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— KNBR (@KNBR) December 13, 2018
One of the few highlight plays for the Warriors tonight
OAKLAND – No Kawhi Leonard, no problem, right? Wrong. The Warriors played slow, sloppy basketball and were put to task by the Toronto Raptors, losing 113-93, despite the Raptors playing their second game of a back-to-back and again without their best player in Leonard. It snaps a 13-game win streak the Warriors had over the Raptors at Oracle Arena.
The Warriors trailed 57-41 at the end of the first half having shot an abysmal 38.6 percent from the field and 17.6 percent from 3-point range.
It did not get better in the second half.
The Warriors couldn’t get within 14 points of the Raptors in the second half, with Kevin Durant 30 points (13-of-22) 7 rebounds, 5 assists seemingly the only one capable of making a shot. He also turned the ball over five times. Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green were a combined 11-of-34, accounting for just 26 points tonight.
Here are five takeaways from tonight’s game:
Was that an NBA Finals preview? Probably (and probably not)
If you had to guess the two teams to meet in the NBA Finals this season, it’s easy to pick the Warriors and the team with the best record in the East without looking any further. But it genuinely looks like the Nick Nurse-coached and Kawhi Leonard-led Raptors pose the greatest challenge to the Warriors, who, despite sloppy nights like tonight, still stand leaps and bounds above their competition in the West.
You would also imagine that a Finals matchup between the two would more competitive than tonight’s abysmal showing was.
Leonard is a superstar in a league that demands (aside from the 2001 Detroit Pistons) that a championship-caliber team have at least one superstar. While DeMar DeRozan is a fantastic player, he didn’t elevate the Raptors to the level the team is at now, nor did Dwane Casey as a coach. In both matchups this season (with and without Leonard, and with the Warriors missing Curry and Draymond Green in the first) the Raptors have given the Warriors a difficult challenge that they haven’t been able to solve.
You would hope, at least from a competitive and entertainment standpoint, that Leonard would be healthy in a Finals matchup, and with all things equal, it still seems like the Warriors would have the edge in that matchup, just on the basis of their star power.
But the Raptors have the deepest bench in the league, and if injuries come into play, that could prove a problem for a Warriors team that has already lost one young player (Damian Jones) for the season, has yet to see how DeMarcus Cousins will fare – judging by his warmups tonight, he still looks a ways away from being comfortable shooting. It’s also a team that has dealt with small and medium injuries to its stars and older rotation players like Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, both of whom were out tonight with injuries.
The Warriors have more playoff experience than any team in the league, however, and the playoffs, as we all know, are a far different beast than the regular season. Still, tonight showed where the Warriors are weak, and what happens when Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson play poorly, and the defense falls asleep. But in a seven-game series, the mean favors the championship-caliber Warriors, not the team that played tonight.
It’s gotta be the shoes
Stephen Curry played one of his worst games in recent memory while debuting his new Curry 6’s. It was a night to forget for the entire Warriors team, but Curry especially. He was poor by any standard, let alone his own. He put up just 10 points on 3-of-12 shooting, 2-of-8 from deep, along with 3 assists, 3 rebounds and 4 turnovers. Klay Thompson went 0-of-5 from 3-point range, with Draymond Green went 0-of-3 with 4 turnovers.
As a team, the Warriors went 6-of-26 from deep. While their 47.6 percent shooting mark from the field looks decent, most of those came as empty baskets in the second half and had no effect on the game. The Warriors’ disjointed, turnover-prone offense that had 19 turnovers, however, was persistent throughout the whole game and shaped the loss.
Swiss cheese defense
The Warriors played Swiss cheese defense tonight, letting the Raptors do just about whatever they wanted. The difference between points in the paint tells most of the story. The deficit – excluding garbage time – was around 20 points. It was one of the worst defensive showings of the Steve Kerr era.
Warriors points in the paint: 40
Raptors points in the paint: 58
There’s no tally for how many times Fred VanVleet, Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka were basically untouched en route to an easy bucket, but it felt like deja vu. It seemed like it happened every possession.
As Mark Jackson, the old Warriors’ head coach and ESPN commentator (who was in the house tonight) would (and probably did) say with full corniness, “Mama, there goes that man!”
Without Damian Jones on the interior, Draymond Green was left searching for answers he didn’t have. The Raptors’ long, athletic lineup led by Serge Ibaka and Pascal Siakam gave the Warriors constant trouble. Defenders were often seen swiping and jumping at all the wrong times as the Raptors scored too many easy buckets inside.
Sorry about the thumb, Jonas
About midway through the second quarter, Raptors center Jonas Valanciunas was giving the Warriors real trouble. In just 8 minutes, he’d tallied 6 points and 7 rebounds. Without Damian Jones to matchup size-wise in the paint against him, he was having his way.
