Recent losses don’t dent Raptors’ confidence level

Team feels it’s coming together despite setbacks

It speaks to how far the Toronto raptors have come since their 2-8 start that back-to-back endof-game losses have them thinking positively rather than lamenting their current situation.

From above .500 to a game below it in a matter of just four days could unravel a weaker-minded team, but the raptors came out of Wednesday’s loss in Miami sounding just as confident as they did following the win over Philadelphia on Sunday that began the week.

Kyle Lowry, the raptors’ six-time all-star point guard, sees a team that has weathered the worst of storms and is just now finding its first real rhythm of the season.

“We have been in and out of injuries and lineups and all that stuff,” Lowry said of the first half of the season which has just four games remaining in it. “I’ve been out. OG (Anunoby) has been out. Freddy (Vanvleet) has been playing a ton of minutes. Norm (Powell) is playing well. We are just trying to figure out the cohesiveness of how we can play with this small unit with Pascal (Siakam) at the five and OG at the four or five or whatever they are playing. So, it’s about getting that comfortability of getting on the floor and getting more time together.”

Head coach Nick Nurse has been surprisingly complimentary of his team in these past two losses, putting the blame on himself for not adjusting defensively quickly enough in the loss to Philly and then blaming basically bad basketball luck for the loss in Miami.

Like Lowry, he sees the path to a strong finish to the first half with games at home against Houston (Friday), Chicago on Sunday, and detroit on Tuesday followed by one more road game at boston on Thursday before the break.

The rockets have lost nine in a row, the Celtics have lost six of their past eight, and detroit has just one win in their past five .

Only the bulls, who have won five of their past six, seem to be on any kind of run right now.

The opportunity is there. “I hope we can keep our edge up to play defence as hard we’ve been trying to play it,” Nurse said. “Again, it’s not perfect and there’s some lapses here and there and there’s some mistakes, but I think the effort, and the fight, and the scramble is there and hopefully, we can do that. If we do that, we should give ourselves a really good chance and in the next games, upcoming games.”

despite a murderous schedule these past three weeks and the injuries that have come and gone, the raptors’ ability to get stops when they need them and string a bunch together, a hallmark of their championship season and even last year, is back after it went missing those first two weeks of the season.

In both losses to Philadelphia and Miami so far this week, the raptors have given themselves a chance because of their defence. both games were up for grabs in the dying minutes because Toronto’s defence locked in and strung together stops.

They didn’t shoot the ball particularly well in the final quarter of them Miami game, but they held the Heat to just 24 points in the final frame to put themselves one good scoring run from taking over the game.

The issue against Philly was a large early deficit that proved too big to overcome.

The biggest fix, as Lowry touched on, going forward is going to be rebounding the basketball as the team commits to a small starting five.

Lowry feels it’s just a matter of that five — himself, Vanvleet, Powell, Siakam and Anunoby — getting accustomed to playing together and the actual smalls in the lineup taking on a bigger share of the responsibility for rebounding.

“We’ve got to help, the guards — myself, Freddy, Norm, we’ve got to help,” Lowry said. “That’s the big thing for us, we gotta continue to just help, everybody. If I can go out there and grab five, six, seven rebounds, Freddy can grab four, five, six, Norm, and we do it as a cohesive and a collective.”