Lamb game-winner does little to disrupt Raptors' agenda

The Jeremy Lamb moment was cute, again.

In the midst of March Madness and the musical chairs being played between five Eastern Conference teams for the final three playoff seeds, the 26-year-old’s 48-foot Hail Mary heave that banked in at Scotiabank Arena was a shot in the arm that could have been looked back on as the one that got the Charlotte Hornets over the hump.

It’s April now, and another Lamb game-winner complementing Kemba Walker’s sorcery that bookends a Toronto Raptors five-game win streak does very little to change either team’s circumstance and the oomph that the Hornets’ celebrations on March 24 contained was conspicuous by its absence here. Charlotte huffed and puffed their way to a gritty 113-111 win but would still likely need to win all three of their remaining games to stand a chance, currently at 37-42.

So, the Raptors lost the first game they played since officially getting locked into the two-seed in the East. That’s no excuse and there was nothing to suggest there was any kind of letdown felt on their part, either. They opened the game with a 19-5 run, closed the first half with a 16-7 run, and even refused to let go of the rope after the Hornets opened up a nine-point lead early in the fourth quarter.

A big reason for that final push was Serge Ibaka. The 29-year-old was superb on both ends of the floor once again, and brought out all the tricks in his bag to finish with 20 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks, his third 20-10 game in four.

The original man from the motherland has had one heck of a renaissance season, and as @MidlifeVertical noted on Twitter, if Comeback Player of the Year was still a thing in the NBA, the Congolese centre would have to be in the running.

When Ibaka struggled this season, it had usually been in the company of a struggling bench unit with point guards who had yet to find chemistry with him in the pick-and-roll. And who could really blame them? With the timeshare between Ibaka and Jonas Valanciunas at centre over the first quarter of the season, followed by Ibaka predominantly playing with the starting unit after the Lithuanian’s injury, there was never really consistent playing time to work through the kinks.

Now, though, with Marc Gasol cementing his place in the starting lineup after Ibaka’s suspension, and Fred VanVleet finding his groove with 13.2 points and 5.9 assists — while shooting 45.1 per cent from beyond the arc — in 11 games since returning from a thumb injury, Ibaka is once again being found in the spaces he best occupies and delivering.

Of course, more minutes alongside Kyle Lowry is a major boost as well. With a mostly healthy squad — Patrick McCaw is currently the only casualty after OG Anunoby’s return in this game — Nurse has been able to afford more minutes to Lowry with the bench unit and the familiarity those two share is going to be crucial in propping up bench units in the post-season.

Toronto’s All-Star point guard was spectacular all night, playing with a tenacity and verve that shows he’s also figured out when his offence is needed whether he’s playing alongside Kawhi Leonard or not.

This was arguably one of the bigger bones to pick when the Raptors went through a mid-season malaise: Lowry with Leonard vs. Lowry without. Take the former Finals MVP out of the lineup and you saw Lowry look to take on all comers, taking the Raptors offence by the horns and doing all the KLOE things to keep everybody else involved, too. When Leonard was in, his offence stagnated and often struggled to find a rhythm.

With all the pieces in place for some time now, Lowry is picking and choosing his spots perfectly. There is a pep in his step driving to the rim and the fact that he’s looking to score more often in those situations is making his teammates that much more of a threat when he does spring the kickout passes. Most importantly, he is recognizing those little moments within the shot clock when the offence is about to stall but injecting some life with some great penetration.

Speaking of the Kawhi offence, he was spectacular once again, dropping 29 on an efficient 12-of-18 from the field. He, too, has found a nice rhythm between getting his and attracting, recognizing and kicking the ball out of double-teams, another aspect of the Raptors offence that will undergo strenuous testing in the post-season.

Another will be closing out games, where even after Lamb’s uncontested three put the Hornets up two, there were still 3.3 seconds left for Nurse to draw up a bucket to tie or win the game. It was indeed strange to see a fadeaway two materialize when you’d figure the Raptors’ ideal preference would probably be to minimize the minutes they have to log in the regular season, but Nurse also did note that it wasn’t his first option.

“We changed the play,” Nurse told the media after the game. “We had another one we were getting ready to run, but I just didn’t quite have the right pieces in there that knew it well enough.”

Saving for the post-season? Perhaps. What has been established with Leonard taking a shot from the right baseline is that that’s his sweet spot, and in short clock/late clock scenarios, more often than not, Leonard is going to put one up from there either after receiving some separation via a screen or creating it himself. At 1.04 points per iso possession — good for fourth in the league — Nurse obviously believes there’s reason enough to ride it.

Unlike the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday, there was a compete level and intensity to Charlotte that gave the Raptors the type of test that can serve them well in the playoffs. There should be plenty more where that come from against Miami on Sunday.

FIRST-ROUND OPPONENT UPDATE

It continues to be the Nets who occupy the seventh seed, but they’ve got a back-to-back with Milwaukee and Indiana on Saturday and Sunday before closing out the season at home to Miami.

With the Heat falling to the Wolves in Minnesota, it appears increasingly likely that the three teams currently in the playoffs — Magic, Nets, Pistons — will occupy the final three spots in the East. I say this primarily because Miami has to now deal with Toronto and Philadelphia next.

Much love to James Johnson and a potential Dwyane Wade post-season swan song, but the physicality they bring to the table is something I’m happy to do without with the way the Raptors’ 2018-19 season has gone on the injury front. We’ve seen what Bam Adebayo did to VanVleet last season, what Kelly Olynyk did to Kevin Love a few years ago, and Goran Dragic’s elbow-first drives to the basket cause more harm to opponents than two points on the scoreboard.

No thanks.

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