Toronto grinds out ugly home victory
RAPTORS 95, BULLS 89
They can’t all be Picassos, but this one wouldn’t have made it onto any refrigerator in the Toronto market if it were a painting.
With the Chicago Bulls going back to their fundamentals and dummying down their playbook, slowing down the pace, preferring to put the focus on their defence, and generally just throwing up a wall of bodies at the rim, Sunday’s 95-89 Raptors win was as grind-it-out as a game could get.
The Raptors played right down to their competition for much of the game, but give them credit for finding a way — ugly as it was over the Bulls (10-27).
“They definitely mucked up the game and made it ugly and dirty and slow, and give them credit for that,” Fred Vanvleet said of the Bulls’ effort. “But you’ve got to be able to win in different ways.”
Down Kyle Lowry and Jonas Valanciunas and back from a few days in Florida where they spit a pair of games but did not play particularly well in either, the Raps (27-11) started very slow putting up a 14-point first quarter to set the low water marks for first quarters. But eventually they found their legs and their shots to do just enough to squeak out the win.
With Serge Ibaka and Vanvleet struggling to find the bottom of the net at all in the first half, and only relatively better in the second, it fell to the rest of the team to pick up the slack.
Unfortunately that wretched shooting night in Orlando seemed to have hitched a ride on the team charter because no one outside of Danny Green was shooting the ball particularly well in this game either.
So it fell to the collective to get the job done and somehow they did.
Pascal Siakam, who had his own struggles in the first half got it going enough in the third to carry the team a little.
He wound up with 20 points on the night but admitted he has to be a better finisher. Time and again in that first half he got to the rim only to be turned away by the contingent of Bulls lurking in the paint.
Kawhi Leonard had his moments too, but a 8-for-22 shooting night with a handful of missed bunnies at the rim wasn’t exactly typical Leonard. His 27 points led all scorers nonetheless.
GETTING COMFY
Injuries, especially when they come in droves like the Raptors have been getting them this past month aren’t much fun for anyone, but there is always someone who benefits. That individual for the Raptors is Norm Powell who is getting minutes and staying on the floor because of his defence. Powell, like every other Raptor, didn’t shoot the ball all that well Sunday, but he was aggressive defensively and earned his bench-high 23 minutes.
GETTING COMFY II
Canadian Chris Boucher is in that tough spot of getting a look only when Raptors coach Nick Nurse is searching for a spark or a lineup that works. He only played just over five minutes but he had two big blocks and a three-pointer he didn’t hesitate on that will likely earn him a couple of more minutes. You can see the difference in Boucher particularly on the defensive end where he was wandering early on, but now appears to know where he should be.
TAKING A SEAT
The Raptors need C.J. Miles shooting, the kind of shooting he was doing a year ago for them, and not what he has provided so far this season. In an effort to get him going, Nurse is doing a little bit of everything, playing him one night and sitting him the next hoping something will motivate Miles to get back to the shooter he can be. Miles didn’t play a second in a game in which Nurse was searching hard for something that would work.
LESSON IN PATIENCE
Sunday’s game was one of those that could have easily gone off the rails if the Raptors had let it. Instead they held the course, overcame some really awful shooting and relied on their defence to get them back in the game. The lack of panic with the Bulls playing a near perfect style to frustrate a team like Toronto, is a good sign going forward. You can’t be a contending team if you can’t adapt to different styles. The slow-it-down, pack-the-paint, and generally frustrate-the-heck-out-of-you approach Chicago had was initially effective but eventually overcome.