Raptors find fight, but struggles against top teams persist

TORONTO — The Oklahoma City Thunder will be the defending NBA champions until sometime in mid-to-late June. 

They remain favourites to be champions again, but the group that was on the floor at Scotiabank Arena are not those guys. 

Not with defending MVP (and defending Finals MVP) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander back home in Oklahoma nursing an abdominal injury that has kept him out for 10 games and counting, and all-NBA wing Jalen Williams out with a bad hamstring and Ajay Mitchell — their newly discovered bench sparkplug — out now for 14 games and counting. 

They are trying to navigate a post-championship season that has been more notable for who has not been playing than who has. Gilgeous-Alexander has now joined fellow starters Luguentz Dort (12), Isaiah Hartenstein (27) and Williams (33) for the dubious distinction of having missed double-digit games through the Thunder’s 59^th start. As well, key reserves Mitchell (16), Aaron Wiggins (16) and Alex Caruso (21) have missed significant time. 

But somehow the Thunder continue to roll. 

They were able to squeeze out a 116-107 win over the Raptors that they earned thanks to a dominant second and third quarter where they out-scored Toronto by 27, and a fantastic flurry in the final four minutes. They finished with a 15-point surge, shutting down a Raptors rally that saw them come back down 24 with one minute left in the third to tie it up with just over four minutes left.

For the Raptors (34-24), it was another loss to a quality team, this one a little more concerning since Scottie Barnes left the game early after bruising his right thigh in a collision with Hartenstein. Barnes will be listed as questionable as the Raptors host the San Antonio Spurs Wednesday night. 

For the Thunder (45-14), it was one more bit of evidence that their championship pedigree extends past Gilgeous-Alexander or Williams and runs all the way through most of their rotation. On Tuesday night, it was Cason Wallace — the Thunder’s third-year on-ball stopper and the league-leader in steals — who exploded for 27 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. His run included six quick points after the Raptors had tied the game on a Jamal Shead three with 4:06 to play. Meanwhile, Canadian national team star Dort shed his defence-first reputation (though not before helping hold Raptors leading scorer Brandon Ingram to 14 points on 14 shots) long enough to score four of his 15 points in the final minutes on a pair of tough jumpers with the game in the balance. 

“We’ve been in a lot of those situations before, obviously we’re still without our main guys, but we know that we have to execute and find the best shot that we can get,” said Dort. “Credit to the Raptors, they didn’t give up, but down the stretch we had to find the best shots, which we did.”

It was a familiar situation for the Raptors, too. The loss dropped Toronto to 4-14 against the top 10 teams in the league by winning percentage. Three of those wins came against a (then) struggling Cleveland Cavaliers team early in the season and the other came on the road against a short-handed Thunder team back in January, although that version did have Gilgeous-Alexander in the lineup. 

It’s a bit of a good news, bad news story: It’s not nothing that the Raptors are 30-10 against the league’s other 19 teams, but beating good teams is essential if all that work is going to deliver something in the post-season.

“I mean, we made a huge jump from where we were last year, like, where were we last year versus now?” said RJ Barrett, who led the Raptors with 21 points on 8-of-15 shooting, including 4-of-6 from three, his best offensive outing since returning from knee and ankle injuries that forced him to miss 24 games in a 30-game stretch over December and January. The Raptors won just 30 games all season, was his point. 

“A lot of these teams have already been good, already been in playoff situations [or] like tonight, won a championship. They already have these guys that are battle-tested.

“It’s good for us to play these teams right now, go through these tough losses during the season so we’ll figure it out,” Barrett added. “Detroit game we got blown out [just prior to the all-star break], tonight we went down and fought all the way back, so we’re already learning and we got to continue to learn and scratch and claw and beat these good teams.”

They certainly have some blueprints they could work from, namely how they performed during the first and fourth quarters — or at least until those final four minutes. 

The Raptors jumped out to a 32-25 lead after the first as they forced the Thunder into six turnovers in 12 minutes, continuing the ferocious perimeter defence they have shown since the all-star break in road wins over Chicago (23 turnovers with 14 steals) and Milwaukee (19 turnovers with 11 steals). 

