Raptors get bullied by Magic as defence no-shows

Raptors get bullied by Magic as defence no-showAmit Mann recaps the Raptors' 127-106 loss to the Magic. They're now 0-2 in the In-Season Tournament and will look to rebound against the Indiana Pacers Wednesday night. Paolo Banchero scored 25 points, Jalen Suggs added 18 points and a lot of energy, and the Orlando Magic won their fourth straight. Dennis Schroder led Toronto with 24 points while Pascal Siakam had 16 points and eight assists for the Raptors, who shot 50.7% and made 14 of 28 3-point shots, but committed 23 turnovers.

Video Transcript

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AMIT MANN: Welcome, welcome, welcome, to the Raptors Over Everything podcast. Rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast feeds and. On YouTube, like and subscribe there as well. Thank you for tuning in after a game like that, where the Raptors fall to the Orlando Magic IN the second game of their in-season tournament from the get go.

The Raptors didn't look like they were up to caliber of the Orlando Magic in this one. They had a lead at the, what? 10:49 mark. That was the last time they had a lead, was at the 10:49 mark of the first quarter. After that, it was all Orlando. And I mean, first off, let's give Orlando credit for the effort that they showed.

I mean, they're a team that's emerging, a team on the rise, no different than the OKC Thunder. And we're seeing, bit by bit, how they're going to be successful going forward. And a lot of it is their defense. And I believe they are ranked first in the league in defensive rating. And we saw a good dose of that tonight, but a lot of this was about the Toronto Raptors and the mistakes that they made on both ends. So looking at some of the stats, 23 turnovers for the Raptors leading to 31 points.

They get outscored in the paint, 68 to 36. In bench points, the Magic have an advantage of 56 to 32. And shots, just shots in general, the Magic have 100 shots. The Raptors have 75. And fast break points, 23 to 9.

So as I mentioned, yes, right from the get go, the Magic were just at a different level than the Raptors. Their tempo was excellent. And they showed it on both ends. They were everywhere on defense. Offensively, they were getting into their actions really quickly. They were running-- as soon as the Raptors had a make, they were out there. And they were running. And it was led by Jalen Suggs.

He was lightning in a bottle right from the get go in this game. I mean, looking at one of the first possessions, he beats five Raptors down the court for a layup. And then he creates a turnover after not allowing-- Pascal switched on to him. And he wouldn't let Pascal get the ball. In the post, pokes it away. And then after that, he hits a 3, hits another 3 which was a bank.

And the image of this game for me is probably going to be like Jalen Suggs with his tongue out, I think it was in the third quarter, and it's all out. And he was-- man, he was vibing tonight. He was probably one of the more influential players. He was their pulse, I'll put it that way. That's what he was tonight.

I did a podcast going into this game. And the fella had mentioned that Jalen Suggs, he's just playing so well. He is becoming like their Energizer Bunny, game out, setting the tone for them. And once again, he did that. But defensively for the Raptors, I mean, offensively, they got their shots. They shot pretty well outside of the turnovers, which we'll get to in a second.

But defensively, they were an absolute mess. A little like insider into how I do my work game in, game out, I got a document. And I use keywords to identify certain things that are important. Make, defense, POV, and things of that nature. And another category I have is damn, damn as in bad things that happen for the Toronto Raptors.

And in this game, on my document, I have 22 damns. That's a record, a season high, if you will. Yeah, so just looking at the defense of the Raptors, they really didn't do much well. So obviously, their transition defense was not good. As I said, after every make, Orlando was pushing the ball. And the Raptors weren't there to meet them. And it happened constantly.

And if they were there, then they weren't getting the right matchups. And then Orlando was working off of that. Paolo Banchero was excellent tonight. We'll get to him in a second. But he was very good. And he was one of the benefactors of the Raptors not getting back in transition. And also again, Jalen Suggs, a lot of his points came from that very way.

