Road setback reflects lost season
CHARLOTTE, N.C.— When they come to do the video epitaph of the 2012-13 Raptors season — when it’s time to show the lowlights and a big reason why another final month is about development rather than playoff preparation — here’s an idea.
Take the final two minutes here Wednesday night as representative of all that’s gone wrong so often this season. Be entirely mindful that it was the 68th game of an 82-game season and let the dissection of another year in the toilet begin.
First, show how they somehow lose Ben Gordon in transition and watch as one of the most selfish shooters in the game today drains an open corner three. Poor transition defence? Check. Fast forward to when they finally force a Gordon miss, down three with 31 seconds left, and fail to get the rebound setting up a foul-andhope finish.
Not finishing plays? Check.
And then end the production with the failure to inbound the ball cleanly in a four-point game with less than nine seconds to go. No attention to detail? Check. Yes, there have been some more disappointing losses in a season chalk full of them. There may not have been one that better exempli- fies the team’s consistent failure down the stretch than the 107-101 defeat suffered at the hands of the Charlotte Bobcats. “Again, it’s the little things,” coach Dwane Casey said, frustration dripping from his every word. “I’ve said it all year — I’ve said it for two years now — it’s not the scoring. It’s not three-point shots. It’s fundamentally knuckling down at winning time, and that’s what it’s about.” Or not knuckling down, not making plays, not finishing the job. Hours before the game, Casey had talked about finding out what people are made of in the final 15 games of the regular season, learning who would finish strongly with nothing on the line and who might coast to the finish. “We want to measure who we are, how we want to play, evaluate who we have on the roster and play the game the right way,” he said. Well, he might have got a bit of clue as the Raptors stormed out of the gate against the team with the worst record in the NBA, then simply failed to finish the job. Toronto led comfortably through much of the first quarter but allowed the Bobcats back in with a 31-point second quarter. When it got to be white-knuckle time down the stretch, the Raptors couldn’t turn it on all of a sudden. “I think we thought the game was going to be easy,” said Casey. “It was a typical NBA game. The shots were falling. We started going easy, so we kind of relaxed a little bit.
“If you don’t approach it that you’re going to compete for 48 minutes at every position, it’s a tough league.” And a league that will eat you alive. The Raptors did get 25 points from Rudy Gay, 19 from DeMar DeRozan and 18 each from Jonas Valanciunas and Kyle Lowry, but scoring is not an issue with this group. It’s the dirty work, the defence, the consistent intensity, attributes that have been lacking most nights since November and again in game 68 of the season.
“One-on-one defence, getting down in your stance and guarding your yard — that’s what it comes down to,” he said. “All their guys are breakdown guys, we knew that. Whether it’s (Gerald) Henderson or (Kemba) Walker, Gordon, all of them, they were attacking our feet,” said Casey. “We’ve got to get down and get into a stance and move our feet. There’s no defensive system that can control that. You have to do that.
“We allowed them to shoot 47 per cent against us, and a lot of it was going at individual matchups.”