TORONTO – It was clear before tipoff that the story of Wednesday\u2019s game would, some way or another, come from the centre position.<\/p>\n
The return of Jakob Poeltl<\/a>, giving the Raptors their planned starting five for the first time since Nov. 21. The suspensions of Jalen Duren<\/a> and Isaiah Stewart<\/a>, destabilizing one of the best frontcourt rotations in the NBA this year. A thumb-related absence for Collin-Murray Boyles, the second game as a Raptor for Trayce Jackson-Davis, or hell, even a rare appearance from Pistons G League standout Tolu Smith.<\/p>\n No shortage of angles. No shortage of wrong answers. Early in Wednesday\u2019s 113-95 loss for the Raptors, it was all about the fill-in Pistons starting five, for years the crown prince of League Pass Twitter: B-Ball Paul.<\/p>\n Sure, Poeltl\u2019s return is a more important development, and dual suspensions for the Dawg Pound bringing physical hoops back to Detroit are newsier, and Cade Cunningham was unbelievable.<\/p>\n But it was Reed who ran with the opportunity, both in his rotation placement and against a Raptors frontcourt that didn\u2019t know what to do with him. He\u2019d scored 11 points by Darko Rajakovi\u0107\u2019s first timeout less than five minutes into the game, then helped force another, angrier timeout 26 seconds of play later. By the end of the first quarter, he\u2019d scored 16, and he\u2019d finish with 22 on 10-of-17 shooting with five rebounds, three assists, four blocks, and two steals.<\/p>\n That the Raptors had no answer for Detroit\u2019s third centre highlights a few things, beyond just the great fortune of even having a\u00a0third\u00a0centre when some teams can\u2019t find two. Murray-Boyles was probably the matchup piece who was most missed, as his physicality and rebounding acumen \u2013 plus his ability to switch some pick-and-rolls and delayed cuts where Paul was fed by Cade Cunningham \u2013 could have helped neutralize him. Jackson-Davis, meanwhile, had a nice debut Sunday and a shakier follow-up, with some of the weaknesses on the scouting report (namely, his hands).<\/p>\n As for Poeltl, far more important than any matchup or outcome is that he was back on the floor. Sidelined since Dec. 21 with a nebulous back issue that went from day-to-day to week-to-week, required visits with specialists, and seemed to frustrate as much as perplex, Poeltl crossing the hurdle to live, active play is huge.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was encouraging that he was able to finally come back and play 20 minutes, as we had planned for him, and it was good to see that he did not have restrictions on the court,\u201d Rajakovi\u0107 said.<\/p>\n The Raptors have hung in well during his absence, succeeding defensively with a smaller, switchier approach that dials up the aggression and trades some floor for ceiling. Poeltl, if healthy, offers more stability, the option to go a bit more conservative in the name of reliability, backline communication, and a place to funnel drives. It\u2019s been on the offensive end where his absence has been more noticeable, with the Raptors thin on high-end screen-setters with roll gravity. Their system is designed in part with Poeltl in mind, and while Murray-Boyles is an adept passer and Scottie Barnes Is a positional chameleon, Poeltl operating near the top of the floor opens up hand-offs, cuts, and the pick-and-rolls that have followed a league-wide trend of declining usage.<\/p>\n Poeltl\u2019s absence has hung over things for weeks. A vague back problem for a 30-year-old 7-footer makes the extension he signed last summer difficult to add into trade machinations, and that\u2019s before getting to the well-what-if of a healthy Poeltl plugging some of the holes a trade would have aimed to. Poeltl isn\u2019t going to start banging threes for the Raptors, but when he\u2019s right, everything makes a bit more sense. Now, presumably, that is behind them, and behind him.<\/p>\n \u201cI just try to be myself, if I know I\u2019m gonna come out in a couple minutes anyway,\u201d Poeltl said before his return. \u201cHonestly, I think these first couple games, I\u2019m just going to go out there and try to play as free as possible. Try not to focus on any of the back stuff that\u2019s been going on, just try to go out there and play my game. And I think the rest will come naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n Poeltl played 20 minutes over four shifts. He finished with nine points, six rebounds, and one turnover. He at times looked slow and stiff, at others more comfortable than he had in December. In other words, what you might expect after a moderate layoff.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt pretty good. Obviously, not perfect,” Poeltl said after the game. “Still trying to find a bit of a rhythm, get my lungs back, trying to find myself again within our offence. But my back felt good, so I\u2019m happy about that, in general. I felt okay just getting up and down. Those are the positives I can take away from the game.