TORONTO — Tie game, 41.8 seconds to play and the Charlotte Hornets have the ball on the sideline kitty-corner to the Toronto Raptors bench. They run the talented but erratic LaMelo Ball off a screen, enter the ball to him and hope he can turn the corner and finish a lay-up to give Charlotte the lead.
Raptors centre Jakob Poeltl slides over to contest the shot, which he does successfully, but in doing so he leaves giant Hornets rookie centre Ryan Kalkbrenner wide open for an offensive rebound and putback. Kalkbrenner came into the game shooting a ‘must-be-a-mistake-but-it’s-not’ 81.8 per cent from the floor so far this season because most of his field-goal attempts have been coming on plays like this: uncontested putbacks or dunks.
This time, though, Raptors guard Immanuel Quickley, who was covering Ball on the play, sizes up the situation and times his jump perfectly to tap the ball out to a waiting Brandon Ingram, saving the home side from being down two with less than 40 seconds to play.
“I was just going whatever it took to win,” said Quickley (15 points, 10 rebounds, four assists) in a buoyant Raptors locker room later. “At that point nothing else mattered other that trying to make a play, offensively, defensively, you have to make the play to win. That’s all I was worried about.”
That’s what the Raptors were worried about as a unit. But their concerns were well placed. Thanks to a remarkable sequence of plays in the final seconds, beginning with Quickley’s unlikely tap-out, the Raptors were able to win a game that hung in the balance until the horn sounded, defeating the Hornets 110-108 at Scotiabank Arena on Monday.
One of the downsides (there aren’t many) of being one of the hottest teams in the NBA is Toronto has barely played anything resembling a close game. Coming into Monday night, they were 27th in the league in the number of clutch minutes – games where the winning team was up by five points or less with five minutes to play. Over their 7-1 streak before Monday night, the Raptors’ average point differential was 11.9.
Even their five losses so far have been by significant margins.
How would they react? Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic was as curious as anyone.
“This is good for us. This is going to be a very good film for us to watch. I thought that we did some extraordinary things there down the stretch — rim protection, blocking shots, coming up with some important rebounds,” he said. “It’s going to be good film for us to learn how we can close the game and better execute there.”
How the Raptors (9-5) got into such a close game against the Hornets, who start three rookies (albeit good ones) and were 4-10 by game’s end, will yield its share of material. Toronto led for the final 20 minutes of the game and held the Hornets to 42.5 per cent shooting while forcing 16 turnovers, but couldn’t put Charlotte away. Had the Hornets shot better than 10-of-40 from three (the Raptors were 10-of-25) the outcome might have been different. The Raptors’ 17 turnovers – five by Ingram – will need a look.
But when the game needed to be won, the Raptors’ key players – Quickley, RJ Barrett, Scottie Barnes and Ingram – all made big plays.
The next big moment came when the six-foot-eight Ingram took the ball down to right hand baseline while being covered by 6-foot-2 Colin Sexton. Ingram was the game’s leading scorer with 27 points and acquired by the Raptors for moments like this. But Ingram, a 10-year veteran, was in no rush.
“I wasn’t able to be that patient earlier in my career,” he said. “Even the year before last. But just seeing it over and over again, I took a few deep breaths, I knew I had to be patient because I knew they were going to send two [defenders]and I knew I didn’t want to turn it over.
“If they didn’t come, I was going to shoot a turnaround on Colin, he’s too small and if they sent two, I might have still shot it, but I was looking for the open play.”
So was Barrett (16 points, three rebounds, three assists).
The Raptors wing has cleverly adapted his game to fit better in a lineup where the offence is more likely to be initiated through Ingram, Barnes or Quickly than him. He’s become a smart and opportunistic scorer from off the ball.
“I was watching BI the whole time,” he said later. “They were kind of doubling all night. I tried to cut a couple of times [earlier]but it wasn’t open, that time it was so it worked out.”
Ingram hit a wide-open Barrett and the lefty from Mississauga, Ont. used his body to shield the ball from Kalkbrenner and finished softly over the rim. That gave the Raptors a 110-108 lead with 18.4 seconds to play.
But the Hornets had the ball and could tie with a two or win with a three.
Ball hit the paint after running off a screen by Kalkbrenner and twisted himself into a pretzel to get the ball to his centre for what looked like a game-tying dunk. At that moment Ingram was caught between hugging sharpshooting rookie Kon Knueppel (24 points, 4-of-10 from three) and helping at the rim. When it became obvious where the ball was going, Ingram got moving, gathered for his jump and blocked Kalkbrenner from behind.
