Visiting Suns put chill on sloppy Raptors
> SUNS > RAPTORS 107 102
They are learning opportunities, those moments of failure from which growth and improvement hopefully springs, and there were a host of them for the Raptors on Sunday night.
Ceding the paint to attacking guards, failing to recover to three-point shooters, shoddy offensive execution down the stretch . . . you name it and they did it in a 107-102 loss to the Phoenix Suns at the Air Canada Centre.
It was a blip on another-wise solid week, Toronto’s first loss in five games, coming off difficult and emo- tional wins over conference rivals Cleveland at home and in Washington. And that is not an excuse, but it’s perhaps an explanation.
The Raptors were just “off” a little bit, and when it came time to rescue the game in the dying minutes, there was nothing left in the tank.
Kyle Lowry missed a layup he can make in his sleep, Cory Joseph threw a lazy pass that led to a turnover, an outlet pass that would have ignited a two-on-one break bounded into the first row of seats, and Luis Scola had a potential game-tying three-pointer blocked with seconds to go when the Raptors had to scramble off a busted play.
“We’ve got to stop putting ourselves in a tough predicament and fighting our way out when we don’t have much time,” said DeMar DeRozan, who led Toronto with 29 points.
“We find ourselves in that position too many times, and once we clean up little things on both ends, it’ll be easier for us to close out games.”
Toronto’s lack of crispness was no more evident than in the myriad ways the Suns ran up a points total about 20 more than the Raptors had given up on average in a four-game winning streak.
Phoenix got 46 points in the paint.
That was bad enough, but it was made worse by the fact the Suns drained 11 three-pointers as well and turned 13 offensive rebounds into 14 points. Perhaps Toronto could have stolen a game with one of those coming into play but they had no chance with all of them going against the hosts. “We didn’t do a good job of shrinking the paint, keeping the paint tight as we did (Saturday night in Washington),” said coach Dwane Casey. “We have to learn from our mistakes and (Saturday night) it was turnovers, (Sunday) it was containing the ball, shrinking the paint and keeping the paint tight.”
Phoenix, in snapping its own fourgame losing streak, got 20 points from Eric Bledsoe and 20 off the bench from Mirza Teletovic.
It was Teletovic’s six three-pointers in seven attempts that was particularly galling. “They came out knocking down threes and if we had cleaned up just half of the three pointers, forced them to take other shots, we easily win this game,” DeRozan said.
“I thought we did a great job on their backcourt . . . but we can’t let guys like that come in and get going, knock down threes. We have to understand the personnel and run them off the three-point line.”
For all their foibles, the Raptors did have a chance to tie in the dying seconds. Bledsoe split two free throws with 12 seconds left to put Phoenix up by three but without a timeout to set up a play, the Raptors relied on a freelanced call. The Suns broke up the play and Scola’s lastditch attempt was blocked.
“They did a good job of switching and taking it out, it was a busted play,” said Casey.
“It was something we ha drawn up on the side . . . while Kyle was shooting free throws since we didn’t have a timeout.”