TORONTO — It's tied with 41.8 seconds left and the Charlotte Hornets have the ball on the sideline in the corner of the field. Toronto Raptors shop. They put the talented but eccentric LaMelo Ball out of bounds, hand him the ball and hope he can turn the corner and complete the pass to give Charlotte the lead.
Raptors center Jakob Poeltl leans in to deflect the shot, which he does well, but it also leaves giant Hornets rookie center Ryan Kalkbrenner wide open for an offensive rebound and pass. Kalkbrenner came into the game shooting 81.8% from the field with a “must be a mistake, but it isn't” shooting this season because most of his field goal attempts have come on plays like uncontested putbacks or dunks.
This time, however, Raptors guard Immanuel Quickley, who had been covering Ball during the play, assesses the situation and times his leap perfectly to tip the ball to a waiting Brandon Ingram, saving the home team from being down two with less than 40 seconds to play.
“I did everything I could to win,” Cookley (15 points, 10 rebounds, four assists) said later in the busy Raptors locker room. “At that moment, nothing else mattered except that whether you're trying to play offense or defense, you have to make the play to win. That's all I cared about.”
That's what the Raptors were worried about as a unit. But their fears were justified. Thanks to a remarkable sequence of plays in the final seconds, starting with Quickly's unlikely shot, the Raptors were able to win a game that hung in the balance until the buzzer sounded, beating the Hornets 110-108 at Scotiabank Arena on Monday.
One of the downsides (there aren't many) of one of the NBA's hottest teams is that Toronto barely played a close game. They were 27 on Monday night.th in the league by clutch minutes – games in which the winning team has scored five points or less with five minutes to play. During the 7-1 run heading into Monday night, the Raptors average point differential was 11.9.
Even their five losses so far have been significant.
How would they react? Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic was as curious as anyone.
“It's good for us. It's going to be a very good film for us. I think we've done some extraordinary things down that stretch – protecting the rim, blocking shots, some big rebounds,” he said. “It will be a good film for us to see how we can finish the game and execute better.”
How the Raptors (9-5) got into such a close game against the Hornets, who had three starters (albeit good ones) and were 4-10 by the end of the game, will show its fair share of material. Toronto led the final 20 minutes of the game and held the Hornets to 42.5% shooting while forcing 16 turnovers, but were unable to hold off Charlotte. If the Hornets had shot better than 10-for-40 from three (the Raptors were 10-for-25), the outcome might have been different. The Raptors' 17 turnovers (five of them by Ingram) require analysis.
But when it came to winning the game, the Raptors' key players – Quickley, R.J. Barrett, Scotty Barnes and Ingram all played big.
The next big moment came when the six-foot-eight Ingram put the ball down the right baseline while he was covered by the 6-foot-2 Colin Sexton. Ingram was the game's leading scorer with 27 points and was acquired by the Raptors in moments like these. But Ingram, a 10-year veteran, was in no hurry.
“Earlier in my career I couldn’t be so patient,” he said. “Even the year before. But just seeing it over and over again, I took a few deep breaths, I knew I had to be patient because I knew they were going to send two [defenders] and I knew I didn't want to turn it over.
“If they hadn't come I was going to hit Colin, he's too small and if they had sent two I might have still kicked but I was looking for open play.”
Barrett did the same (16 points, three rebounds, three assists).
The Raptors forward has cleverly adapted his game to better fit into a lineup in which the offense is more likely to be initiated through Ingram, Barnes or Quickley than through him. He became an intelligent and opportunistic goalscorer without the ball.
“I watched BI all the time,” he said later. “They kind of doubled all night. I tried to cut a couple of times [earlier] but it was not open, that’s what happened that time.
Ingram hit a wide open Barrett and the left-hander from Mississauga, Ont. used his body to protect the ball from Kalkbrenner and took a soft shot over the rim. That gave the Raptors a 110–108 lead with 18.4 seconds to play.
But the Hornets had the ball and could have tied the game at two or won at three.
Ball got into the paint after Kalkbrenner came off a screen and twisted into a pretzel to send the ball to his center for what looked like a game-tying dunk. At that point, Ingram was caught between an embrace from sharp-shooting rookie Con Knuppel (24 points, 4 of 10 from three) and help at the rim. When it became obvious where the ball was going, Ingram moved, braced himself for the jump and blocked Kalkbrenner from behind.
