Raptors lose to Bulls in chaotic finish

Amit Mann recaps the Raptors losing to the Bulls in their second game of the season. Toronto had a 17 point lead with less than half of the 4th quarter to go but were not able to get the win.

Video Transcript

AMIT MANN: All right, welcome, welcome, welcome to the Raptors Over Everything podcast. My name is Amit Mann. Rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast platforms, and on YouTube, like and subscribe there as well.

Recapping the Raptors 104-103 loss to the Chicago Bulls. A chaotic game, wow, wow. Going forward with some of these recaps that I do, there will be highlights on them. But for now it's just my ugly mug, and waiting for some people to get some things figured out upstairs, and people who sign the checks. But that is coming on the way. But for now, just myself.

Going through some of the main stats from this game. So the Raptors were up 17 with five minutes left in the fourth quarter. Things were looking good until they were not. And, also, they turned the ball over 21 times, and they fouled DeMar DeRozan two times on pump fakes in the final, few seconds of the game. Wild, wild stuff.

So where did this game get decided. Well, in those last five minutes or so, the Raptors, they did not get good possessions on the offensive end, they did not manage the clock very well, and surely some shots were missed that were at least makeable for their standards. There was a Gary Trent Jr. 3, there was a Dennis Schroder layup that didn't go in.

But, also, at the same time, you've got to manage the clock a little better, and with their 0.5 basketball, the tempo that they want to play, you're balancing the confidence you have in your system, and also in yourself. But also you got to look at the score and what's going on. And it didn't help that Jakob Poeltl and OG Anunoby were not available for the most important part of the entire game.

Jakob Poeltl had fouled out. His last two fouls were not great calls. Vucevic pushes him into Coby White, that draws one foul the next time around. He's contesting at the rim against DeMar DeRozan, and it was a pretty clean contest, arms are straight up, and he got called for his sixth foul.

And then OG Anunoby was not available. He had muscle cramps, and he left the game at the 705 mark of the fourth quarter. And you put those two together, they were a plus 48 in this game, so pretty important parts of the Raptors defense. And when they were not on the court, then who's guarding DeMar DeRozan. And it was Pascal Siakam, he did a decent job in the isolation possessions that he had against him, shuffling his feet, moving those puppies pretty well, actually, but then also the Bulls, they found some cross matches where they had DeMar going against Scottie Barnes, and he liked that match-up, he was doing pretty darn well actually.

And you look at the final, what was it, last 447 plus OT, DeMar scored 21 points. Yeah, that's a lot of points, man, that's a lot of points. He checked in that fourth quarter. He had 12 points and 447 onwards. It was a layup package, it was free throws, Precious Achiuwa also fouled out, and that's when Chris Boucher had to come back in, but the Raptors now don't have a traditional center at the rim, and also they're missing their best defender.

These aren't excuses, but this is the reality of how the Bulls are able to make this comeback that they did, but going down the main stretch of this game, when I talk about chaos, this was the chaos I'm talking about, OK? So just to go through some of the things that I just mentioned 91-88, all right, the Raptors have the ball, and for some reason, Gary Trent Jr. Is inbounding the ball. I don't know why he's doing that, because he's probably one of your best free throws at least available on the court. But he's doing that inbounds to Chris Boucher and the Raptors call a timeout again, so they reset it.

Now Pascal Siakam is inbounding the ball, and he inbounds it to Scottie Barnes. Again, I still think that you should be trying to get the ball to Gary Trent in those situations, because, again, as I said, he is your best free throw shooter. But he gets the ball to Scottie, he's in the back court, and he just fumbles it, and he loses it. And DeMar gets it. It's an and one, Dennis Schroder gets a foul, and so now the game is 91-90.

Pascal Siakam makes two free throws, we're at 93-90 at this moment. And so DeMar is coming off a screen, and Chris Boucher unfortunately bites on a pump fake, and DeMar gets three free throws. Not great. . Obviously you have to be more disciplined in those situations, you can't do that. Just point blank, you can't do that, but he did it.

And oddly enough DeMar DeRozan missed three free throws in the last 13 seconds of this game to actually get it to overtime. Crazy stuff, because he's a pretty good free throw shooter. And also in those clutch situations, usually he's pretty good, but he did miss a whole bunch of free throws in the sequence of events as I'm going through them. So DeMar makes two free throws, now we're at 93-92.

