Taking what you can from a loss
TORONTO — In the heat of the moment after a potential massive comeback against the benchmark for excellence in the NBA comes up just short it’s difficult to find a silver lining.
Mention the words “moral victory” in this context and you’re as likely to have a player walk away from you as correct you. Players and most coaches hate moral victories mostly because they only come in losses.
The players and most coaches won’t tell you this but there was plenty to be gained from last night’s entertaining yet ultimately disappointing 127-125 loss.
Start with the experience itself. On the floor in the final five minutes of a game that had the Golden State Warriors, unquestionably the best team in the NBA today playing at or near peak capacity, the Raptors had Jakob Poeltl, Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, C.J. Miles and DeMar DeRozan. Norm Powell subbed in as well.
Outside of DeRozan and Miles every other member of the Raptors playing those clutch minutes is a better player today for having been through that than they were before.
Rarely are the Warriors pushed to their limits but they were by the Raptors and by this group in particular over those final few minutes.
Poeltl was a defensive wall and should have been rewarded for his block on Steph Curry in the dying moments rather than hit with another foul. But just as DeRozan himself had to endure years of progressing to the point where he got calls, Poeltl too has to earn him stripes in the league before he earns the respect of the officials.
There’s every chance he will go his whole career with a star like Curry getting that call against him but plays like that one will earn him plenty of credibility going against lesser stars in future.
Siakam, who had a bit of a rough week communicating switches on defence bounced back and couldn’t help but gain confidence with a strong showing in the waning moments of that game. His athleticism on both ends earned the Raptors opportunities that otherwise would not have been there.
VanVleet, a man who has the utmost confidence in his own ability, couldn’t help but gain even more directing the offence into the hands of DeRozan where it should be in crunch time or working to get CJ Miles an opening to take advantage of his ability to knock down threes from just about any area beyond half court.
“Yeah, we learned a lot,” VanVleet said after the game. “Obviously, you like to play these games against the best teams and obviously the defending champs, we wanna come up with the win. We’re not really into moral victories around here. So you gotta look and see what you could (have) done better. But you gotta respect the fight in the second half, the way we brought it, and the way we played against Cleveland. We can take some of the things that we did and carry those over and that’s what we gotta do, and eliminate a lot of the mistakes.”
Casey for his part has to be applauded for having the confidence to take the long-view approach and put his young kids in these situations. Granted there was no Kyle Lowry to turn to in these situations but he had a tried and tested Serge Ibaka on the bench but went with the kids because it was a combination that was working and he knows whatever experience he can get for these guys now makes them that much better come April and May.
“We can compete,” Casey replied about what he has learned about his team in the win over Cleveland and the failed comeback against Golden State after a pathetic first half. “We play the way we did the second half tonight, the way we played in the Cleveland game – again, I’ll take responsibility for coming out the way we did the first half, maybe didn’t give them enough confidence – we came out the second half with the swagger and toughness you’ve got to have to play against a great team like Golden State. You put yourself in position to win, you shouldn’t spot ‘em 27 points. Not saying you’re going to stop them but, still, the shots they were getting, almost like a layup line in the first half.”
Casey won’t say it because he is truly never happy with any loss, but at some level he had to like what he saw Saturday night form his team.
There was plenty to be gained from this particular loss.