Notebook: Raptors have no excuses against Wizards

The Toronto Raptors have no excuses.

Health? As good as can possibly be expected in nearly three-quarters into an 82-game season.

The only player who didn’t practice in Toronto Friday before they took off for their Saturday evening game against the Washington Wizards was rookie Collin Murray-Boyles, who banged his troublesome left thumb in the third quarter of Toronto’s loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday and had to leave the game.

The 20-year-old played through plenty of discomfort since the problem first surfaced just prior to Christmas. Now with the Raptors playing only the Wizards in a stretch of five days, perhaps he gets the night off so the injury – deemed a sprain – settles down a little bit before Toronto hosts the New York Knicks next Tuesday.

Regardless, the Raptors should be at or near full strength.

What about practice days? The Raptors can’t complain about that.

They had three practices in Chicago coming out of the all-star break, another on Friday in Toronto and have two more open days before they see the Knicks. That might not sound like a lot, but in an NBA schedule, having those kinds of windows to both get some work in as well as some rest is gold.

Strength of schedule? No offence to the Wizards, but they have 16 wins so far this season, and 11 of them have come against teams that are otherwise trying to tank for lottery position.

So let’s put this in stone: If the Raptors – one game up on sixth-place Philadelphia with a 34-25 record — don’t win on Saturday night in Washington, maybe they don’t deserve the playoff position they’ve been working towards all season.

Just putting that out there.

Three-point Grange:

• Scottie Barnes should be a lock for an NBA All-Defensive Team: It’s not often that an NBA star’s highlight reel could feature as many or more defensive plays as offensive ones, but Scottie Barnes could come pretty close – even though his offensive reel would feature plenty of swooping dunks and laser-like, no-look passes thrown through traffic in transition.

Just this week, he had consecutive strips against the Thunder’s Alex Caruso that led directly to Raptors scores going the other way. As well, late in the fourth quarter against the Spurs, Barnes stayed hip-to-hip with De’Aaron Fox, one of the quickest guards in the sport, as Fox drove to the rim. And as if that wasn’t impressive enough, Barnes then reached in and ripped the ball out of Fox’s hands, to start a fast break the other way, staring down Fox as if to question why he would even think of trying to score on him.

“It was an amazing play,” said Raptors forward Brandon Ingram. “He does stuff like that pretty much every single game. It’s a testament to how hard he works on the defensive end. He really cares about winning. He really cares about getting stops on his man. So that showed at the end of that game.”

In three games since the all-star break, Barnes has eight steals and six blocked shots. He’s already set a career-high with 92 blocked shots, and the 78 steals he’s tallied are on pace to set a career mark in that category as well, surpassing the 93 he had last season.

With 23 games left, he has an excellent chance to accumulate 100 steals and 100 blocked shots for the season, something that hasn’t been done by anyone in the NBA since the 2018-19 season and hasn’t been done by a Raptor since Oliver Miller did it in the franchise’s inaugural season, 1995-96.

Overall, Barnes is on pace for 112 steals, 128 blocks and 450 assists. According to the basketball-reference.com database, the only other players to have hit those three thresholds in a single season are Michael Jordan in 1987-88 and Kevin Garnett in 2002-03. Between them, Jordan and Garnett were named to the league’s all-defensive team 21 times (12 for Garnett, nine for Jordan).

If Barnes doesn’t earn an all-defence selection this year for the first time, there should be an investigation.

How to get that next six minutes: The difference between being the ninth, 10th or 11th man in Darko Rajakovic’s rotation is how much opportunity you get to play in the second half – or whether you get to play at all.

Tuesday against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Gradey Dick trotted out for his typical first-half stint of five or six minutes, but in the second half, it was Jamison Battle who got those minutes. Then, in the first half against the Spurs, it was Battle who came off the bench first, while third-year wing Dick recorded his first DNP-CD (Did Not Play – Coach’s Decision) since he was a struggling rookie two years ago.

Battle also didn’t get that second-half stint versus the Spurs as Rajakovic kept his rotation fairly tight in a close game against an elite team.

So then, what exactly is Rajakovic looking for from either Battle or Dick – or anyone else to round out those minutes – now that Ja’Kobe Walter seems to have solidified himself as part of the regular eight-man rotation?

“It has to be on the defensive end, really holding their ground on the defensive end,” The Raptors coach said. “And on offence, being able to knock down a shot. That’s the 10th guy on the roster. Both of those guys, they’re elite shooters and they just need to be able consistently knock down shots.”

Battle has certainly got the message. He was the Raptors’ most efficient three-point shooter last season at 40.5 per cent (on 259 attempts) and is connecting on 41.8 per cent of those looks this season, although he’s only put up 55 of them as his playing time has been limited in a deeper rotation.

The undrafted second-year man out of Minnesota routinely is near the top of the Raptors’ practice charts for makes and attempts, and has worked hard to make himself a passable defender. He can often be seen going over defensive fundamentals as part of his pre-game routine.

“It’s mostly about footwork stuff, not opening up my hips,” Battle said. “I think that’s the biggest thing to me, is that I tend to open up pretty easily and I think when I’m working with [Raptors assistant coach Mery Andrade] the biggest thing is just stay square and guard the ball, just because that’s our that’s our identity, and that’s something that, no matter what, that’s got to be consistent. … So, I think it just helps give me a quick reminder of what I need to do for the game.”

You can only watch it so many times: One of Rajakovic’s favourite things to do is take in big musical theatre productions when he has a chance. The show he’s seen most is “The Lion King,” which he’s watched four times, and expects to see again because his son Luka enjoyed it so much when he took him.

However, despite how many times he’s gone to see the show, he’s not in the habit of seeing the same thing over and over again. That’s what he likes about sports: you never know what’s going to happen.

“You go to the theatre to see Hamlet, to see Shakespeare, it’s gonna be awesome, but can you go and do that eight times a month? Probably not. But when the Raptors are playing you come and see eight games because every single game is going to be different in a way. That’s the beauty of the sport. Because you never reach the goal, you never reach the finish line. It’s always in the process.”

Plenty of truth there, but one show Rajakovic is likely getting a little weary of is the tendency for his team to fold at key moments in important games.

The Raptors blew a 10-point lead to start the fourth quarter against the Spurs on Wednesday, and on Tuesday came all the way back from down 25 against the Thunder in the third quarter, tying the game with just over four minutes left, only to lose the final four minutes 15-6.

And those most recent cases aren’t the only games that have seen the Raptors blow leads.

Before the all-star break, the Raptors had a double-digit lead over the Minnesota Timberwolves to start the fourth quarter and lost. A couple of games before that one, they were also up by 13 to start the fourth against the Orlando Magic and lost that game, too.

“For us, as a young team, everything comes down to learning from those experiences, getting better,” Rajakovic said. “We’ve got to see the big picture. At the start of the season, we were winning a bunch of games and close games, and everybody thought, ‘Wow, we figured it out and everything is amazing, and it’s great.’ Some of those games we could easily lose, so over the course of a long season, things even up.

“But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to improve our execution.”

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