Now Pascal Siakam, he draws an offensive foul. Why? Because Alex Caruso is in his business on the inbounds play, and also Alex Caruso drew a foul on Dennis Schroder earlier on in the fourth quarter while they are rallying. Man, he's a spark plug, he's feisty, he knows some of the tricks of the trade. A little bit of flopping probably, but, hey, it worked, right?

But still the Raptors are up 93-92, not a bad situation, at least considering how much time is remaining on the clock. Scottie Barnes now, he bites on a DeMar DeRozan pump fake and Pascal Siakam after that play. He turns his head, he's just like, what are you doing, bro, we can't do this stuff, can't do it.

You got to know better. The coaching staff has to do a better job of keeping the players in check with that stuff, you just can't do it. But as I mentioned, somehow, some way, DeMar DeRozan misses another free throw.

And so we go to overtime, and in the overtime, around a minute or so, remaining 103-99 as I said. And DeMar gets the layup, makes it 103-101, and the Raptors have the ball in their hands. And in those situations, it's important to get a good possession, but also you don't want to commit a live ball turnover.

And the Raptors committed a live ball turnover. It was a broken possession, and Pascal Siakam had the ball at the top of the key, with the rebound, five, six seconds left on the shot clock. And he had a wide open, Scottie Barnes in the corner, or around the wing, actually. He could have gone that way, obviously long shot, long rebound, you got to worry about that thing. But considering what transpired afterwards, not great.

So he gets the ball poked away. Levine is going down the court. He kicks it out to Caruso 3, and now the Raptors are down in this game. But there is a few seconds remaining on the clock, and the Raptors decide to go with a an elbow touch for Pascal. They clear some space for him, but unfortunately he's not able to get a shot off.

The clock expires, Torrey Craig plays some tight defense, and there you have it. Obviously, just as I mentioned, a lot of undisciplined plays. You just have to be better, more composed. Your inbounds plays just have to be a lot more crisp. And with the ball, you've got to manage the clock a lot better.

So there's certainly a lot of things that the Raptors can take from this game. But going through some of the key other moments of this one, the bench lineup plus Pascal Siakam or Scottie Barnes. They tried it again in the second quarter. It was one of the low points of the previous game where the Raptors did win the home opener. They tried it again. And again, it did not work. And Malachi Flynn did not see any minutes after that. That lineup just it was kind of the same sort of thing. They looked very unsure of themselves. They didn't know where they wanted to go offensively. And they just weren't getting good possessions on offense. And on defense, I mean, Andre Drummond's kind of doing his thing in the paint. You don't have a traditional center. Precious Achiuwa is very familiar with Andre Drummond and his size. And it became a problem.

And also as the game was going on, granted the starters had a good first quarter, but the Bulls they started bringing Vucevic and Andre Drummond higher and higher up. And so they're around the nail. And they're kind of hovering around that paint area. And it was just kind of clogging the paint a lot for the Toronto Raptors. And they weren't able to get some of the baseline cuts that you would ideally have in those situations. And the Raptors were running some of their sets. Like there was a play where they run OG for a down screen. And it goes into a dribble handoff. And then he goes again into an off ball screen with a player into a spaced area. Drummond kind of snuffed that out. And in that very case, you want OG to cut back door because that would have been available.

But right now, the Raptors I suppose early days. They don't have a lot of counters within their offensive schemes. And some of it's a lot more intuitive plays that they need players to read and react to. And that was a case where it didn't really go their way. But obviously, the Raptors need some more plays within their 0.5 system so players can actually have just some different ways to score the ball on offense. But where they did find some comfort is in some of the things that they've always been doing. And that is finding mismatches, and bullying the post. And that's what Pascal and Scottie Barnes were doing, especially against Alex Caruso and Coby White. And that was kind of their offense for the good portion of the second half and the latter part of the second quarter where they went on a bit of a 12-0 run I believe.

