Bucks make most of OT run
Dwane Casey had worried for days that the Toronto Raptors might not come back from the NBA all-star break with the proper level of intensity and consistency of effort.
They had won seven games in a row and ascended to the No. 1 spot in the Eastern Conference. The coach’s fear was that the team might be full of its collective self.
The coach was right; it just took a bit longer for it to manifest itself.
Paying the price for a litany of mistakes early in the game, the Raptors dropped a 122-119 overtime to decision to the Milwaukee Bucks at the Air Canada Centre on Friday.
A dramatic Jonas Valanciunas buzzer-beating dunk sent the game to overtime, but the Raptors gave up an 8-0 run that allowed Milwaukee to snap Toronto’s season-high winning streak.
Jason Terry and Khris Middleton made three-pointers in overtime for the Bucks, while Serge Ibaka missed a couple for Toronto.
A Giannis Antetokounmpo jump shot gave Milwaukee a three-point lead with 12.8 seconds left, and the Raptors missed a game-tying three and had to settle for DeMar DeRozan dunk with less than two seconds left. Two Raptors fouls gave the Bucks free throws with less than half a second to go and there was no chance for another miracle.
DeRozan had 33 points and Ibaka 17 for the Raptors, while Antetokounmpo had 26 for Milwaukee, which shot 13-for-26 from three- point range.
Casey’s biggest concern in the final 25 games of the season is, to use a pet phrase of his, attention to detail.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re doing the fundamentals,” he said. “And it starts with transition defence, oneon-one defence, shot challenges, all the stuff you could normally take shortcuts with, we’ve got to do all those things.
“It’s simplistic, it’s something you can control. A lot of times you can’t control whether you make shots or not, but you can control some of those hard things.”
It was those things that the Raptors were lacking most of Friday night. They were slow in transition, unable to get out to shooters and hammered on the backboards.
It wasn’t until the first eight minutes of the fourth quarter that they put together any stretch of consistent defence, turning an eight-point deficit after three quarters into a three-point lead with about four minutes left.