It was the Raptors at their best. Rookie Collin Murray-Boyles (four points, four rebounds, two assists, two blocks and a steal in 30 minutes), starting at centre for Jakob Poeltl (out resting his back), got his hands on seemingly every pass the Thunder tried to throw. Barnes (15 points, seven assists, three steals and four blocks), back in the lineup after missing Sunday’s game for personal reasons, stripped Caruso’s dribble on consecutive possessions, each turning into transition lay-ups, giving the Raptors a 10-point lead — their high-water mark for the game. 

They reprised that energy for a nine-minute stretch bridging the end of the third quarter and first eight minutes of the fourth as they went on a 27-3 run where they held the Thunder to 1-of-15 shooting and forced them into seven turnovers. OKC looked very much like a team needing the defending MVP to bail them out. 

“I mean [the Raptors] defend really well,” said Dort. “The pressure and the way they turn us over was extremely tough, but obviously it’s hard to pressure for 48 minutes and we had to find a way to break that.”

They did. It began in the second quarter when the Thunder began taking care of the ball and some of their secondary scorers got cooking. 

Wallace — getting all the point guard reps he could hope for with Gilgeous-Alexander out — exploded for 13 of his game-high 27, making all five of his field goal attempts, including three triples. The Thunder led 60-51 at half. 

In the third quarter, it was three-point specialist Isaiah Joe shaking loose, knocking down five threes, including two for four-point plays, finishing with 19 points in the frame and pushing OKC’s lead to as high as 25 — creating an 18-point cushion to start the fourth. Over the pivotal second and third quarters, OKC had just five turnovers while forcing the Raptors into seven. Related, the Raptors’ offence cratered, as they scored just 48 points over the middle two frames. 

“I wish I had the answers. Hopefully the film is going to help us understand better, but the second, third quarter was not us, and it was not our identity,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic, as his team allowed the Thunder to shoot 54 per cent over the middle two periods. “That was not what we did in the first quarter to start the game. We were dictating and dominating on the offensive end, creating a lot of turnovers, which fueled our offence and we took our foot [off the] gas.”

They got onto the gas again in the fourth and made it a game. The Raptors deserve plenty of credit for that. But two good quarters are not going to cut it against the NBA’s better teams, and certainly not against the defending champion Thunder — even the short-handed version.

Barnes in good spirits: The Raptors’ workhorse banged his leg on Hartenstein’s knee with 3:38 to play and immediately limped to the bench. The Raptors were down two at the time. The Thunder quickly scored on a lay-up from Wallace, a triple from Joe and a jumper by Dort. Barnes subbed back in with the Raptors suddenly down nine with 2:29 to play and was subbed out again 90 seconds later. In the locker room, he seemed to be in a good mood, joking with locker mates Ingram and Jamal Shead, but could be seen rubbing the inside of his right thigh or knee area before going for treatment post-game. Barnes has missed just two games this season, and the Raptors won his 32 minutes against the Thunder by 18 points. 

To the winners go the spoils: When Dort spoke with the media after the Thunder’s win, he had a massive diamond-encrusted necklace on over his black turtleneck sweater. At the end of the chain was a pendant shaped as a wolf’s head, roughly the size of a toddler’s hand. It’s his championship wolf, Dort told me, a gift to himself for winning the NBA title last year. His last name, translated, means wolf. “A [championship]ring wasn’t enough,” he said, laughing. 

Silver lining for SGA? Gilgeous-Alexander has played a lot of high-pressure basketball in the past three years. To review: the Canadian national team star led the Thunder to the second round of the 2023 FIBA World Cup, helped the Thunder to the second round of the 2024 playoffs, led Canada to a fifth-place finish at the 2024 Olympics and helped the Thunder to their first-ever championship last summer. Chances are he’ll be playing deep into June this year and beyond, while the 2027 World Cup and 2028 Olympics aren’t all that far in the future. In that context, is missing a month or more of basketball (he’s been out since February 3rd and will be re-evaluated next week) the worst thing? “He wants to play, he doesn’t want to miss games and he didn’t want to miss this game, I’ll tell you that, so that’s a high cost to him,” said Thunder head coach Mark Daigenault. “… But getting a good reprieve out of this [could be a benefit] — not that he would ever want that — but you can’t fight your circumstances.”