Not a bad situation for the Raptors to have. Like you want to have different ways in which you can create offense. But it does bring up an interesting point. You want to play 0.5 basketball, but you also want to win games right now. So when do you decide to deviate back to some of the things that you know, which would be cross matches, and post ups, and drawing double teams, and kicking out. And you know they found success with that in this game. And even though Pascal didn't have the best last stretch of the game, I thought in that second quarter we probably should have got a few more touches. And when he did get the ball, he got Nikola Vucevic in space. And he was able to hit a pull up jumper.

You need some of those aspects of your game, of your offensive package. And right now, the Raptors, I mean, I think they're kind of wrestling with what they want to do possession by possession. And 0.5 basketball is great. But when there's 10 seconds left on the shot clock, and your sets didn't work, where are you going? And sometimes it is nice to have some of your pet plays. Your tricks. And that would be a post up for Pascal Siakam. There isn't always going to be a couple of small guards out there. But you got to find ways to keep manufacturing good possessions. And that's something that Darko and the coaching staff probably have to think about.

Just going through some of the players. Like Scottie Barnes, I mean, he had that bad turnover in the latter part of the fourth quarter. But he had a pretty good game today, man. He had a triple double. And he had seven turnovers for sure. But I loved the way he pushed the ball. The pace he was playing at was great. He had some jumpers as well. There was one around the baseline. And there were a few other turnaround shots around the nail area that bodes well for his offense going forward. We want to see him being able to expand his range bit by bit.

And there was some hook shots there. Obviously, the turnaround jumpers that I mentioned. And some of the plays also he was making were a bit of the cerebral stuff that you want to see from a player where he knows that he's going to be drawing two players, and he's firing a one handed rocket over to Gary Trent Jr. for three. Those are things that really do matter. And I mentioned the 3 that he made in overtime. I hope the 3 point shot is in a comfortable spot for him. Because he looks confident right now taking those shots, and I hope that continues.

I just want to mention Chris Boucher. Just give him some credit because I think a lot of us were a little bit surprised that he did not play in the home opener. But since Malachi Flynn did not get his second shift today, Chris Boucher played 16 minutes. He was a plus 22. He did have that play where he bit on a pump fake. But aside from that, three big defensive rebounds in overtime. And also you had one big offensive rebound. He made two free throws.

And the other cases where he's just crawling a loose ball. Getting a few points here and there. He's very good at doing the touch screens that is part of the Raptors system right now because of his ability to just turn that corner, shift his body around, and start penetrating the basket. And he drew a few fouls doing that. So I hope he's staying in the rotation. I think he's an asset I think he helps especially with the bench. And how it's gone so far in some of those heavy bench minutes.

If we want to talk about maybe the Raptors don't need to be doing it-- lineups where they have four bench players out there along with one starter-- that's a separate conversation. But I think that's a good one to have as well. But I'd like what he offered today. He was professional the other day. And then today, he came in. He did the job. So credit to that. Darko, he won his first challenge. So salute to you, sir. You got that one. It was on a Pascal Siakam bang, bang play. It was an offensive foul. And Coby White looked like he was moving a little bit. And you could hear Pascal Siakam saying like, no way. No way he was moving and stuff like that. And then Darko challenged it. And he won it. But then there was a similar play later on in the game. He lost that one. It was, again, a Pascal Siakam offensive foul. But it be what it be.

Dennis Schroder didn't shoot too well today. 3 of 11. A couple of layups around the basket didn't go his way. But that's going to be how it goes sometimes. OG was playing fairly well in this game. Obviously, his defense on DeMar was terrific. And then he left and DeMar went off. So that's that one. Gradey Dick only played five minutes. Last game I believe it was only two minutes. But this time, it was five.

And actually, I just want to give him some credit because it was a very lively two minutes. And he was making some really fast decisions. He missed the two shots he took. But they were good shots for his standards. And I think shots that I think he'll be able to make at some point. It's just good that he's finding that comfort. If he gets a ball, and he knows the shot's not there, then he's driving. He's penetrating. He loves his jump passes.

That might get him in trouble one day. But for now, he's making them. And just credit to him because he also had a nice play where he did a nice closeout on a Bulls player around the basket too. So good stuff from Gradey. And now the Raptors shift to the Philadelphia 76ers and Nick Nurse tomorrow. And we'll see how that goes. Hopefully, there's some better shooting luck. So my name is Amit Mann. Rate, review, and subscribe. And like on YouTube. And we'll talk to you soon.