There’s nothing magic about Raptors’ shooting in second straight loss to Orlando

ORLANDO—When they walked out of the Florida heat and into a morning shootaround in the Orlando suburbs on Friday morning, the Raptors had high hopes for their tropical road trip. Two games in three nights against the Magic, who came into the weekend in 30th place, figured to be a sun-drenched salve to Toronto’s recent skid.

As poorly as the Raptors had been playing of late, surely two wins and a dose of Vitamin D would go a long way to resetting the season.

Alas, rather than refreshment, the trip brought only heightening frustration, the latest coming in Sunday’s 111-99 loss. Coupled with Friday’s humbling defeat at Amway Center, the sweep at the hands of the Magic was a loud announcement of a grim truth. The Raptors simply aren’t very good, at least not right now. And there’s no simple route to improvement in sight.

What’s wrong? Start with the fact Toronto’s offence seems stumped for ways to produce easy buckets, in no small part because its three-point shooting, never a strong suit, has taken a recent dip into the abysmal, going 16-for-60 (27 per cent) in the two-game set here.

“We’re having a hard time shooting the ball right now,” Toronto coach Nick Nurse said. “OG (Anunoby) has been playing through some stuff with his shooting hand, which has probably affected him. Freddy (VanVleet) is certainly out of sync with his shooting. And we rely heavily on those two guys, and then plus Gary (Trent Jr.). I don’t know. We just need to figure out a way to will some in there.”

It’s not that the Magic didn’t deserve plenty of credit for reeling off their third straight win thanks to the stellar play of Franz Wagner, who had 23 points, and Paolo Banchero, who had 20, among others. And it’s not that there weren’t positives for the visitors in Sunday’s loss. The Raptors got to the line for 38 free-throw attempts, and their defence, lax in Friday’s game, was tight enough to force 18 Magic turnovers. Nurse, mind you, counted himself displeased that the Raptors only managed to convert those giveaways into 23 points.

“When you’re creating that many turnovers, you probably should (score more). Those are 18 chances to go back at ’em and getting a point a possession, a little more than a point a possession, is probably not enough,” Nurse said.

It doesn’t help matters that the Raptors got news this weekend of yet another key injury, this one a strained hip that kept Anunoby out of Sunday’s game.

Maybe that sidelining was inevitable. Before Sunday, Anunoby had gone 26 straight starts without missing a game, a stretch in which he had reeled off the best basketball of his career. But Anunoby’s lack of durability has been a franchise liability over the previous couple of seasons, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that his perfect-attendance streak came to an end.

The absence of Anunoby, of course, only put more pressure on the Toronto players left standing. Perhaps in part as a result of that strain, Pascal Siakam and VanVleet spent a lot of the night in foul trouble. When Siakam picked up his fourth foul with 7:14 to play in the first half, Toronto’s game immediately took a turn for the worse. The Magic reeled off a 14-2 run that helped them build a lead that got as big as 16 points.

“I think when you’re in early foul trouble like that, especially with your No. 1 offence creator, it makes it tough,” Nurse said.

It doesn’t make it easier when nobody really steps into the breach. A day after Scottie Barnes acknowledged to reporters that a lot of his sophomore struggles emanate from the defensive end — “I feel like I’ve got to clean things up on the defensive end,” he said — the reigning rookie of the year was afforded plenty of early opportunity on offence, with the Raptors looking to get him the ball in a succession of first-quarter sets. The attention didn’t do much to bust Barnes’ slump. Though he played a more enthusiastic brand of defence, he finished the game with 11 points on 3-for-13 shooting from the field. In 41 minutes, Barnes added just two rebounds and zero assists. Trent led the team with 24 points Sunday, which VanVleet and Siakam had 20 and 19, respectively.

This certainly wasn’t pretty basketball. VanVleet took a few knocks to the head, most notably on a stiff arm from Markelle Fultz that was upgraded to a flagrant foul after video review. The Magic committed 28 fouls, a season high for a Toronto opponent.

But while the Raptors held the Magic to 33 per cent shooting from the field in the first quarter, they lost track of some of the home team’s shooters after halftime, when the Magic reeled off a 10-for-18 barrage from three-point range to help seal the win.

As the Magic rained down those bombs, the Raptors often couldn’t buy a shot in reply.

VanVleet, who went 2-for-7 from three-point range Sunday, called his team’s current inability to make a jump shot “a little gut punch, for sure.”

“We need some of those threes to go down,” VanVleet said. “The other team just gets more and more aggressive, and they load up more if you don’t make them. And we saw some of that tonight … It’s not a loss that you take very lightly … with the standard that we hold ourselves to. But they played better than us two games in a row. So you have to give them credit.”

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