It was him getting the ball off a make or off a miss. And he's just bolting down the court. And he's beating everyone. And he's getting to the basket. Obviously, the depth of the Magic really showed tonight. And they are a team that can go 10 deep, not just like kind of 10 deep. No, they got 10 players who can execute at a pretty high level.

And you look at Cole Anthony, he comes off the bench, 15 points, 10 assists off the bench. He was a monster in the pick and roll. He was hitting floaters. He was getting to the rack. He was making some nice passes, obviously, with 10 assists. He was a huge problem for the Raptors along with Jalen Suggs.

And just like that kind of depth, they really do come in waves, the Magic. And they certainly came in several waves in this game. But just looking at the defense again, there were several just lapses of judgment, are we switching, are we not switching? Guards getting tap outs. Gary Trent Jr., there was one remember where Malachi Flynn gets switched on to Paolo Banchero and play some pretty sound defense.

But then shot goes up, and there's Anthony Black just tipping it in. And Gary Trent Jr. has no idea what's going on, not good. But those are the attention to details that you need on defense. Are you aware? Are you focused? Are you locked in for 24 seconds and also get the rebound? And the Raptors, man, they just weren't.

I mean, after the first quarter, you look at it, and they were down what? By 7 points. But they finished the quarter decently. They kind of weathered the storm. And so you're going into the second quarter, you're like, OK, well, let's see what kind of bench unit we're going to get. And I want to pivot to some of the substitutions now because that lineup that started the second quarter, just not a good decision, in my opinion.

It was Scottie, Chris Boucher, OG, Gradey Dick, and Precious Achiuwa. So Malachi Flynn played some minutes in the first quarter. And then he didn't play with that group to begin the second half, or the second quarter, rather. And I just found that to be a bit of a curious decision because I mean, how relentless Orlando is with their pressure, they're getting all kinds of deflections. They're in the passing lanes. There's very little room out there.

And so you need probably some ball handling to at least to help Scottie as he's doing his thing on offense to just give him a release valve a little bit. Someone who can get-- who can touch the paint, who can make kickout passes, who can bring the ball up the court. So maybe you can run some off ball stuff for Scottie to get him pressuring the paint a little bit.

And Malachi wasn't in that lineup. And I thought that was a really odd decision. It just didn't really make sense to me. Looking at that second quarter, that unit that I'm talking about, it gets outscored 15 to 6 before the first sub comes in for the Raptors at the 6:53 mark of the second quarter. That's when Jakob Poeltl comes in. And eventually, some of the other starters do come in as well.

And I just think that lineup it wasn't a good move. I look at it, and there's a few examples right here. Precious Achiuwa, he's overdribbling, something Darko has talked to him about. Granted, there was another play later on in the game where he actually made the right play. He touched the paint, he kicked it out, and Dennis went for a layup. But that was an area where he didn't make the right decision and draws an offensive foul.

Then Chris Boucher, he's ball watching, Jonathan Isaac just cuts back door and it's a dunk. Then they take a timeout. And here we go again, Jonathan Isaac, who was very influential in his minutes, he's not playing too many right now, but they're continuing to ramp him up as he comes back.

Rearview block on OG as he's going towards the bucket. And then on the other end, Chris Boucher doesn't realize that he's coming. Jonathan Isaac is coming for the offensive rebound in transition. And he gets that. And then later on, an odd one, and Precious and Chris, they just didn't really have the focus that I think they really should have had, especially in their first shift.

Precious Achiuwa, it's a kind of a bit of a play around the baseline. And they're inbounding the ball, Orlando is, and to me, it seemed pretty clear that Precious just had to switch onto, I believe it was Franz Wagner. And it was a pick and roll action with the other Wagner, Mo Wagner. And OG was covering him.

But along the baseline, once they do that, you kind of have Franz in a corner. And Precious staring at him, you got OG facing the baseline. And Precious just dips. He just leaves and he goes towards Wagner at the 3-point line. And it's just like he just has a wide open lane towards the basket. That's another example of just like, what are we trying to do on offense-- or on defense?

