Raptors’ disastrous third quarter against Nuggets exposes an all-too-familiar problem - Toronto Star

The Raptors were outscored 41-15 with eight turnovers as stretches of unseemly play negate much of the positive they do.

DENVER—It was as gruesome a quarter of basketball that the Raptors have played this season, a turnover-filled 12 minutes here Wednesday night that wasted whatever good had come before it.

And it is a habit that has to be changed if this team fancies itself among the better squads in the NBA’s Eastern Conference.

After a tremendous first half that included some of their best offence of the season and tough defence that kept them in the game, the Raptors collapsed in epic form before ultimately losing 128-109 to the Denver Nuggets.

That is the problem this team wrestled with last season and is displaying again this season.

Stretches of unseemly play negate much of the positive they do; they can’t beat good teams because of those in-game lulls and there are a lot of good teams they’ll be facing soon.

So far this season, Toronto’s played three teams that would be considered “good” and they were crushed in Minnesota, beaten thoroughly by the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday and then drubbed by the Nuggets.

The Nuggets’ Nikola Jokić, left, dominated the Raptors for a 30-point, 11-assist, 10-rebound triple-double that only took him 30 minutes to achieve.

They’ve beaten bad teams — Chicago, Washington and the Clippers — and split two games with a middle-of-the-road Orlando team.

“Obviously, give (Denver) credit but just for us having that one bad quarter, we got to eliminate that,” said RJ Barrett, who led Toronto with 22 points. “There’s going to be stretches throughout every game where we probably don’t play as well or when the other team goes on a run.

“But we’ve got to figure out how to eliminate those.”

It remains early in the season, yes, and the Raptors are still without Kawhi Leonard and their record is still a passable 4-4 but the signals on display in the third quarter at the Ball Arena here were awful.

Toronto was outscored 41-15, with eight turnovers of their own, while Denver shot 69.2 per cent from the field and went nine-for-10 at the line.

It was ugly and Toronto’s penchant for scuffling through extended periods of games mystifies coach Darko Rajaković. Wednesday’s was the most glaring example of the inconsistency but it’s popped up a handful of times already this season.

“I wish I knew what’s going on,” Rajaković said. “We had stretches that, especially offensively — I thought in the first half, we played really, really good offensively, we were also making shots. The second half, we started by getting open shots and the same looks but the ball did not go through the net.

“That (consistency) is something we got to continue working on and improving on.”

Until the Raptors solve that problem, the season’s going to devolve into a series of inconsistent nights. To be really good, and that’s what the Raptors are aiming for, bringing effort and crisp execution every game is a given. It can’t be like Wednesday when they were not even competitive for the third quarter.

“We talked about opening the game better, which we did with much better energy in that first quarter,” the coach said. “We did not match that in the third quarter. 
We’ve got to find a way how to sustain it over the whole game.”

The third-year-wing brings strong defence, a three-point touch and an understanding of what is expected of him.