Raptors Need to Re-Prove Their Resilience After Draining Game 5

Monday represented an incredible opportunity for the Raptors. They had a chance to dispatch one of the greatest teams of all time in five games, collecting their elusive first championship and sending the fans home happy.

They failed. Even with the flamethrower version of Kevin Durant departing early, the Raptors could not quite close. It is the sort of situation that haunts the franchise’s torturous history – the Raptors are the masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

This group, however, does not have to answer for the teams of the past. These Raptors, at least to this point, have proven emotionally impenetrable. How they cope with the emotional drain of Game 5 will be the story in Game 6, and perhaps their entire season.

Game 5 was won at the 3-point line. It was also lost in the minutia – in the little details that the Raptors had been so good about managing up to this point.

The Raptors were able to create the first fourth-quarter lead change of the entire series on Monday night, only to watch it slip away in the final three minutes. There were better decisions to be made in that final push, but it ignores the poor decisions made in the first 45 minutes that could’ve made life a whole lot easier.

Fred VanVleet, who has done a great job defending Steph Curry for most of the series, had a rougher go of it in Game 5. He committed two fouls on 3-point attempts, and while you’d like to see closeouts that are a little more under control, it’s also tough to say that Curry’s newfound openness was all on VanVleet. Defending a generational talent is a five-man effort, and on the first foul you can see that Kawhi Leonard doesn’t provide much assistance. Serge Ibaka is less culpable, but he isn’t helping out a ton either.

That might be the most space Curry has gotten all series, and both he and Thompson have had to expend plenty of energy to get themselves open. The return of Durant opened things up earlier, but the fact that Curry went 8-of-16 on uncontested shots and Thompson went 6-of-11 speaks to the sharpness that Golden State brought to the table. Those are hard shots to earn, even if Toronto’s focus dipped a bit from previous contests. Both players covered over 3.1 miles in Game 5, and it’s the off-ball movement that makes the Warriors hum.

Again, the Raptors had some uncharacteristic lapses in concentration. The Raptors held a 13-6 edge in offensive rebounds and lost the second-chance scoring battle by a 19-16 margin. Danny Green cannot abandon Thompson until possession is secure. Having the Splash Brothers rain down threes on hard-earned looks is one thing. Surrendering them through careless decisions is another entirely.

In the wake of Durant’s injury, it was the Warriors, not the Raptors, who put together a run. Golden State’s lead stretched from four to 13 in just under four minutes, and that will likely go down as Toronto’s biggest missed opportunity in a night that was full of them.

If you had to pick a stretch that could rival those post-KD minutes as the biggest whiff, it would have to be the endgame.

The Raptors emerged with a six-point lead thanks to Kawhi’s greatness, and it truly looked as though they could drag themselves across the finish line. A few more defensive lapses and some throwback prevent offense leads us to Game 6.

The lightning rod moment was Nick Nurse calling a pair of timeouts with just over three minutes left on the heels of Toronto’s run. The prevailing notion seems to be that Nurse misguidedly allowed the Warriors to settle their kettles and robbed the Raptors of precious momentum.

Momentum is subjective, and your belief in that argument relies entirely on how much you believe in its presence or impact on the game. Would the Raptors have shot 1-for-6 the rest of the way had no timeout? It’s possible. Did the timeout make the shooting drought more likely? Probably not.

The driver behind the timeouts was a desire to get the Raptors a chance to rest up in hopes of delivering a knockout blow. If you’d like to argue that the Warriors benefitted more from that rest, as well as the chance to try and make some defensive tweaks, we’ve got far more time for such a discussion.

And while the Raptors’ offense did dry up down the stretch, their lead wasted away because of more defensive miscues. The Warriors demand elite levels of concentration for all 48 minutes, and the Raptors faltered just enough to cost them a victory.

Norman Powell understandably doesn’t want to leave Quinn Cook on this play – credit to Steve Kerr for getting a shooting threat onto the floor – but he’s got to make sure that anyone other than Thompson ends up with a shot after Toronto’s two point guards go for the trap on Curry.

The next bucket is just a well-run play, with the only potential area of improvement looking like Marc Gasol getting out on Curry. It’s also worth noting that DeMarcus Cousins sticks out his rear end to give VanVleet a longer route. It’s essentially the same thing that earned him an offensive foul in the closing seconds, only on this play VanVleet didn’t end up on the floor.

On the basket that gave the Warriors their final lead, the Raptors’ good intentions turn into disaster. Leonard’s instincts take him to Andre Iguodala at the rim. That’s fine in and of itself, but as soon as he leaves the entire floor in front of Thompson is wide open. Leonard didn’t quite recognize that Gasol was going to be able to contest a layup, and the fact that Iguodala doesn’t even think about taking a shot makes the decision look worse in retrospect. Green could also do a better job on a secondary closeout after Leonard gives Thompson a  fly-by.