“I knew I was late, so I had to do something,” Ingram said of his second game-changing play in nine seconds. “I didn't think he was going to get up that slow, but I knew I had to try to get the ball, either block the shot or foul him and force him to the free throw line. Nothing easy.”
Charlotte recovered the loose ball, called a timeout and had one more chance to win or tie with 7.5 seconds on the clock.
This time, Barrett had to protect Miles Bridges in space, and it wasn't an easy task. But the Canadian star stayed put and slipped off his foot. As Bridges stepped back to take a shot from just beyond the free throw line, Barrett stretched every inch of his six-foot-seven frame to save the shot.
It worked, but when the ball rolled away, it was Sexton who jumped back in the scrum and set him up to hit the horn. But Barnes (16 points, six rebounds, six assists) lurked, and as Sexton went up, the 6-foot-8 Raptors forward got his second block of the game, sending the ball out of bounds as the buzzer sounded. After a brief review, it was clear that time had expired and Barnes had a breakaway block.
“I was looking to see who would make the rebound and the ball fell into [Sexton’s] hands,” Barnes said. “And it was my man and I wasn’t boxing, so I had to go and get the block.”
It was the latest in a string of remarkable plays, each of which was crucial.
“All those reads at the end of the game are players,” Rajakovic said. “They are the ones who read the game and make the right decisions.
Collectively, they secured the win, Toronto's fourth straight and eighth in its last nine games, moving the Raptors into third place in the East. But perhaps more importantly, those games and the victory they made possible fueled a growing sense of belief that this team was capable of winning any game.
“It’s practice for achieving your goal over the long term,” Ingram said. “Working in tough situations, trying to figure out what's the best shot on the floor and also defensively, figuring out the right play. That's going to help us in the playoffs.”
In 40 seconds of basketball, it was hard to imagine the Raptors doing it any better.
There was a lot of discussion about the Raptors' loaded rotation at the shooting guard and/or small forward positions, with Grady Dick, Ja'Kobe Walter, Ochai Agbaji and Jamison Battle all hunting for minutes behind RJ Barrett. And if that's not enough, add AJ Lawson to the list. With Agbaji out for a fourth straight game with back soreness, Lawson was recalled from the Raptors 905, where the 25-year-old Mississauga native showed he was probably too good for this level. With the 905 off to a 4-0 start, Lawson is averaging 25 points and nearly two steals per game while shooting 50.8 percent from the field, including 43.3 percent from three on 7.5 attempts per game. He was called up from the 905 and was on the Raptors bench against Charlotte, but did not enter the game.
It was hard to judge what was cooler: Ingram's first poster as a Raptor or the bench's reaction to him getting up and dunking over Kalkbrenner at the 6:43 mark of the fourth quarter.
The bench has gone crazy, and justifiably so. But it wasn't just the play, it was who directed it, Rajakovic said.
“I mean, Brandon is a really cool teammate, his teammates really like him,” the coach said. “He's done a great job of integrating himself into our team, even last year when he wasn't playing. He's invested in our guys. He's invested in this team. You know, he likes being around them. He likes getting to know them. And you know, when someone's just a good person and doing well, obviously you're going to root for them and support them. So it was a natural reaction on our bench.”
There aren't many Canadians whose basketball journey resembles that of Jermaine Bucknor. The former national team standout from Ross Sheppard High School in Edmonton played professionally in France, Poland, Germany, Belgium, Argentina and Canada. He got into coaching after retiring from playing and is now in his second NBA season working on Charles Lee's staff with the Hornets, helping to add to Charlotte's collection of impressive rookies.
“One of his greatest qualities is that he’s a bully,” Lee said. “He was my partner today at the shooting competition [at Charlotte’s morning shootaround] and he knocked a mess out of the ball, which I really like. And that's why we were able [win it] …
“But other than that, he's an amazing person and a really good coach who is so passionate about the details of the game. Every time I watch him, he's watching film and just trying to figure out, how can I get better? How can I help our players get better? Watching him practice again on the court, I see his attention to detail with which he even explains things. He's a good teacher of the game, his level of patience, his optimism. He's been a huge addition to our team. The staff, I know that being a first-year coach is so It's important that you hire the right guys to fight with you, support you, execute your vision and elevate the culture. And he does that phenomenally.”
