after the first quarter and were shooting 12-of-43 early in the second but, somehow, they stayed in the game. They were tied after 12 minutes and even managed to take the lead despite making just over a quarter of their shots when Barnes — who looked as smooth and confident offensively as any Raptor — took the ball the length of the floor and pulled up for a 15-foot jumper to put Toronto up 27-25.
By the time the Raptors coaxed another turnover from Celtics guard Marcus Smart and Anunoby went the length of the floor for a bucket, Toronto was up by eight. A moment later Barnes slammed home a VanVleet miss and the Raptors were up 10 with four minutes to play in the half, 41-31
The Raptors formula was simple: they took way more shots than Boston. They led 51-47 at half because they had taken 19 more shots than their opponents thanks to a 15-3 edge on the offensive glass and winning the turnover battle 12-3. With those kinds of numbers, shooting 35 per cent doesn’t matter as much.
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The season’s young, so are the Raptors and you can’t judge too much after just two games, but the Raptors are committed to how they want to play and have stuck with it through two games.
“Well, we’ve got to just, in general, want to attack,” said Nurse. “But you’ve got to be able to play all tempos. But you can’t attack if teams are back and set, and you got to get into your sets or your next action basketball or whatever it is. So, that’s lessons we have to learn.
“Just kind of some areas where we’re creating opportunities we’re not getting enough out of. We get turnovers, we’ve got to turn those into more points. I’ve been saying that for a little bit.
“We get offensive rebounds; we’ve got to turn them into more points. And it’s hard to get back off turnovers. So those are the situations really trying to run on. And then just play with some pace in the half court.”
It’s not always going to be pretty. For long stretches of games it might be ugly. But this is how the Raptors are going to do it and in the second game of 82 it looked a lot better than in the first.
This time they should look at the tape and savour it a bit.