Still, the offense did not help matters. The Raptors have been working deep into the shot clock for most of the series, particularly in the second half. In Game 4 they were still able to find good shots in limited time, but they could not replicate their success in the pressure cooker of Game 5.

Kyle Lowry begins his drive with around five seconds left on the shot clock and opts swing the ball back to an open Gasol with less than two seconds to shoot. That the pass is wayward renders the possession lost, but even if it succeeds there’s a wild shot coming. Lowry passed up a potential layup, and Draymond Green has read the play and is ready to jump the original lane. Leonard and VanVleet don’t quite space out properly – one of them needs to go right to the corner so VanVleet ends up open, whether that’s where he starts the play or where he ends it – and even if they had, Lowry is either forced into a tough pass to the corner with Klay Thompson potentially in the way or Gasol is forced to swing the ball with a second or less left on the clock. If they can get into this action even two seconds earlier, we may be living in a very different reality.

The final possession features a few more minor miscues that snowball into a big mess.

If you want to criticize Nurse’s timeout usage, him not calling one here is the better choice. The Warriors emerge in a set defense off a dead-ball turnover, and while Nurse has been content to let his players run things out, Toronto fails to generate a clean shot with a chance to win the game.

Leonard, as is his right as a dominant force, soaks up time by pounding the air out of the ball. His pass to VanVleet is fine, but Shaun Livingston makes a tremendous play to force a dribble. If VanVleet can just swing the ball to Lowry when he first catches the ball, the Raptors have a wide-open three. That only takes a second off the clock, but in that time Draymond Green gets in position to contest Lowry’s eventual shot and Gasol decides to try and open up a driving lane rather than slip towards the hoop.

Almost, but not quite. The Raptors were a step too slow and defended just a little too well to get what they wanted out of a key possession.

It culminates in a fantastic defensive play from Green, and it should be noted that he, Livingston and Iguodala were superb defensively all night. The end result was more than the Raptors failing to execute — the Warriors, as you might expect, are the cream of the crop, Durant or no Durant.

Of course, not all is lost. The Raptors should look at the box score and feel somewhat confidence in chalking a lot of things up to variance.

The Warriors went an absurd 20-for-42 from behind the arc, including a red-hot start when Durant’s mere existence opened everything up. Draymond Green and DeMarcus Cousins hit three triples between them. Klay Thompson hit seven, while the Raptors hit eight as a collective.

Toronto finished the night 3-for-18 on wide-open threes, which serves as a nice throwback to their series against the Sixers. Pascal Siakam has now missed his last 12 threes and is just 2-for-15 in the Finals, with almost all of those shots coming unguarded in the corners.

Leaning on regression is a fool’s errand as the amount of time left evaporates. There are two games left, at most, this season. The Raptors cannot operate as though Siakam will absolutely start knocking his shots down again – perhaps that’s why he spent the final nine minutes on the bench – but they can like their odds. Open players will be encouraged to shoot, and the opportunities will continue to come. That level of trust in the process, and one another, is what’s kept the Raptors cool under pressure.

Losing a potential closeout game with a huge break in your favor, at home, is the sort of thing that can break a team mentally. The Raptors have been one of the steadiest outfits in the league all season long and should feel equipped to handle the ups and downs of a wildly emotional ride.

There’s enough to make the Raptors think that they can bounce back in Game 6 – not that they have looked like a team that will be shaken, anyway. The Warriors won by a single point on a night where they hit 20 threes, the Raptors hit eight and Kawhi Leonard looked like a mere mortal for 36 minutes. There is no need to be shaken.

It will not be easy, however, and whether the Raptors can recharge enough after Game 5 to deliver the necessary sharper execution and simple shot-making may determine the outcome of the series.

The Raptors will once again be pushed to their limits. So far, no team has been better at finding their center in times of dismay. It’s impossible to know when the house of cards will topple, as we’ve yet to see it fall. Toronto is not a team that is easily dazed, but every team has its breaking point. We’ll see if the Warriors can find it in Game 6.

Other Observations

1 – The whole Kevin Durant situation just sucks. He clearly wasn’t ready to return to action, and the Warriors are catching a lot of heat for it. If you’re going to blame anyone then that’s probably who deserves it the most, but it’s disingenuous to pretend as though they forced Durant back onto the court against his will. This is the same team that essentially forced Klay Thompson to sit out Game 3, so it’s not like there’s a track record of them forcing players to return ahead of schedule. And hey, it’s entirely possible that Durant’s Achilles injury was not in the reasonable realm of possibilities. All the parties involved may have been wrong, but it’s hard to say that there’s any sort of malice at play. The most upsetting part of the scenario is probably the trickles from the Warriors beat that some in the organization were getting “frustrated” with Durant’s recovery. KD was dynamite in his return and didn’t look rusty at all, dropping 11 points and holding a profound effect on Golden State’s offense in his 12 minutes on the floor. He also finished plus-six in a game that the Dubs took by one. This sucks. Nothing but the best for KD in his recovery.

