Scottie Barnes and the Toronto Raptors were punched in the mouth by the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday night, and a date with Kevin Durant’s Brooklyn Nets is typically not what the doctor would recommend for a team that is struggling to defend on the perimeter.
Toronto took all of that pent-up anger from the New Orleans loss, went out on the floor in Brooklyn, and…got absolutely destroyed in a fashion that was somehow even more embarassing than the Pelicans game. The Raptors were already down 24 by the end of the quarter.
Pay no attention to the 114-105 final scoreline. That’s as phony as a $3 bill. The Raptors were down by as much as 35 points in the second quarter and only managed to claw their way back into the game when the Nets very clearly took their foot off the gas pedal. This roster is mired in a very deep funk.
The takeaways from this game are plentiful, but very few of them are good. The Raptors can’t seriously claim to be contenders when impact players are struggling and elite teams continue to beat up on a disjointed roster in the first half of games.
3 hot takeaways as the Toronto Raptors lose to the Brooklyn Nets.
3. The first quarter effort is unacceptable.
For the second game in a row, Toronto surrendered 40 points in the first quarter, putting them in an impossible hole before they even had time to catch their breath. This team is built entirely around stingy defense, so the fact that they’ve been so poor in this area has been extremely puzzling.
Stationary 3-point shooters like Joe Harris were able to decimate the Raptors from the corner. Giving up a ton of 3-pointers to a good offensive team is one thing, but anytime an NBA team starts out 15-20 from the field, that’s a damning indictment of both the scheme and the players’ efforts.
The Toronto Raptors started slow once again.
The Raptors weren’t much better offensively. In fact, that may have been worse. They scored just 17 points in the quarter and had just two made field goals out of their first 16 attempts. That’s good for a success rate of 12.5%. No level of poor depth can excuse such a horrid performance.
There were some positives in the second half. Barnes was more offensively aggressive, Gary Trent Jr. got hot again, and O.G. Anunoby showed some heart. Unfortunately, due to yet another poor start from Toronto, none of the positives from that part of the game mattered one iota.