“I knew I was late so I had to do something,” Ingram said of his second game-changing play in the space of nine seconds. “I didn’t think he was going to go up so slow, but I knew I had to make an attempt on the ball, either block the shot or foul him and make him go to the free-throw line. Nothing easy.”
Charlotte gathered up the loose ball, called timeout and was left with one more chance to win or tie with 7.5 seconds on the clock.
This time Barrett ended up defending Miles Bridges in space, a tough assignment. But the Canadian national team star stayed square and slid his feet. When Bridges faded back to shoot from just inside the free-throw line, Barrett extended every inch of his six-foot-seven frame to contest the shot.
It worked, but as the ball rolled off, it was Sexton who got the rebound in a scramble and put it up to beat the horn. But Barnes (16 points, six rebounds, six assists) was lurking, and when Sexton went up, the six-foot-eight Raptors forward got his second block of the game, sending the ball out of bounds as the buzzer sounded. After a brief review, it was clear the clock had expired and Barnes had a walk-off block to his credit.
“I was watching to see who was going to get a rebound and the ball fell into [Sexton’s] hands,” said Barnes. “And that was kind of my man and I didn’t box out, so I needed to go get the block.”
It was the last in a flurry of remarkable plays, all of which were crucial.
“All those reads there at the end of the game, that is the players,” said Rajakovic. “That is them reading the game and making the right calls there.
Collectively they secured victory, Toronto’s fourth straight and eighth in the past nine games, moving the Raptors into third place in the East. But perhaps more importantly, those plays and the win they made possible fuelled a growing sense of belief that this is a team is able to win games of all kinds.
“It’s practice for your goal in the long run,” said Ingram. “Executing in tight situations, trying to figure out what the best shot on the floor is, and also defensively, figuring out he right play. That’s going to help us in the playoffs.”
For 40 seconds of basketball, it was hard to imagine the Raptors figuring it out any better.
Grange for three
A very busy rotation
There’s been a lot of discussion about the Raptors’ crowded rotation at the shooting guard and/or small forward spot, with all of Gradey Dick, Ja’Kobe Walter, Ochai Agbaji and Jamison Battle in the hunt for minutes behind RJ Barrett. And if that wasn’t enough, add AJ Lawson to the list. With Agbaji out for the fourth straight game with back soreness, Lawson was recalled from Raptors 905 where the 25-year-old Mississauga native has shown that he’s probably too good for that level. Through the 905’s 4-0 start, Lawson is averaging 25 points and nearly two steals per game while shooting 50.8 per cent from the floor, including 43.3 per cent from three on 7.5 attempts per game. He was called up from 905 and was on the Raptors bench against Charlotte but did not get into the game.
A dunk to remember
It was hard to judge what was cooler, Ingram’s first poster as a Raptor or the bench’s reaction to him rising and dunking over Kalkbrenner at the 6:43 mark of the fourth quarter.
The bench went bananas, justifiably. But it was more than just the play, it was who was making it, said Rajakovic.
“I mean, Brandon is a very cool teammate, his teammates, they really love him,” the coach said. “He did great job getting incorporated in our team, even last year when he was not playing. He’s invested in our guys. He’s invested in this team. You know he likes to be around them. He likes to get to know them. And you know when somebody is just a good human being, and he does well, obviously you are going to cheer for him and support him. So that was the natural reaction from our bench.”
A Canadian in Charlotte
There’s not many Canadians whose basketball journey is like Jermaine Bucknor’s. The former national team standout from Ross Sheppard High School in Edmonton played professionally in France, Poland, Germany, Belgium, Argentina and Canada. He got into coaching after he retired from playing and is now in his second NBA season working on Charles Lee’s staff with the Hornets, helping develop Charlotte’s collection of impressive rookies.
“One of his greatest qualities is that he’s a hooper,” Lee said. “He was my partner today in a shooting competition [at Charlotte’s morning shootaround]and he shot the mess out of the ball, which I love. And so we were able to [win it]…
“But other than that, he’s an all-around amazing human being and a really good coach that is so locked into the details of the game. Every time I look over, he’s watching film and just trying to figure out, how can I get better? How can I help our players get better? Watching his court workouts again, it’s his attention to detail that he even explains things with. He’s a good teacher of the game, his patience levels, his optimism. He’s been a huge addition to our staff. I know coming in as a first-year coach is so important that you’re hiring the right guys to go to battle with you and to help support you and carry out your vision and enhance the culture. And he does it phenomenally.”