2 – Not to pile on, but Kevon Looney reportedly re-aggravated an injury after it was said that he couldn’t get “more hurt” by playing. The two are unrelated cases, and the Warriors’ medical staff is taking an unwarranted beating. Looney was obviously playing through some serious pain in Game 5 and doesn’t look like he can get much out of his right arm, but he’s still the most mobile center in Golden State’s arsenal, especially with no Durant likely taking Draymond Green out of that equation. It’s been a commendable effort for Looney, who is earning himself some money in free agency.

3 – That leads nicely into DeMarcus Cousins, who came through with a big effort in a must-have situation. It looked like Cousins was headed for a DNP-CD prior to Durant’s injury, but he entered the game and made a consistent impact from start to finish for pretty much the first time all series. Cousins put up 14 points, six rebounds, a steal and a block on 6-of-8 from the field in 20 minutes. He got a lot of his points in weird matchups and continued to struggle against Marc Gasol, but the Warriors will need anything they can get. It’s a huge effort in a tough spot from a player who had been largely ineffective prior to Game 5.

4 – That said, Cousins finished as a minus-four in his time on the court. Even with the acknowledgment that single-game plus-minus can often be entirely useless, it’s clear from watching the games that he can’t quite outscore all of his problems. Golden State’s usual starting lineup this series – Cousins and the healthy four of the Hamptons Five – went minus-13 in only seven minutes. Their overall performance this series is much better than that, but it’s something that can be exploited without having to scheme up ground-breaking stuff.

5 – We’re a few 3-pointers away from talking about Kawhi Leonard’s fourth quarter as an all-time stretch. He went on a 10-2 run himself to give the Raptors a six-point lead and ended up scoring 12 of his 26 points in the final 12 minutes. This was one of Leonard’s “worst” games of the series, as he shot 9-of-24 overall and went a pedestrian 6-of-8 from the charity stripe, but he more than delivered in the game’s biggest moments.

6 – The Warriors made some inroads in the half-court game, scoring 1.02 points per possession. That’s probably skewed by the fact that they went 7-of-9 to start with Durant on the floor, but the Raptors can clean that up. They’ve been a much better defensive group than that, even against an elite opponent. On the flip side, Toronto was only scoring 0.88 points per half-court possession. Shot-making figures in heavily for both teams in those measures, but Game 5 was a bit of a script-flip for the Raptors.

7 – Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka were both excellent in Game 5. Gasol was able to get lots of work as a scorer early when the Warriors were at their smallest, and ended up with 17 points, eight rebounds and two threes in 31 minutes. That only two of those points came in the second half might be more of a problem, but Gasol knows when to assert himself and when to keep the line moving. There was some thought that the Hamptons Five could force Gasol off the floor to a degree, but it’s now clear that he’ll have a sizable role to play. Ibaka has taken a dip in the fountain of youth over the last couple of games and came through again with 15 points, six boards, a steal and a block. Toronto’s frontcourt edge is pronounced with the Warriors seemingly less likely to deploy Draymond at the five.

8 – The Warriors opened the fourth quarter with a lineup of Quinn Cook, Klay Thompson, Shaun Livingston, Jordan Bell and DeMarcus Cousins. Not sure how much we’ll see of that group going forward. It’s one of the stranger combinations that Kerr could’ve cooked up.

9 – Kyle Lowry had a field day attacking Cousins when the big man switched on picks. If not for Draymond’s game-saving block we could’ve been looking at a peak KLOE performance. Lowry had a number of nice reads, assertive drives and pretty short-stop moves to open up floaters and jumpers in the paint. He’s delivered big time since a quiet Game 2.

10 – The officiating took a big step back in Game 5 after a fairly solid Game 4. They botched another goaltending call (there has to be a better way to correct mistakes here), missed a blatant foul on a Klay Thompson 3-pointer, missed an even-more blatant foul on Marc Gasol in the final minute and then gave Boogie Cousins a weak offensive foul that put Toronto in position to win the game on the final possession. That was technically the correct call, but amidst the backdrop of all of the other screens just like Cousins’ that aren’t called and the amount of contact that received no whistle for players on both teams, it just didn’t make any sense in that moment. Marc Davis is up for Game 6, so get ready for that experience.

*Originally published June 13, 2019