Humbled Raptors become the Team That Finally Lost To Detroit
With even casual sports fans across North American paying attention because of the historic ineptitude of the Detroit Pistons, the Raptors proved how far they have to go after out losing the team of all-time.
“I was almost in tears and so happy for our guys,” Pistons coach Monty Williams was quoted on social media as telling reporters in Detroit after the game.
And make no mistake, the Raptors were responsible for their own demise in Detroit, and that has to be the most worrisome point of the evening,
They knew what they were up against — any NBA fan on Earth knew — and they couldn’t find a way to bury the Pistons from the start.
They played poorly down the stretch, started slowly and let a team that was down retain some hope, and dug a double-digit hole in the third quarter. And when the game needed someone to take it by the scruff of the neck and make it his own, no Toronto player did
Circumstances — a major trade, the schedule — made it tough for the Raptors, but teams that purport to be good get through them. The Raptors didn’t. Even if coach Darko Rajakovic tried to put a positive spin on it, according to the X feed of Toronto broadcaster Savanna Hamilton.
“I told guys it was not the outcome that we want (but) I thought that it may have been one of the harder playing games for us this season,” he said in his post-game media session in Detroit. “So I want to try to build on this and get better through this.”
But that lack of killer instinct — and it’s not the first time it’s happened this season — is the most troubling of traits. Maybe it can be learned. More likely it’s going to need further roster machinations to fix.
The Raptors were within five with just over six minutes left, precisely the time the Pistons generally fade and good teams pull away. But in the most telling aspect of the night, the Raptors just couldn’t close out a win and now will be forever known as the Team That Finally Lost To Detroit.
It is not a badge of honour. It will make the Raptors, for a few moments at least, the laughingstocks of the NBA, fairly or unfairly. The Pistons, who had last won on Oct. 28 to go 2-1 on the season, were always going to win another game at some point. But that they did it against the Raptors will make them the object of derision for the time being, and rightfully so.
The shame isn’t that the Raptors lost. The indictment is that the collective group couldn’t step up to seize the moment and ensure that they didn’t.
Pascal Siakam was brilliant in the third quarter, Scottie Barnes was OK for a few possessions in the fourth and Dennis Schröder and Gary Trent Jr. had their moments. But no one did it when the game was in the balance, at least not enough to allow the Raptors to steal a win they didn’t deserve.
Siakam finished with 35 points — 27 in the second half, 20 in the third quarter — and Schröder had 30. It took Barnes 20 field-goal attempts to get 22 points, and Trent finished with 24. Taken in isolation, those aren’t not bad numbers at all, but the Raptors needed more and no one provided it.
It wasn’t as if Toronto was facing the Showtime Lakers or the Timmy-Tony-Manu San Antonio Spurs or the Stephen Curry-Klay Thompson-Draymond Green Warriors or the Bird-McHale-Parish Boston Celtics. This was the Detroit Pistons, losers of 28 straight games with the vast, vast majority of them entirely on merit.
The Pistons came into the game worse than the Raptors in three-point shooting, then went 12-for-28 (42.9 per cent) from beyond the arc. They also took advantage of Raptors largesse and awful defending to go 35-for-40 from the free-throw line
Cade Cunningham is a good player and his 30-point night for Detroit was not unexpected, but that the Raptors couldn’t slow Kevin Knox (17 points) or Jalen Duren (18 points, 17 rebounds) was inexcusable given the stakes and intensity the Raptors knew they had to have.
And yes, it was a depleted roster and the second game of a back-to-back, but that’s just noise and excuse making. Sure, the Raptors got into Detroit in the middle of the night, but it wasn’t like they got to bed at 3 a.m., had to wake up at 5 a.m. and play before breakfast.
The challenge was made more difficult by the Saturday afternoon trade that robbed the Raptors of three players who could have seen action in Detroit.
But without OG Anunoby, Precious Achiuwa and Malachi Flynn (now Knicks) and with incoming R.J. Barrett and Immanuel Quickley not yet available, coach Darko Rajakovic still had enough to work with. He milked it as best he could, including getting serviceable minutes from Thad Young by using him for the first time in weeks while Chris Boucher, Jalen McDaniels and Otto Porter Jr. filled in as best they could.
It made for some odd combinations — a frontcourt of McDaniels, Porter and Young played together for the first time ever — but it was also a night of makeshift decisions by Rajakovic and his staff.
Perhaps the most telling point was that despite the limited roster, there were no minutes available for rookie Gradey Dick, the lone Raptor not to get off the bench while the game was still in doubt.
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