Once again, the Toronto Raptors were right there on Monday night. Lungs screaming at altitude, their only hope of slowing the best player alive fouled out, and down their two lead creators, this team of lunatic tryhards came just a half cup shy of a buzzer-beating win in Denver on Monday night. RJ Barrett’s would-be winner was down, then it wasn’t.
He said a week ago, after a similar shot against the same opponent, that he’d take that shot again, because “that’s who RJ Barrett is.” He wasn’t kidding.
Eventually for RJ, and for these Raptors, the coin flips will even out. They’re too close, too spunky, and maybe just too damn talented to keep coming up on the short end, especially once some of their walking wounded start to return.
The work Barrett and Gradey Dick in particular have done this past week in Scottie Barnes’ absence could be legitimately trajectory-altering for the franchise. Barrett, though he struggled shooting against ratcheted up attention from the Nuggets on Monday, has shown that at minimum he’s got the secondary creation juice to help vary the attack and support the big guns once Barnes and Immanuel Quickley re-assume their roles. Some of the reads he made out of wildly aggressive Nuggets traps and double-teams were downright gorgeous, and there seems to be an achievable happy medium between the largely off-ball play finisher he was last year, and the probing, calculated pick-and-roll operator he’s had to be these last four games.
Dick, meanwhile, is on his way to being one the greatest bang for your buck players in all of basketball, both for paying spectators and a Raptors team in need of some rookie scale guys that truly pop. He’s a laser show, the bright lights of his incredulous shot-making repertoire dancing across every inch of the half court, and now even crossing over to the other end of the floor. The second quarter stretch where he served the Nuggets a piping hot course of Dick Two-Ways might have earnestly launched him into the national consciousness.
Neither Barrett nor Dick was totally equipped for closing time. The Nuggets sold their defensive soul to get the ball out of both their hands in crunch time, and were rewarded with a slew of stops and turnovers that gave them just enough margin to hang on. But that’s OK. Dick is 20. Even the best don’t master trial by fire on the first attempt. Same goes for Barrett, never before tasked with this level of offensive burden. Only good can come from this period of over-extension.
You can feel something with this team. They’re connected. They play for each other. They’re making incremental and in some cases gigantic strides seemingly by the game. Save for the opener against Cleveland, every game has left those watching buzzing with anticipation for the next.
They will eventually need their two big guns back if they want to truly string together a mid-season run up the shambolic Eastern Conference standings. But in the meantime, there’s no way a team playing with this much soul doesn’t tread water and earn some results.
This is a team that rewards you for watching, that affirms the choice to trade sleep for hoops when those dreaded 10pm tips near. This is as fun as 2-6 gets, and this inspired group is just scratching the surface.
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Today on the podcast I go deeper on the 121-119 loss to the Nuggets, Gradey Dick & RJ Barrett, the best defensive half the team’s played all year and more. Enjoy the show!
