Toronto Raptors<\/a> wing says on Friday afternoon, his voice trailing off slightly. \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\nNothing captures the \u2018there are only game days and practice days\u2019 reality of NBA life \u2014 especially on the road \u2014 quite like grown, high-functioning adults not knowing what day of the week it is, or what city they are in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The road exacerbates it, and the Raptors will have been away from home for 13 of the first 22 nights of the season by the time their current five-game road trip wraps up in Indianapolis Saturday.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just players for whom time blurs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe you’re gonna think that I’m lying,\u201d said Darko Rajakovic as the Raptors were finishing practice on campus at Marian University.\u00a0\u201cBut I really only know that we\u2019re playing the next game against Indiana, and I believe that they’re playing the next games against Washington and Brooklyn. I really don’t know who we play after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Actually, I don\u2019t think you\u2019re lying, Darko, given that the Raptors’ next two games (after the Pacers Saturday) are at home against Charlotte on Monday and then on the road against Philadelphia on Wednesday. It\u2019s only after those two do they host Washington and Brooklyn.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the point of the exercise is that if there were ever a time for the Raptors to veer from their \u2018just get the next one\u2019 mantra, it might be right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yes, it\u2019s accurate that nothing the Toronto Raptors did in their impressive win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday can actually help them in their match-up with injury-riddled Indiana, other than perhaps carrying over some good vibes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And win or lose, their meeting with the Charlotte Hornets at home Monday will exist independently of whatever happens after that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But there are moments during that 82-game schedule where entire seasons can take shape. It\u2019s not that any single segment defines the rest of the year, but like investing or even gambling, some of the biggest gains are made in the smallest of windows.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Raptors are in one of those windows now. There are many points during an NBA season when circumstances conspire against you and wins are that much more difficult to come by. Difficult travel, quality opponents, untimely injuries, unexpected slumps \u2014 they matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the reverse is also true. And over the next nine days, the Raptors face a non-murderers\u2019 row if there ever was one (current record in parentheses):<\/p>\n
\u2022 @ Indiana (1-11)
\u2022 Charlotte (4-7)
\u2022 @ Philadelphia (7-4)
\u2022 Washington (1-11)
\u2022 Brooklyn (1-10)<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a case that it\u2019s the easiest schedule any NBA team has ever had, as according to ESPN\u2019s Kevin Pelton, this is just the second time that three teams in the same conference have started the season at 1-10 or worse. The other was in 1997-98, when it was the Western Conference dregs that were bringing the NBA down. That year, the Raptors started 1-10 also, but they were in the East, of course.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So anyway you cut it, playing three teams with a cumulative 3-32 record in the space of five games, while hosting the 4-7 Hornets in between, is the basketball equivalent of finding a wallet with no ID and a couple of hundred dollars cash lying on the sidewalk. Pick that thing up.<\/p>\n
Even travelling to play the Sixers could be worse, as Joel Embiid \u2014 who scored 29 points in 26 minutes against the Raptors in a Philadelphia win last week \u2014 has missed the last three games due to soreness in his right knee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bottom line is the Raptors, winners of six games in their past seven and sitting two games above .500 for the first time since November 2022, could get on a serious roll here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And in the Eastern Conference \u2014 where finishing six or seven games above .500 at the end of the regular season could mean a playoff spot \u2014 a good week, say winning four of five games, could have them five games above .500 with a week left in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For his part, Barrett appreciates the logic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you know, the probably most common answer would be taking it one game at a time, which is true,\u201d he said when I asked him about seeing an opportunity to put some wins in the bank while they can. \u201cFirst and foremost, let’s take care of business here in Indiana.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at the same time, standings matter, everything matters. The pushes that you make matter. You don’t know what’s going to happen over the course of an 82-game season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we’re healthy,\u201d he says, touching the wooden bleachers for luck. \u201cAnd we have to capitalize on that, especially coming from last year and not being healthy at all. Like, right now is a big time to make a push and make some noise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think we’ve been doing that a little bit, I think the beginning of the season (when the Raptors lost four straight after opening the season with a win), the schedule was tougher, so it should get a little lighter at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n
For his part, Rajakovic doesn\u2019t want to hear about the toughness of the schedule. As well as the Raptors have played since their 1-5 start \u2014 Toronto is fourth in defence, eighth in offence and fifth in net rating over its past seven games \u2014 he still sees plenty of room to improve.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even in their impressive win against Cleveland on Thursday, the Raptors gave up 14 offensive rebounds \u2014 five of them to Nae\u2019Qwan Tomlin, who has nine NBA games to his credit after going undrafted out of college in 2024. Tomlin \u2014 who also scored on a few basic baseline cuts \u2014 had only ever scored more than the 18 points he put up against Toronto once in his career. His six rebounds were also the second-best mark of his brief career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a couple of times we lost a man, we lost the vision, so they were able to score on a couple of cuts there,\u201d said Rajakovic. \u201c\u2026 And then it was a couple of things in the coverages that we could execute better, to be more attached to men and then to do a better job of affecting the ball and then getting back to the shooters. So those are some of the things that we focused on [at practice], trying to clean up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The message: regardless of the opponent or their pedigree, they can hurt you.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t want to know (about our schedule),\u201d Rajakovic said. \u201cLiterally, that’s my approach, and really taking it one game at a time is very, very important. You look at games, and you just don’t know, are they gonna be healthy? Are we gonna be healthy? So many things can happen after every game \u2026 there are so many things that are outside of our control, and the NBA is a lot. There is a lot of pressure on players, on coaches and everybody, and I’m trying to limit that just going one day at a time. And there’s the whole philosophy of all that we’re looking at. I really don’t look at it in those terms, like can we make a run here or not? We\u2019re in a good stretch right now and so let\u2019s just take care of business tomorrow night against Indiana.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sounds like a plan. But after that comes Charlotte…\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. \u2014 Honest question, RJ Barrett: what day is it?\u00a0 \u201cThursday? Saturday? I know it\u2019s near the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-284754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}