A little consistency could go a long way for the Raptors
TORONTO - As far as Fred VanVleet is concerned, the Raptors’ quota for giving away games in a season was reached a long time ago.
Sunday night’s 116-112 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves was just another example of how this team, as good as it can look one night, can look absolutely horrible the next.
And it all comes down to defensive consistency.
Some nights the Raptors have it. Others, like Sunday against a Minnesota team that had lost four in a row coming into Toronto and was without one of its marquee players in point guard D’Angelo Russell, there is no sign of it.
The Timberwolves, led by No. 1 overall pick Anthony Edwards, seemed to take turns running into the heart of the Raptors defence and making layup after layup for long stretches of the game.
That protecting the paint is one of the primary tenants of the Raptors defence illustrates just how far out of whack the Raptors were Sunday night.
That this kind of performance came hot on the heels of a promising road trip was either terrible in terms of what it says about that recent trip or expected given when it occurred.
Head coach Nick Nurse alluded to the latter in trying to explain his team’s lack of push back until it was too late.
“I don’t know, sometimes back off a road trip sometimes these are tough,” Nurse said. “I don’t make any excuses for any of that stuff but you gotta play your way out of it. So, somewhere during the game you’ve got to play your way out of it and get to some consistency and we didn’t do it till it was really late I don’t think.”
Even with their consistent defensive failings, the Raptors had a chance to tie the game and send it into overtime with a basket with seven seconds remaining.
The Raptors forced a turnover to set up an inbounds play and got Pascal Siakam a one-on-one matchup with a lone Minnesota defender between him and the basket.
Siakam got all the way to the rim and layed the ball in off glass only to see it rim around the cylinder and pop back out basically sealing the loss.
It was devastating in the moment given how perfectly the sequence unfolded until the spill out at the very end, but it’s not what the rank and file were talking about after the game.
VanVleet and Kyle Lowry, the two-headed leadership train on this team took turns being upset with the inability of their team to play a consistent four quarter defensive effort, something that in the past has just been accepted as the norm.
“We understand that we can’t have those games given away,” Lowry said. “We’re three games under .500 and we could be six games over .500. It’s that small of a difference.
You’ve just got to continue to work and continue to just push and push and hopefully roll off some more wins in a row. I think that’s what we’ve missed this year, is just a consecutive win streak, a big five-, six-, seven-game winning streak.”
VanVleet, normally much more analytical post-game seemed to be somewhat lost for words to explain how different this team can look defensively one night to the next.
“Really frustrated, brother,” VanVleet said when asked where he was on the frustration meter knowing this team can defend but then can also give up 37 points in a quarter to a Minnesota team that struggles to score at the best of times.
“I don’t have much more of an answer for you than that,” VanVleet said.
“I’m trying to answer your question the best I can, but just to answer it directly: Pretty frustrated knowing that we can do it. So here we are. Here we are again.”
There is hope on the horizon in the return of OG Anunoby, though even that seems headed in the wrong direction. Initially he was thought to be returning Sunday but didn’t make his return. Now he’s listed as doubtful for the first game in Milwaukee. Eventually though he’ll be back and welcomed with open arms particularly against the offensively potent Milwaukee Bucks who average a tick belong the offensively brilliant Brooklyn Nets in terms of league dominance in scoring.
The Raptors scored with Brooklyn in a huge road win last week holding the Nets under their season average enough to make their own offensive burst stand up.
The Bucks, though, defend substantially better the Nets allowing just under five points a game loss to opposing offences so scoring with them is only going to be harder than it as against the Nets.