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.
2. Pick a starting lineup and stick with it
The Raptors decided to throw Brooklyn a curveball (or, at least, attempt to) when they put temporary starter Thad Young back on the bench and opted for the height mismatches brought on by Christian Koloko. Considering how deep a hole they found themselves in, the addition wasn’t good enough to stabilize the squad.
Koloko did record five points and nine rebounds, but he was one of the main reasons the Nets raced out to such an insurmountable lead in the first quarter. Young went from starting to playing just four minutes, showing that it took all of two games for Nurse to fall out of love with Thad again.
The Toronto Raptors changed their lineup again.
Where Nurse supporters may see him mixing and matching to get the most out of a limited roster, haters will wonder how this team is supposed to execute any coherent strategy over the course of a 48-minute game when the lineups keep changing so frequently.
Young and Koloko both have their drawbacks as centers, but the Raptors need to choose one of them and mold their style of play around it. Either go all-in on small ball and concede rim protection with Young or get that shot-blocking while dealing with spacing issues due to Koloko. Flip-flopping gets us nowhere.
1. It’s time to be concerned about Scottie Barnes
After making some small improvements in his perimeter game during the offseason, Barnes has struggled out of the game this season, seeing his scoring, rebounding, and efficiency all go down. Barnes’ November was poor, as he shot just 39% from the field, and December hasn’t started well either.
Barnes finished with 17 points, nine rebounds, and three assists while making 50% of his shots. Not bad, all things considered. However, his seven turnovers were killer, especially when the Raptors were bailing water in the first half. Another injury sustained late in the game is not ideal for a player who was struggling prior.
Scottie Barnes must step up for the Toronto Raptors.
The three things Barnes needs to do in order to maximize his success are shoot efficiently, avoid turnovers, and show the requisite level of effort needed to win. It seems like Barnes just can’t seem to activate all of those traits at once this year, as he’s been much more volatile than he was as a rookie.
If he’s been playing through injuries this whole time, the fact that Nurse is throwing him out there in Game No. 22 of the season for heavy minutes is a disgrace. If he’s healthy, however, fans and executives alike need to be slightly concerned about why Barnes’ production appears to be stagnating.
His effort picked up in the second half, but that doesn’t erase the turnovers.