Opinion | Strange night but little things add up to a Raptors win ushering out 2021

Happy New Year.

Remember when you’d sit around Jan. 1 morning and watch the parades – Cotton Bowl, Rose Bowl with the famous Grand Marshal – and keep really quiet because Mom and Dad might be sleeping it off?

Do they still have parades? Does anyone care who the Grand Marshal is? They’ve ruined the football part of the day because of the proliferation of bowl games and the “playoff” games that were last night and I’d kind of like to back to the olden days.

Anyone else?

But we won’t, life marches on and I guess the only tradition I can try to keep is ordering Chinese food in later on, always a highlight of Jan.1 around Casa Smith back in the day.

We do need to keep up one tradition and that’s wrapping up last night’s game early the next morning so here you go.

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THREE POINTERS

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An odd night

It was certainly weird for us who chronicle the game because it was the first time any of us had seen an NBA game with so few people in the building.

Not much energy and very little buzz unless you count the piped-in hum of fan noise that played just about the entire game.

There were two points, each only maybe 10 seconds long, when the noise was muted and I’d love to experience maybe a full quarter with nothing but real noise on the court.

Can’t imagine that happening because it doesn’t seem to be the NBA way but I bet it’d be enlightening.

One thing it didn’t do, though, was cause the players any major concern. Like Fred VanVleet told us after the game, they’re used to it.

“It was more normal than not, to be honest with you,” he said. “I didn’t even think about it until we were just talking about in the locker room. So I don’t know the numbers but I would say we probably played just as much if not more fanless basketball than we have a packed stadiums, so it is what it is.

“I’m not going to make so many excuses or, you know, dwell on the challenges and adversity that we’re facing.”

Wise words indeed.

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A secret weapon

Justin Chamapagnie didn’t light up the stats sheet or play an awful lot – about 10 minutes, all in the fourth quarter – but he made more than enough plays to have a major impact on the game.

The biggest came with about four minutes left in a tie game.

Pascal Siakam had missed a couple of free throws that were pretty important given the circumstances but Champagnie shed his man on the lane, stuck along the baseline to rebound the second miss that gave the Raptors a vital second possession.

It ended with Siakam put back a VanVleet miss about 15 seconds later and the Raptors closed it out and never trailed again.

Nick Nurse said he was just searching for some energy – the game sure had some listless moments – when he went to Champagnie, Boucher and Dalano Banton in the fourth quarter.

“Pascal missed both free throws and Justin comes away with the ball; it takes an unspirited moment and put some spirit right back into it,” Nick said of the play.

“That spreads just a bit. There’s a guy that’s around the ball, finding the ball etc., and all of a sudden Chris is finding it … just keeping plays alive.

“It’s good, we were searching for energy so we needed it.”

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Shooting woes

The three-point shooting was kind of brutal 31 per cent as a team, VanVleet was an awful 4-13 and to Nurse at least it was easy to see why.

“I think we started six of eight from three and about the next 20 were short,” he said. “Great shots, open shots we want to take but it was almost a situation where it felt like ‘I’m not sure those are the right shots to take tonight’ just because we (didn’t) have any legs.

“Then Freddy hit two big ones after he went short about six times in a row.”

The legs were the thing.

“Yeah, just jelly legs,” Fred said. ”My timing was off, my release was a little off, a little slow. But you know, (it’s) part of the process so work myself back in.”

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To finish, if you’re so inclined to ask some burning question for tomorrow’s 2022 debut edition of Ye Olde Mailbag, all you’ve got to do is click on [email protected] sometime today and fire it off.

I’ve got an off-day Raptors story to figure out but the day’s otherwise open so getting it done and sleeping in a bit on Sunday sounds good. Help a fella out, will ya?

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