As Raptors continue to stumble, some mistakes inevitably fall on coaching

Los Angeles — At least no one can suggest any single coaching decision was the difference as the Raptors fell 123-103 to the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday night. 

Instead, the Raptors got done in mostly by LeBron James. The ageless wonder took over the Sunday night game after Anthony Davis — who has been the Lakers’ best player this season and a legitimate MVP candidate — had to leave the contest with 5:16 left in the 3^rd quarter after getting hit in the eye after a big block on Raptors centre Jakob Poeltl.

The Raptors were leading by three at the time and had been in some form of control for most of the night. “I think for the longest time in the game, we were really good,” said Raptors reserve Chris Boucher, who had 18 points in 20 minutes off the bench for Toronto. He wasn’t wrong. It looked like the Raptors would once again be taking a favoured team down to the wire, which has become their trademark to this point in the season. Maybe one of these times, they could push it over the finish line. Doing it in Los Angeles against the Lakers would make it a little nicer, no doubt.

But James wasn’t having it after scoring just five points in the first half. The NBA’s all-time leading scorer showed why he’s still a force in his 22^nd season as he scored or assisted on 11 points in what ended up being the decisive 18-9 Lakers run to end the quarter after Davis went out. He helped give Los Angeles a six-point lead to start the fourth quarter, and it was all the daylight the Lakers needed as the soon-to-be 40-year-old finished with 19 points, 10 rebounds and 16 assists. James completed his 139^th triple-double with just over a minute to play by grabbing his 10^th rebound and pointing to a section of Lakers fans who had been reminding him how close he was. 

James was then subbed out, replaced for the final minute by his son, Lakers rookie Bronny James, who was scoreless.

“LeBron James is probably one of the best, if not the best, player that has ever played this game,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “… He’s just a player that sees the game with different eyes and is able to punish every little mistake or mismatch that he has there.”

The Raptors did a lot of things right. They had six players with at least 12 points and none with more than the 18 points that Boucher and RJ Barrett had. Toronto counted a healthy 26 assists on 37 field goals. But Barrett shot just 5-of-15 from the floor and counted four turnovers as he has been struggling at times to generate offence with Scottie Barnes still out with an eye injury. As a group, the Raptors had 18 turnovers (to the Lakers’ five), which was the biggest single statistical difference in the game, along with the Lakers converting 51.2 per cent of their shot attempts to Toronto’s 45.1 per cent. 

The Lakers improved to 6-4, while the Raptors dropped to 2-9 and remain winless so far in their four-game road trip, which winds up Tuesday in Milwaukee. The Raptors are 0-6 overall on the road.

But the Raptors aren’t only a happy story about a group of gritty over-achievers. Despite the emphasis on team defence since training camp, it hasn’t shown up yet — Toronto is last in defensive rating after being 26th last season, and turnovers have been an issue all season.

“We were scrambling to guard very basic actions,” said Poeltl, who finished with 14 points, 10 rebounds and four assists. “… For sure they have good offensive players that make plays and punish mistakes, but we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard … we shouldn’t be making mistakes like these.”

Some of that falls on coaching, it’s inevitable. 

The challenge of being in so many close games is that there are, paradoxically, more things to scrutinize. If the Raptors were getting blown out routinely, it would be blamed on a lack of talent or commitment or both. Coaching might be a problem, but it would be hard to argue it would be the biggest problem. 

Instead, by coaxing a steady stream of competitive games out of a team that has battled injuries, unfamiliarity and youth and entirely unburdened by expectations, Rajakovic has earned the right to be second-guessed on some of his late-game decisions in the game of speed chess that is the final two minutes of an NBA game. 

While Sunday’s result might go in the ‘is everything all right?’ file, which is where most blowout discussions go, the Raptors’ loss Saturday against the Clippers was a different category, as the Raptors, trailing by three with six seconds left, ended up running the same inbounds play twice, even with it likely being the wrong choice each time. 

The play was to get the ball to Poeltl, who would simultaneously set a screen and make a handoff to one of the Raptors’ shooters on the floor to set up a game-tying three-point play. The problem is that the Clippers fouled Poeltl on the catch twice, which was predictable. The first was to burn the foul they had to give before putting the Raptors in bonus, and the second was to put the Raptors — Poeltl in this case — on the free throw line, reasoning that it would be better to have Toronto make two free throws rather than have a chance at a game-tying three-pointer.

The problem was that the Raptors were out of timeouts and couldn’t change the play once the first one got spoiled by the Clippers’ first foul. The Raptors ran it again, and the Clippers didn’t even have a moment to be confused. They simply fouled Poeltl and put him on the line, which is what they wanted to do in the first place. The Raptors centre intentionally missed the second free throw, and Poeltl almost scored on the putback to put the game into overtime, but that rimmed out and the Raptors had lost their third straight and fifth straight on the road.

Did it matter? Probably not in that whatever play the Raptors ran, the Clippers were going to foul and put who had the ball on the free throw line, given it was a safe play with a three-point lead.  But it wasn’t the ideal play, and game management in the NBA needs to be at a high standard. As the Raptors have shown in nine of their 11 games, the margins are that close.

As a result, it was the kind of sequence that keeps a coach up at night, and Rajakovic was no different. By the time the Lakers game was set to tip-off, he acknowledged that he wished he could have handled the end-of-game situation on Saturday differently.

“In those situations, I need to use Jak more as a screener, not a guy that was supposed to catch the ball and then screen,” said Rajakovic. “So that one last night goes on me, and I need to do a better job … We did not have the second timeout to [use] to draw a different play there. So it was a perfect storm coming our way.”

There have been other examples: On Oct. 28^th, Rajakovic’s decision to let Barrett attack in transition on the final play of overtime rather than call a timeout didn’t work out well as Barrett missed a tough shot, and the Raptors ended up losing a game they were leading by 10 with 2:17 to play.

On November 4^th, this time playing at Denver to start their current road trip, rookie Jonathan Mogbo was trapped with the shot clock winding down and the Raptors trailing by one. Rajakovic didn’t signal for a timeout, and instead, the Raptors ended up turning the ball over on a shot clock violation and lost another game they could have or should have won.

None of which should take away from the big picture: the Raptors are playing hard and unselfishly and above expectations. Las Vegas oddsmakers are the perfect barometer, but Toronto entered Sunday’s game with a 2-8 record against the point spread. They’ve only been blown out once, and that was on opening night to a Cleveland Cavaliers team that is 11-0 on the season. Before last night, they were 18-16-2 in their previous 36 quarters. 

Second-year wing Gradey Dick is opening eyes around the NBA — “he’s a fantastic offensive player,” was Lakers head coach JJ Redick’s pre-game assessment — the Raptors are getting meaningful minutes out of unheralded rookies, and they’ve found an unexpected contributor in Ochai Agbaji. And all the while they’ve been managing injuries to as many as five players projected to be in the top eight in their rotation. There is far more good than bad.

“I think this whole season is about the big picture,” said Rajakovic. “… We need to understand where our young core is, how we need to develop them. And that is the most important thing for us. We want to be competitive in every single game … outside of the Cleveland game, everything else, we found our way to be there with five minutes to go, and we’re fighting in all of those games against really good teams and on the road, and everything and our spirit and our energy is there. I’m really satisfied with our effort that we’re putting in. Now, it’s learning. What are the plays that we can run down the stretch? What do we need to adjust defensively? How we can make those winning plays? And it’s a work in progress.”

Rajakovic wasn’t referring to his coaching, but he could have been, and it would have been fair. 

And in the same way his players and his team have shown enough progress to merit optimism through a tough start, their head coach has as well.

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