The Toronto Raptors needed to take advantage of the start of a season-long, six-game homestand in the worst way.
Instead, they kicked it off by playing basketball in the worst way possible — for very long stretches offensively at least. The Raptors started out miserably, briefly showed signs of life and then seemingly were about to get shoved off the floor in the fourth quarter by the Milwaukee Bucks.
Er, hang on a second.
All the bad stuff happened — the Raptors lost 104-101 in overtime, and we’ll get to that — but Toronto did finish regulation with an improbable 28-7 run in the final four minutes that wiped out a 21-point Bucks lead in a blink of an eye, seemingly.
The fans in Scotiabank Arena who hadn’t left already went predictably nuts. It was the most fun stretch of basketball seen around here this season — easily.
It was capped by a Gary Trent Jr. triple with 0.8 seconds on the clock — his second bomb in the final 30 seconds — to send the game into overtime after Toronto had trailed Milwaukee by 11 points with 43 seconds to play. Scottie Barnes provided two hoops of his own in the frantic finish to regulation.
But then came the overtime period. After matching the Bucks bucket for bucket, Toronto collapsed on a driving Giannis Antetokounmpo only to have the Bucks star whistle a pass through traffic to a wide-open Grayson Allen to nail the wide-open game-winning triple with 10.8 seconds left. It was Antetokounmpo’s 10th assist and finished off triple-double that included 30 points and 21 rebounds.
Fred VanVleet had a chance to send the game into a second overtime in the final seconds but his three was wide and the euphoria was replaced by the realization that the Raptors had dropped another game they probably needed to have.
VanVleet finished with 28 points and 12 assists (on 8-of-23 shooting and 4-of-14 from three) while Trent Jr. added 22 points and Barnes scored all 19 of his points in the fourth quarter and overtime, but it was – even with the wild end – not enough.
Now, losing to the Bucks, a perennial championship contender led by two-time MVP Antetokounmpo is hardly the worst thing that can happen to a team, even on your home floor.
But the way the Raptors lost — with their season-long offensive woes laid bare in the first 44 minutes for all to see and to a Bucks team playing for the second time in two nights and missing two starters and two rotation players – is hard to swallow for a team that knows the clock is ticking if they are going to change the trajectory of their season before it’s too late.
The loss — the Raptors’ second straight and eighth in nine games — dropped Toronto to 16-22 for the season while the Bucks improved to 25-13.
In contrast to the hot-shooting finish, Toronto missed its first 15 shots and didn’t score a field goal until 7:24 had been played in the first quarter. Even with their late surge, the Raptors shot 32.8 per cent from the floor and 9-of-46 from deep. They forced the Bucks into 28 turnovers and still lost, which is really hard to do, but the Raptors have almost done it twice now in the space of a week, having barely scraped past the Phoenix Suns after forcing 27 turnovers.
But the Raptors offence in the half-court is so suspect that even taking an astounding 28 more shots that the Bucks – who shot only 39.8 per cent from the floor and 33.3 per cent from three – wasn’t enough.
Now, the Bucks are an excellent defensive team with a fairly simply formula. They rely on Brook Lopez to guard the paint while the rangy Antetokounmpo uses his speed and size to cause havoc elsewhere. Everyone else chips in and does their part, using their size and athleticism.
Consider this moment midway through the second first quarter: Siakam pump fakes Antetokounmpo from the three-point line and gets the Bucks star to bite. Siakam puts the ball on the floor and gets to the paint, but sees Lopez waiting there, patient as a mountain range. Siakam tries to ball fake the broad-shouldered seven-footer, who doesn’t bite, before dumping it off to Barnes, who can’t handle the pass and fumbles it out of bounds.
Early in the second quarter, O.G. Anunoby turned the corner on Antetokounmpo but again began hesitating as Lopez shuffled back to the rim, matching the Raptors forward’s speed. When Anuonby finally got into his lay-up, Antetokounmpo had followed him down the lane and swatted away the shot from behind.
