This one isn’t worth a full breakdown so I’m just going to give you the details. The Toronto Raptors got their behind’s kicked by the San Antonio Spurs, falling 116-103.
They were up 14 at one point, then the bench came into the game. Overall, the Spurs bench outscored the Raps’ 61-26, which is kind of sad. However, when your bench consists of Dwight Bucks, Julyan Stone, Landry Fields, Steve Novak, and Austin Daye I guess you can’t really expect too much. And you definitely can’t expect Dwane Casey to run an 8-man rotation, because that’s crazy.
However, it should be better once the new guys get here.
Offense- B-
The Raps scored 36 in the first, which was fantastic. Jonas Valanciunas scored 10 first quarter points, and Amir Johnson dominated as well. However, the Raps turned to small ball after establishing the lead, so yeah. JV finished with 14, Amir with 19, Terrence Ross got the start and had 14, DeMar DeRozan had 19 points and an impressive 7 assists, and Kyle Lowry had 11 and 7.
One thing I will say is that the ball movement did look better, which is refreshing. Lowry’s distributing has been great lately, and it will be interesting to see what Masai decides to do with him.
Defense – D-
Pretty bad defense to say the least. The Spurs had a balanced attack, and had way too many wide open looks. Not much to analyze, just great ball movement by San Antonio and terrible defense by the Raptors.
Rebounding – A
Whoopee, the Raps out-rebounded the Spurs 38-36. Balanced rebounding effort as a whole with Amir leading the way, bringing down 9 boards. However, it won’t make much of a difference if the other team shoots 57% and you turn it over 19 times.
Overall, this wasn’t really surprising as the Spurs are an elite team and the Raptors are not. We’ll see how things go with the new group, but if this keeps up, don’t expect the roster to stay in tact much longer.
Game Ball – Manu Ginobili
Whenever the Raps had a small run going, Manu would obliterate it with a three-pointer. He finished with 16 points and 9 assists.
And here’s the clip of Amir destroying Kawhi Leonard.
