Raptors compete admirably, but rally falls short of much-needed win

TORONTO — For the past two weeks, the Toronto Raptors have looked lethargic, like a team hoping for 10 extra minutes of sleep so they can get back to that oh-so-perfect dream.

No matter how many times you hit snooze, that dream doesn’t come back as anything more than a groggy memory, and every time you close your eyes, the more tired you’ll get, delaying the inevitable.

After a heartbreaking buzzer-beater loss to the Los Angeles Lakers and a flat-out dismantling by the middling Charlotte Hornets, the Raptors needed a bounce-back game — if not a win, then at least a fight, a semblance of the energy that once was. 

Despite a 121-113 loss to the Boston Celtics, the Raptors reminded themselves who they can be, playing with energy and determination in an impressive second half. If only they did it for the full 48 minutes. 

Right off the bat Sunday afternoon, the Raptors looked like they slept through the alarm once again, sluggishly rotating on defence and allowing a dangerous Celtics team to pile it on with 77 first-half points on 56.6 per cent from the field and 44.4 per cent from three-point range on 27 attempts. 

It was lining up to be another quiet night inside Scotiabank Arena, with the crowd at a standstill, wondering where the team that went on a nine-game streak earlier this season had gone.

But 12 minutes and a couple of big buckets from Jamal Shead, A.J. Lawson and Ochai Agbaji later, the Raptors looked refreshed — like the team that earned their spot near the top of the Eastern Conference. And while they couldn’t close it out, it served as a timely reminder that there’s a contender, a fighter, somewhere in there. 

“They were not the same guys. Energy was different. Urgency was different. Couple other guys stepped up over there in the second half and helped us,” Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic said of the stark contrast after the game. “In this league, you cannot take anything for granted. Every single night is a new opportunity to compete and to prove yourself. What happened yesterday, good or bad, nobody cares about it. 

“It’s all about that moment, where (you’re) at, how you compete, and I’m demanding more urgency from the whole team, demanding more scrappiness, because when we do that like we did it in the second half, we’re a completely different team, and we can compete with any team in this league. We just got to do that over the course of 48 minutes. It cannot be just one half.”

Take Shead, who finished with nine points, three assists, four rebounds and two steals in 22 minutes, but who went into halftime 0-of-5 from the field with one assist, one turnover and en route to yet another tough outing for the second-year guard. 

Though he only had five points in the third quarter, they were loud and set the tone for the run to come for the Raptors. His first bucket came on a three-pointer with 1:47 to go in the frame, cutting the Celtics’ lead to four points and capping off an energy-shifting 23-4 run.

Then, as the seconds in the third ran out, Shead responded to a couple of three-pointers from the Celtics with a layup and a steal, nearly completing a four-point swing in the space of 10 seconds and prompting Rajakovic to celebrate with his energetic guard after the whistle had been blown on the frame. 

“When he’s like this, like he was in the second half tonight, that’s the Jamal that we know. That’s Jamal,” Rajakovic said. “He’s really making the difference for us, so we need to see more of him being the type of player that he was tonight.”

“These guys need me to be a vocal leader, an energy giver, just be myself every night,” Shead said of himself after the game.

For a second there, the Raptors were riding high. Regular Raptors 905ers Alijah Martin and AJ Lawson checked in to start the fourth — not the regular group you’d see with a suddenly tight game hanging in the balance. 

Shead stayed in the zone to start the frame, knocking down a floater, then dishing out a dime to Lawson in the corner for a three-pointer. One-point game.

Jaylen Brown coughed up the ball above the break, the Raptors recovered the loose ball after, and Shead and Scottie Barnes sprinted down the floor, with the former finishing the layup and grabbing Toronto’s first lead of the game — 98-97 with 10:39 to play.

While Barnes (18 points, 11 rebounds, eight assists, one steal and one block) and Ingram (30 points, four rebounds and three assists) did their parts, depth players — guys who know they need to fight for their minutes and bring the energy in the sparing seconds they do get — gave the Raptors a chance on Sunday. 

“All of those guys are very important for us, and we trust and believe in all of them, and they’re going to get opportunities,” Rajakovic said about the depth guys bringing the energy. “AJ, Alijah stepped on the floor tonight. Chucky, he’s going to be there. Like everybody can have an opportunity. They just need to work very hard to be ready for the moment.”

But when the Celtics’ three-point-heavy offence is hitting its stride like it was in the first half and responding to runs like they were in the fourth, there aren’t many teams in the league that can stop them.

Payton Pritchard (15 points, four rebounds and six assists), Derrick White (27 points, four rebounds and five assists) and Brown (30 points, eight rebounds and five assists) turned up the heat in the fourth. 

Pritchard drilled a triple to give Boston a three-point lead at the seven-minute mark and hit another with four minutes to go to build the lead back up to six and keep the Raptors just far enough away from completing an all-too-necessary rally. 

The dagger came from White, who knocked down a 32-foot three-pointer off the dribble in Jakob Poeltl’s face, taking the lead to nine and simmering the Toronto crowd. 

“It’s good that it’s happening early in the season. You get to learn from it. That Celtics team, of course, they’re missing a few guys, they traded a few guys, but they’ve been in a lot of situations where they executed at the end of the game,” Ingram said of Boston’s late-game execution, taking the loss as a touch point and a learning opportunity. 

“They got a formula down where they know what to go to. So if we’re gonna be in games like that, that’s our next step. Of course, we had some success in those times, (but when) we go against these teams that have been there before, we gotta be a little bit sharper.”

Sometimes you also just lose to the math. The Celtics knocked down 20 three-pointers on 42.6 per cent, while the Raptors only attempted 22, sinking nine for a 40.9 per cent mark. When you’re trying to dig yourself out of a hole (which the Raptors did admirably), trading threes for twos isn’t gonna work in your favour. 

But the math does get a lot easier when you don’t give up 77 points in the first half. 

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