Raptors 90 – Hornets 85: U-G-L-Y

The Raptors defeated the Hornets in a shockingly bad game by throwing away a big lead, falling way behind, then roaring back.

The Toronto Raptors stopped the bleeding with a win over the Charlotte Hornets. This dreadful effort was the worst game I’ve seen in person all season, and perhaps for several seasons. Both teams deserved to lose, but the Raptors managed a Q4 comeback of epic proportions to grab the victory.

There was scant indication early that both teams were fated to enter The Twilight Zone at various times. Toronto was sound in Q1, with Jonas Valanciunas finding enough room to score frequently. DeMar DeRozan endured another crummy start, but Kyle Lowry drained a pair of long balls. Norman Powell, who got the start, helped out. The Raptors scored 31 in the first 12 minutes – and 27 in the next 24.

Better shooting at the Y

The second and third quarters had to be seen to be disbelieved. I thought I was in a time warp and was watching the hopeless pre-Vince Dinos of the late 90s. Powell scored 8 points in Q3, and still was minus_20, as was DeRozan. The Raps shot 25%, while the opponents were slightly better, at 76.5%.

Toronto fans, who were getting quite tired of the exhortations to cheer on their uninterested squad, booed as time expired in Q3. Little could we anticipate what was to happen next.

Coach Dwane Casey, seemingly quite disgusted with his main men, threw out a what-the-hell quintet of Jakob Poeltl, Delon Wright, DeMarre Carroll, Cory Joseph, and Lowry. This unlikely (to put it mildly) combination could do no wrong, and were never substituted for. The Raps erased a seemingly insurmountable 17-point margin in less than 5 minutes, as Toronto couldn’t miss and Charlotte certainly could. The Hornets didn’t make a bucket until there were barely 3 minutes to play, when Kemba Walker hit a contested runner. Frank Kaminsky, who along with Walker had shredded the Raps early, hit a 3-ball to tie the match.

Toronto was not to be denied. A Lowry 3-point play restored the lead, and Wright extended it off a turnover. A Nicholas Batum 3-pointer was matched by Carroll with 7 seconds left, and the crazy victory was in the books.

Takeaways?

There are several lessons to be learned from all this:

• DeRozan is more gassed than he knows; his shooting was woeful, again
• Dwane Casey is running out of patience with players who can’t deliver, and is willing to experiment
• the Raps best keep running into teams which over-rely on the long ball (13 of the Hornets’ 18 shots in Q4 were from beyond the arc) because a 90-point game won’t cut it
• never give up

Here’s hoping we’ve just experienced our first and last Bizarro-World victory of the season.

Putbacks: Serge Ibaka wasn’t at the game,otherwise one assumes he would have been introduced to the crowd…There was an elegant tribute to Wayne Embry, senior Raptors advisor, on the big screen…Terrence Ross has been spliced out of the opening film montage