Some version of those plays happened over and over again as Toronto either tried to drive the lane and got stymied or didn’t even bother trying and missed contested twos and threes on the perimeter, as the Bucks pressed up, confident that Lopez would protect them if they got beat.
It got to the point where Raptors head coach Nick Nurse changed his rotation to try and keep Barnes away from Lopez as the Bucks centre was barely guarding the Raptors forward, who in turn couldn’t or wouldn’t shoot enough to draw Lopez away from the basket. Eventually, Nurse went with the more shot-happy Chris Boucher to keep Lopez occupied.
When players are making teams adjust their rotations on the fly, you know they’re having a defensive impact, and it’s just one reason the 14-year veteran is a favourite to be named defensive player of the year.
“It’s his basketball IQ, his instincts and feel and there’s that little moment when you contest (the ball-handler), do you fake and fade (back to the rim), just different things,” said Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer who has leaned on Lopez as his defensive anchor for five seasons now, a stretch in which Milwaukee routinely has sat at or near the top of the NBA’s team defence rankings (they’re fourth this season) — the exception being last year when Lopez was out most of the season after back surgery and Milwaukee was 14th.
“We can talk about it, but there’s nobody that does it like Brook. We could get him to come out here and teach a class on it, but he’d probably get frustrated with us because there’s some things that are just natural and inherent.”
There’s that.
And also that there is no defensive package more guaranteed to emphasize Toronto’s jump-shooting ineptitude in the half-court than a giant, smart rim protector and a squad of rangy active defenders flying around the perimeter. The Raptors started off missing their first 15 shots, only one of which was actually at the rim. Tentative threes and contested twos bounced off the rim harmlessly. It was ugly.
When Siakam scored the Raptors’ first point on a made free throw with 5:12 remaining in the opening quarter, the sold-out crowd at Scotiabank Arena cheered like they’d won the lottery, or a free slice of pizza. Of course, Siakam missed the second free throw. Toronto finally broke through when Lopez and Antetokounmpo went to the bench. First VanVleet and then Siakam scored lay-ups in transition.
But that was it. Toronto missed its next six shots and finished the quarter having not scored a single half-court basket.
The only good news is that the Bucks were almost as bad, shooting 5-of-24 for the period and making eight turnovers, which how your lead is just 13-12 when you’ve held your opponent to 8.7 per-cent shooting.
On the other end, the Raptors may have caught a break given that Antetokounmpo and the Bucks played in Washington on Tuesday night and were in Toronto on the second night of a back-to-back. The Bucks star set a career high with 55 points in a win against the Wizards, capping a seven-game stretch where he’s topped the 40-point mark five times, including the previous three. Maybe he was lagging just a little.
The Raptors had plans for him — to over-simplify, the intent was to build a ‘wall’ off defenders between Antetokounmpo and the rim, both in the half-court and especially in transition. It’s the same strategy most teams use — and one the Raptors popularized with their (relative) success against Antetokounmpo during the Eastern Conference Finals in 2019 – but in his 10th season the Bucks star’s game continues to grow.
“His game has just evolved, certainly it has,” said Nurse before the game. “That was kind of early on in his career (going to the rim), that was his super unique strength, and he went to it over and over and then, as all these guys do, they see different things … and he’s certainly developed many more things.”
But more than anything, Antetokounmpo just keeps attacking, drawing so much attention that his teammates benefit. The Bucks started the second quarter on a 14-3 run thanks to a trio of wide-open triples from the Bucks supporting cast as Antetokounmpo was held to just eight points against five turnovers in the first 24 minutes.
Trailing by 11, the lid finally came off the basket for the Raptors, who missed their first seven shots of the second quarter to start the game at a ghastly 2-of-29. Threes by VanVleet and then Trent Jr. — Toronto’s only two makes from distance in 17 attempts — fueled a 16-5 run that allowed Toronto to be in the game. Against all odds, the Raptors trailed only 39-38 at the half.
It seemed like the game couldn’t get any stranger at that point. Turns out it was just getting started.