Then, Draymond Green went for a steal and caught more hand than ball. Valanciunas’ thumb turned in a direction that no thumb should ever turn and he left the court screaming and at one point bit down on a towel before heading to the locker room with what was later diagnosed as a dislocated thumb. The video below shows what happened, but watch at your own risk:
Don't think his thumb is supposed to look like that ? pic.twitter.com/LK2qqkKAx2
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) December 13, 2018
“Started from the bottom, now we’re here”
Since the Toronto Raptors joined the NBA in 1995 in the Eastern Conference along with the then-Vancouver Grizzlies in the Western Conference, the team has undergone distinct periods in its history.
First, there was the abysmal start, in which people questioned the legitimacy and staying power of a basketball team in Canada, and the Raptors failed to secure more than 30 wins in any of their first three seasons. The Vancouver Grizzlies relocated to Memphis in 2001 after just six sad years north of the American border. That was the bottom, as Drake, the steward of Toronto basketball and culture, rapped in “Started From the Bottom.”
But towards the end of that start, the Raptors drafted Tracy McGrady in the 1997 NBA draft, and the next year, made a draft-day trade with none other than the Warriors, trading away Antawn Jamison (4th overall) for McGrady’s cousin, Vince Carter (5th overall), starting the VinSanity era in Toronto. In the 1999-2000 season, the Raptors made their first-ever playoff berth.
Then, McGrady left in a sign-and-trade deal to the Orlando Magic for a first-round draft pick, feeling outshined by his cousin, Carter. The Raptors made the playoffs the next two seasons, making it as far as the Eastern Conference Semifinals in 2001. But starting in the 2002-03 season, the Raptors were scorched by injuries and reverted to sub-.500 basketball.
In 2003, the Raptors drafted Chris Bosh, but passed up the chance to draft Andre Iguodala in 2004, instead drafting center Rafael Araujo. Later in the 2004-05 season, much like his cousin McGrady, Carter was traded to the New Jersey Nets. That marked the start of the Chris Bosh era and a pair of back-to-back playoff berths in the 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons. However, the 2006 season began with the infamous drafting of Andrea Bargnani first overall. While it was a weak draft, it featured LaMarcus Aldridge, Brandon Roy, Rajon Rondo, Rudy Gay, J.J. Redick and Kyle Lowry – who was initially drafted by the Grizzlies.
But, like McGrady and Carter before him, and following a pair of seasons missing the playoffs, Bosh left in free agency in 2010 for the Miami Heat, and the Raptors were terrible for a pair of seasons until the 2013-14 season, the start of the current era. In the 2009 draft, the Raptors drafted DeMar DeRozan, setting the stage for today. In the 2011 Draft, the Raptors drafted Jonas Valanciunas, and traded for Lowry from the Houston Rockets the next season.
The current era began when general manager Masai Ujiri came in, trading Bargnani to the Knicks for Marcus Camby, Steve Novak, Jason Richardson, a first-round pick and two second-round picks. The Knicks were about as dumb as they’d ever been at that point in time and somehow thought Bargnani would push the needle of a Carmelo Anthony-led team. This allowed the Raptors to add Jakob Poeltl and Pascal Siakam in the 2016 Draft and build the most dangerous core in the NBA.
Last season, Ujiri realized that Dwane Casey, the Coach of the Year, and DeMar DeRozan (even without LeBron James in the East this season) weren’t enough to make a run at the title, after five-straight seasons of making the playoffs, but only one Eastern Conference Finals appearance. So, Ujiri traded DeRozan, Poeltl and a protected 2019 first-round pick to the San Antonio Spurs for the disgruntled and soon-to-be free agent Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green.
So, here we are, with the Raptors having their best-ever start to a season thanks to the acquisition of Leonard. They have now beaten the Warriors twice, this time handily, and without Leonard. The two questions are, will Toronto make their first Finals appearance, and will Leonard stay with Toronto after this season? It makes sense on paper for Leonard to stay. Thanks to the Raptors position as the only Canada franchise in the NBA, they avoid much of the media scrutiny that every other Finals-contending stateside franchise endures.
That figures to be perfect for the reclusive Leonard, who, despite saying he’s a “fun guy,” has the personality of a robot, at least in public. And that’s fine. He’s playing as good as any other player in the NBA right now. But, if the Raptors don’t make the NBA Finals (again) and don’t win a title, will Leonard stay? They’ve never made it through the Eastern Conference Finals. It seems like that accomplishment would be enough to keep Leonard, but he keeps his plans under lock-and-key better than any other NBA player, so it’s impossible to tell.
The Raptors don’t have history on their side (see McGrady, Carter, Bosh and the nonexistence of a Finals berth), but they’ve also never had a team or a player this good. At this point, it’s clear that the Leonard trade was worth it, even if he’s a one-year rental, simply because of the way he’s elevated this team. But it would mark a new milestone for the Raptors if they could, for the first time in their history, hold onto their bona fide star player in free agency.