And are we executing it? And are you locked into the details of what we're doing? This game obviously wasn't going well for the Raptors. And they were trying a few different things. And do what we're trying to do on a given possession on defense? Do you know? I'm asking that question because it seemed like at points, that wasn't the case.

But even going into the third quarter, I mean, the Raptors, they had a little bit of a run going into-- at the end of the second quarter, so it was around like what 11-point game, 50-- yeah, 67-56. So obviously, not insurmountable. You can make that-- you can make that up. But then at the beginning of the third quarter, Goga Bitadze was a monster. And Jakob Poeltl he had a hell of a night tonight.

He had-- look at his stat line, I'm not even sure what it ended up being, I'll look at it right now while we're chatting about this. So he had 10 points, 10 rebounds, four turnovers, five of seven shooting. That's obviously not a bad game statistically. But dealing with Bitadze was a problem for him. Dealing with some of the guards that Orlando has, Nikola Anthony, Jalen Suggs, some of the guys that can just turn the corner on some of those pick and rolls and get towards the basket, yeah, Jakob had a hell of a time tonight. And Bitadze in that third quarter, holy smokes.

So another couple of sequences that went pretty bad for the Raptors, but very good for Bitadze. So he gets the block on Jakob. And then he eventually scores-- in another possession, he scores off a Spain pick and roll, on the alley-oop, actually. And then a few minutes later, he strips Jakob. And it leads to a Paolo floater.

And then there was a play where Dennis just took like a really odd floater. Bitadze is right in front of him. And he tries a floater from around the free throw line area, gets blocked pretty badly. And then, again, this is all within like a 6-minute stretch, 4 or 5-minute stretch. Later on, the Raptors are on defense. And Bitadze, he gets a tapout. And it leads to a 3.

And not to mention his offensive prowess, his ability to be a bit of a hub for the Magic. He had six assists tonight. In DHOs, he does a great job of turning his body and creating that space as a DHO is happening. And they ran a lot of those along the wing. He had a few nice passes tonight. He's a pretty intriguing player.

And he's not even their starting center. Wendell Carter Jr. is out, but Bitadze comes in. He played 30 minutes. And yeah, he was pretty good. Two steals and five blocks, wow. He had a great game. And that kind of nullified a lot of the momentum that the Raptors had in that third quarter.

Later on in that third quarter, they were trying to make a bit of a run. But then another odd lineup comes up. It's Malachi Flynn and Dennis Schroder are your backcourt. And the Raptors have switched to switching everything. And that's an odd backcourt to have when you have Paolo Banchero on the other side.

And all they did was just they kept on making the switch happen. And if it wasn't a bucket, it was a kickout. And then it was an open 3 or something like that. And it just-- it was a weird thing to do. When you decide to switch everything and you have your two smallest players, I believe, on the court together as your backcourt against a pretty lengthy wingspanny team, I just-- I don't get it. That was kind of a weird, weird decision to me.

But just one more thing on the Magic, Paolo Banchero, he's really developed. He spent a lot of time, obviously, during the offseason, working on his game. His 3-point shot has really come around. Tonight, he had 25 points, two 3's, five rebounds, three assists. He had this basket against Precious where it was a pick and roll. And OG was guarding Paolo. And then Achiuwa, they switched-- they switched that action.

And it's them two going at each other. And it was an inside out dribble crossover. And he got-- and one, I was like whoa, man, that was a quick crossover, quick move. He's definitely building his confidence. So that's a good player right there. And they got a few good players on the Magic side, you look at their last two games. And they trounced the Pacers. And they just bullied the Raptors.

So good stretch here for them. I believe they won now four games in a row. So just on some of the Raptor details, I mean, talked about the defense. Oh, one more thing is that Otto Porter Jr., I saw that he came in late in the game during the emptying of the bench time, I'll call it that. And I thought it was a bit odd that why wasn't he being used earlier on in the game.

Maybe he was on a bit of a minutes restriction of some sort or they were working him back. He missed about a week or so. So obviously, he would have been very helpful. I hope that is the case, because if he just didn't play and he opted-- Darko opted to go a different way with his substitutions and his rotations, then that would not be good.

