Say this much about the Toronto Raptors and their sub-optimal start to the 2020-21 season: They aren’t being casual about it.
There are no false pretences.
Kyle Lowry was calling the fourth game of the season a “must-win,” and the organization has already singled out Pascal Siakam, one of its core players, having him watch a game in street clothes after he fouled out of a game with 26 seconds left and walked to the locker room.
After the fifth game of the season — another loss — Fred VanVleet said, “We’re in a hole, so this one hurts a lot more.”
And all of this before the Raptors hosted the Boston Celtics at Amalie Arena in Tampa for the first time since their Atlantic Division rivals eliminated them in Game 7 of their second-round playoff series.
But a bad start is a bad start, and the Raptors were in a hole on merit as a team that is overly reliant on three pointers, doesn’t rebound well and has a hard time beating good teams – their only win coming against the lowly New York Knicks.
So Nick Nurse wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.
“We’re on their backsides, man, about things they’re doing wrong,” Nurse said before the ball went up. “We’re getting on them. And they can’t hang their hands by that or feel disrespected … it’s just all teaching. It’s all learning, and that’s just where we are.”
Where are they?
After losing 126-114 to the Celtics (4-3) — only an 18-5 run in garbage time that cut into what was a 26-point deficit made the game seem closer than it was — Toronto is 1-5, in second-last place in the Eastern Conference and about to head out on a four-game West Coast trip.
The Raptors started well, winning the first quarter, but they ran out of steam quickly as they lost the second and third quarters by 28 points.
VanVleet was outstanding, leading the Raptors in scoring for the third straight game. He put up a season-high 35 points on 13-of-20 shooting, and Lowry bullied his way to 18 points, five rebounds, five assists and two steals, while the troubled Pascal Siakam even showed some life attacking the rim, hustling in transition and on the offensive glass on his way to a season-high 22, bolstered by a season-best seven trips to the free-throw line.
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But the Celtics got a career-high-matching 40 points in 30 minutes from their young superstar, Jayson Tatum, and the Raptors bench was outscored to the tune of 55-17 before garbage time commenced.
There were positives. The Raptors got to the free throw line 38 times, by far a season best. They forced 19 turnovers and committed just 10 themselves. But once again they got pounded on the offensive glass — 12-8 — fouled too much (Boston shot 34 free throws themselves) and allowed the Celtics to shoot 15-of-29 from deep.
But some of the best theatre came before the game, when Nurse turned a routine media availability into a referendum on a number of players and on the roster itself. He pledged, for example, that Stanley Johnson — the powerfully-built but otherwise limited small forward who played just 150 minutes all of last season – had moved ahead of Matt Thomas and Terence Davis in his rotation.
“It just has to balance out the rotation. I just cannot keep sending out another guy, another little shooting guard. You know, we’ve got a whole slew of ’em, and I already have two really good ones that start and play most of the minutes, right? Stanley’s filling, we’ve got a gaping hole at the wing and three-four, and that is where he’s going.”
It’s not always advisable for head coaches to dismiss the utility of half the roster, but if you’re not going to speak your mind as the reigning coach of the year while in the first year of a new contract, then you never will — and for the most part Nurse always has.
“You know me, I don’t know my stats very well, but we’ve given up something like 55 offensive rebounds,” he said. “We just can’t continue to get bashed on the glass like that because all the other good stuff you’re gonna do just gets wiped out. So that’s why. I’m looking for some rebounding help, brother.”
And Davis, who was a darling as a rookie and who was the only Raptor to appear in every regular-season game last season, or Thomas, who Nurse all but gifted a rotation spot in the pre-season?
This might be one of those times when they don’t check their phones:
“I’m disappointed in Matt. I’m disappointed in Terence. They’ve made way too many mistakes defensively. They’re our two best shooters probably but they’re just coming out and fouling and giving up boatloads of points in a short amount of minutes, and they can’t get that many back on the other end. So I’m still searching there.”
Nurse searched so long and so hard that he even gave rookie point guard Malachi Flynn his first meaningful minutes of his career, running him out midway through the first quarter to allow rest for first Lowry and then VanVleet. The world didn’t end and Flynn didn’t look out of place.
In the early going, it appeared as if the Raptors were going to put their troubles behind them. They burst out to a 17-5 lead through four minutes, hitting five of their first six triples. Even Siakam — who struggled so badly against Boston in the playoffs and who has looked lost at times this season — got into the act, hitting a pair of early threes.
Toronto led 32-23 after the first quarter, but then the unravelling began. As they have so often this year, the Raptors stopped scoring. They coughed up a 5-of-24 quarter and could only watch as the Celtics took control of the half — and the game, as it turned out — with a 14-0 run late in the second quarter that saw Boston take a 61-46 lead into the intermission.
Things didn’t get better after the break. Nurse started Alex Len at centre after a woeful showing by Aron Baynes, who missed all five his shots — none from more that two feet, which is hard to do.
By then the Celtics were flowing and smelling blood. Jayson Tatum built on his 21-point second quarter with 15 more in the third, and Jaylen Brown — the Celtics’ best player so far this season — coasted to 19 points on 16 shots. And just to rub it in, there was an impressive outing by a point guard taken late in the first round — but it wasn’t Flynn. Instead it was the Celtics’ Payton Pritchard, taken 26th overall — three spots ahead of Flynn — who looked calm and comfortable on his way to 23 points off the bench on a night when Boston was missing guards Kemba Walker (knee), Jeff Teague (ankle) and Marcus Smart (thumb).
So where are the Raptors? They are in trouble if the expectation is to compete for an Eastern Conference title and beyond. A 1-5 start is hardly the kind of momentum that generates confidence in advance of a four-game West Coast trip that begins Wednesday night in Phoenix.
As Nurse wasn’t too shy about pointing out, there are enough gaps on the roster that a playoff spot — any playoff spot — might be a more realistic goal, with nothing promised or guaranteed.
