Raps shaky in loss to Nets
Strugging Raptors seem to have lost their way as they lurch toward all-star break
The anger is palpable as is the concern, the worry is there and the level of frustration is at a season-high.
The Raptors are nowhere near where they want to be, nowhere close to where they were and nowhere approximately close to where they ultimately have to be. And it’s wearing on everyone. “I think tonight was just frustrating,” DeMar DeRozan said after the Raptors were spanked 109-93 by the Brooklyn Nets at the Air Canada Centre.
“The last two games we’re not playing like ourselves . . . we did it in four games in five nights last week, showed the type of team we are.
“We just have to be consistent with it and it’s just frustrating when little things might not go our way and we let that trickle down to other things. We’ve just got to stay level headed and keep pushing and doing the things that got us here.”
The problem Wednesday was easy to see but far more difficult to fix.
The Raptors simply didn’t defend nearly as well as they had to on the perimeter, allowing Brooklyn guards and wings unimpeded paths to the basket for either ridiculously easy layups or just as easy passes to open shooters on the three-point line. It was a breakdown at the point of attack, it was slow reaction by the big men allegedly there to protect the paint and the pick-and-roll defence was brutal.
Ex-Raptor Jarrett Jack burned them for 24 points, ex-Raptor Alan Anderson had 22 and a Brooklyn team that came into the game shooting a collective 32 per cent from three-point range made 10-of-33 shots from long distance.
When there’s basically no one guarding players along the arc, those shots become far easier to make.
“There are a lot of teams running pick-and-rolls on us and they are doing things where we have to help each other and scramble,” said Kyle Lowry. “I don’t think there are any individual or one-on-one breakdowns. I think it’s the schemes they are running, pick-and-rolls, making us tag and scramble and they are doing a good job of figuring out what we are going to do defensively and they are getting to the right spots.”
DeRozan’s frustration boiled over in the final minute when he was ejected for a Flagrant 2 foul for bodychecking Brooklyn’s Bojan Bogdanovic. It capped a 5-for-13, 13-point night for the Raptors swingman.
“It was just a hard foul,” said DeRozan. “They had got it going and they were rumbling like they were the No. 1 team in the East.
“I just wasn’t going to let them get anything easy.”
The trouble was, for the first 47 minutes, the Nets got easy after easy after easy basket and the Raptors couldn’t shoot themselves back into the game. DeRozan and Lowry were a combined 10-for-26 from the floor and Lou Williams hung up an unseemly 1-for-11night; there is no way the Raptors can with if those three post those numbers in the same game.
That becomes doubly true if Toronto defends as poorly as it did.
“We had some schemes in place, we didn’t get it locked in or tied up; if you don’t come in with the mindset that you’re going to out-work that team, you’re going to have more nights like this,” said Casey.
“For whatever reason, we’ve lost that work ethic, that fight, that grit, that grime and we’ve got to get that back.”
And get rid of the level of frustration that’s mounting with every game.
“There is a sense of frustration because we are losing games that we know we are capable of winning,” said Lowry. “For us it’s a bigger ingame goal for us.”