But I imagine because of some of the restrictions that he's still on, they're still ramping him up and to a full 20, 25 minutes per game kind of way. So yeah, hopefully that is the case. But yeah, Otto, he comes in, he hits two shots pretty quickly. He certainly could have been helpful tonight. That's for damn sure.

But on the Raptors offensively, they shot 50% from the field, 50% from 3, 29 assists on 38 field goals. Pascal, he was getting his matches. He was hitting his shots. He had eight assists. And so the doubles were coming. He was making the right decision, as he usually does. When he's in the post, he's pretty comfortable down there.

And he sees the angles he needs to see. He's able to navigate all the bodies and the length that he's being shown. And he finds the open man. He was finding Scottie. He was finding Jakob. He was finding other players for 3. So that was kind of Pascal's game.

Obviously, everyone kind of struggled. In terms of turnovers, you look at the starting lineup, let's just take a look here. So for OG, he had four turnovers. Pascal, two, Jakob, four. Scottie, five. Dennis, two. And Precious Achiuwa had also, off the bench, he had three turnovers. So yeah, a lot of turnovers.

And as I said earlier, 31 points were created for the Magic off of those turnovers. That's a hell of a number. That's hard to overcome, obviously. Scottie Barnes, he had some good moments. He had that 3 I mentioned earlier on at the end of the second quarter. That was really nice. It kind of beat the clock. Good stuff there.

He obviously showed his hustle. And I mean, he didn't have as impactful of a night on the offensive end, like I said, five turnovers. Spacing was a problem for the Raptors once again. And a lot of the stuff that they had issues with, it was just being pretty careless with the ball, which was a problem that has been a problem for this team throughout the season.

And we've seen ups and downs with it. But this was probably one of their worst nights. The Magic, I mean, it was-- their defense is so similar to what the Raptors were doing last season, except if you look at their roster, they have more skill versatility, more guard play. And so they're able to compound that with the length that they have with some pretty good guards, guys who can make shots.

Gary Harris, another player, a veteran right there who can come in, and just knows what he has to do. He's pretty feisty as well. You put these all together, and that's a pretty interesting team, a team that can probably play the style where they're getting a lot of deflections. And they're pursuing runouts and things of that nature.

Gary Trent Jr. was pretty non-existent tonight, 1 of 6 minus 3. Malachi Flynn, he hit a few shots at the end of the game. But that's kind of that story. Not many people had a good game tonight. Overall, no one really had a too good of a night. I mean, Dennis Schroder, felt like he was hitting all of his shots. He shot 8 of 13, 4 from 3. Hit all his free throws. Free throws have been a problem for the Raptors.

Pascal had six-- went 6 of 8. Scottie goes 3 of 4 from the line. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the game is that they didn't defend at all. And they got punched in the mouth a couple times. And they did rally a few times. But they didn't have enough to bring it all the way home. A lot of just careless turnovers, and things just weren't going their way sometimes.

Out of bounds, balls deflecting off your limb or something like that. And then it goes out of bounds. And you had a good defensive possession. But then now it's Orlando ball, and they hit a 3. So deflating moments, for sure. Don't see Jakob Poeltl foul out very often. But that's an indication of how things went for him.

He had a couple of screening fouls for him. And then there was a few offensive rebound fouls. He got one against Anthony Black which definitely should not have happened. And there was another one as well. So he got a-- yeah, it was just a tough night for Jakob. I expect him to rally. But you look at tomorrow against the Pacers and if they don't find their groove defensively, if they're not paying attention to the details, and locked in on their matchups, and the game plan, and I'm looking at Darko too, it's for everyone, could happen again.

The Pacers are one of, if not the best scoring team statistically right now. And if the Raptors don't show up, it's going to happen again. So there you go. Tough game. Not a fun one to watch, yeah. Thanks for tuning in. My name is Amit Mann. Rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast feed. YouTube, like and subscribe there as well. We'll see you. Thanks.