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Koreen: The Raptors do not fit - The Athletic

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TORONTO — Precious Achiuwa would make a difference. Otto Porter Jr. would make a difference. Having Pascal Siakam for the games he missed and Fred VanVleet for the games he’s missed, not to mention the ones he’s tried to play through despite nagging injuries, would have made a difference.

Disclaimer done. For the Raptors to be this bad defensively as we approach the halfway mark of the season is an abject failure, despite the asterisks.

“I don’t think you can count on the roster being healthy,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said Wednesday, a day before his team lost 119-106 to Memphis. “So you can’t sit and say, ‘Yep, that’s the answer: Wait till our roster’s healthy.’ We can’t count on that. We’ve got to get it done regardless. … There needs to be some more consistency with it. That’s it.”

Here’s what’s consistent: In their past three home games, admittedly against three teams with championship aspirations, the Raptors have been outclassed. In each of those games, the Raptors lost their competitive spirit at times. They’ve rarely wilted for whole games, and they didn’t against Memphis, either. Nothing they do well seems sustainable, though.

As we trot toward the new year, it’s clear: The Raptors don’t fit, and they can’t make up for it with pure energy expenditure. Offensively and defensively, this team is uninspiring and predictable. The same problems continue to reveal themselves. Nothing is changing.

Nurse called out the effort after Thursday’s game — they were bad in transition, so he’s not wrong — but that seems like a convenient answer specifically because it is so simple: Play harder. Play better. Play smarter. Those are, at once, necessities and not very helpful. In substance and style, there is plenty to pick apart.

Going back to last season, the Raptors have relied on isolation far too much for a team that doesn’t have any especially skilled one-on-one players, Siakam excluded. Coming into the game, the Raptors were among the leaders in isolation percentages yet ranked in the 7th percentile in efficiency on those plays. Yet, with as many gifted passers as they have — Siakam, the injured VanVleet, Scottie Barnes, Thaddeus Young — this is a team that attacks with little cohesion.

Assist percentage is not necessarily a positive or negative statistic, but the Raptors have been sinking in that category as the season has progressed. Against the Grizzlies, the Raptors relied a lot on Gary Trent Jr. cooking up looks for himself. It worked more times than it usually does, but it’s not a consistent path to success.

Who couldn’t have seen problems in the half court coming, though? Everyone — Nurse, Raptors president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri and his front office and the players — has to wear the continued defensive struggles. Add the Grizzlies to the long list of teams to shoot better than 50 percent against the Raptors. Just the Spurs, a team that is comically uninterested in winning basketball games presently, allow a higher shooting percentage to their opponents than the Raptors.

In the past two games, the Raptors defence has been at its best when it has played zone defence. The Raptors should be good in that scenario, given they have the length to cover a lot of space simply by moving from side to side with their arms outstretched. However, that length should also allow them to contain dribble penetration in more standard alignments.

They cannot, and it’s at the root of their problems defensively. With their excellent defensive rebounding faltering against the burlier big men and their trademark relentlessness being matched by similarly minded teams with more overall talent, such as Memphis, the shortcomings are being exposed.

“It was about as bad as it could get,” Nurse said of the team’s transition defence Thursday. “There (were) times when we would make a free throw and they would throw it ahead and dunk on at the other end. Plays like that can happen … maybe once every seven years — like, seriously. We’ve got to get focused and connected and get serious about playing harder.”

“We haven’t been getting back (in transition),” said O.G. Anunoby, who added that the starters haven’t been coming out with the requisite effort.

When a team isn’t meeting expectations, a binary argument often forms among a fan base, and sometimes within the organization in question: Is the coach not making the most of his roster, or is the roster simply not sturdy enough to flourish in any setting? With the Raptors, the latter is more the case, but it doesn’t have to be one or the other. The half-court offence was a glaring problem heading into the season, and the fact the coaching staff has failed to cook up anything reliable beyond hoping for Siakam’s excellence is damning.

For all those wanting Nurse to run a more traditional defence, though, it is genuinely hard to know what he should do. Outside of Siakam and Anunoby, every Raptors player logging significant minutes has disappointed on that end this season. They do not have the perimeter talent they thought they had. They don’t have the type of rim protector to play a conservative style, either.

On many fronts — not just with Barnes, who would make up for a lot of the team’s weaknesses with some improvements from his excellent rookie season — developmental progress has stalled. Defensive schemes that once looked to be on the cutting edge are now being routinely dissected. To make matters worse, this level of play puts the Raptors in a terrible negotiating position if they want to try to get better with a trade before the deadline.

The Raptors have now lost 13 of their past 19 games. With every defeat, investing resources into improving this year’s team seems like more and more of a dubious prospect.

Observations

• With VanVleet out with back spasms, Nurse used his 18th starting lineup in 35 games: Siakam, Barnes, Anunoby, Juancho Hernangomez and Christian Koloko. Nurse said before the game that getting set up on transition defence was going to be important, but this seemed like too much of a concession to that mission. To start neither Malachi Flynn nor Trent got rid of any notion of spacing the Raptors offence could put on the floor. (For what it’s worth, Koloko still has the best net rating of any semi-regular player in the Raptors rotation, ahead of Siakam.) The Raptors were outscored 13-4, and Flynn and Trent each entered the game less than four minutes into the contest. Trent and Khem Birch replaced Hernangomez and Koloko to start the second half.

• Flynn tried — he really did. But watching him attempt to fight for an offensive rebound while Steven Adams treated him as casually as a fly still drew a laugh from me. Adams had eight rebounds after Ivica Zubac had 10 Tuesday.

• Today in Pascal Siakam Is Impossible to Stop in Transition, I think Siakam might be impossible to stop in transition.

• I try not to talk about optics too much because in that way lies some dangerous assumptions. However, Barnes leaving the court during a play because he got hit in the head, going back to the locker room, then coming back out moments later and immediately marching over to the referees to complain about the non-call? Not good. Barnes returned to the game and was much more of a physical presence, which was good to see.

• After the game, the Raptors waived Justin Champagnie, whose contract was set to guarantee for the rest of the year this weekend. That opens up a spot for another player. Later in January, the Raptors will be able to offer 10-day contracts.

(Photo of Chris Boucher and the Grizzlies’ John Konchar: Dan Hamilton / USA Today)

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