\u201d<\/p>\n The results, if you care to evaluate them in a return game, were mixed. On paper, the Pistons missing Duren and Stewart could have been an easier landing spot for Poeltl\u2019s return, taking away two brutes to bang with. Instead, Reed and a series of undersized forwards-at-centre spaced Toronto\u2019s defence out, asking Poeltl to cover more space and run in transition. It left jumpers open for Cunningham, rim-runs open for Reed and, in general, the Raptors looked like a defence that had grown unfamiliar with\u00a0this\u00a0style rather than the smaller identity they\u2019d had to play with of late.<\/p>\n On the other end, Detroit mostly handled Poeltl in the dunker spot with whoever was nearby, and while a few of his screens resulted in opportunities rolling to the rim, he\u2019ll have to rebuild some chemistry with teammates who have played extensively without him.<\/p>\n \u201cIn theory, a lot,\u201d Rajakovi\u0107 said Saturday of what Poeltl (and Jackson-Davis) can add for the offence. \u201cWe still have to see how the chemistry between those guys is going to develop. I want everybody to understand that everything starts with us on the defensive end before we talk about offence. \u2026 And from there, we\u2019re going to be learning how to best use those guys on the offensive end and what it\u2019s going to do to our spacing. Experience has taught me that a lot of times what you have planned, and what you\u2019ve based on the film, it\u2019s not necessarily what works in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n An aside on chemistry: Missing key starters in Poeltl and RJ Barrett has a real effect. Redeveloping chemistry after absences is now, unfortunately, a necessity for any good team in the league. Consider that the Raptors hadn\u2019t had their main starting five together in almost two months, that this was just the 13th\u00a0time they\u2019ve played together this year, and yet\u00a0still\u00a0they are top-20 in minutes played this year among all NBA lineups. Injuries, load management, building versatility; whatever the case, the NBA in 2026 requires figuring this stuff out in a hurry. (A positive: Entering Wednesday, that fivesome was above-average at both ends of the floor, a nice start for a small-ish sample.)<\/p>\n The bigs were, obviously, not the only story. Cunningham scored 28 points in 30 minutes on surgical efficiency, adding seven rebounds, nine assists, and three steals for good measure. He seems to take\u00a0all\u00a0of his matchups against his 2021 draft class peers the same way Barnes sizes up Evan Mobley, which is a fun subplot in Cunningham\u2019s ascension to stardom.<\/p>\n Barnes did an admirable job when matched up on him in the first quarter, but using Barnes on a perimeter player removes his defensive playmaking strengths from the lower third, and nobody on the team can replicate that. Nobody could replicate it on-ball against Cunningham, either, and Cunningham had some fun in the minutes Barnes sat, exacerbated by Barnes\u2019s first-half foul trouble.<\/p>\n The Raptors, who never once led, offered little resistance as the lead swelled as large as 23 in the third. Brandon Ingram faced extra attention that took away some of his opportunities and seemed to lead to a lot of passiveness elsewhere. Toronto had a characteristically light shooting night. The bench provided minimal scoring and even less from a positive lineup perspective. It\u2019s hard to find an area Detroit didn\u2019t outplay Toronto, including the battle for points in the paint, which is consistently a harbinger of Raptors outcomes. That includes 17 offensive rebounds to a team down two centres.<\/p>\n A week ago, this game looked like a big measuring stick for the Raptors. They are aware, in the locker room, that they have not played their best basketball against the league\u2019s best teams. As the playoffs draw nearer, seeing how they stack up against potential playoff opponents is good information, motivation, or affirmation. Even with a few missing pieces \u2013 and maybe even more so, given who they were \u2013 this lays clear the Raptors have plenty of work left to do.<\/p>\n The lose drops the Raptors to 4-13 against the league\u2019s top 10, with three of those wins coming early in the season against the Cavaliers (who only recently entered the top 10 after a few months of malaise).<\/p>\n \u201cThat says we\u2019re 4-13 against really good teams. That\u2019s what it says,\u201d Rajakovi\u0107 deadpanned.<\/p>\n That record is 1-10 against the top six. Toronto will get two more cracks at Detroit as part of a much more difficult March schedule that will give them plenty of iron against which to sharpen themselves for April.<\/p>\n They will need to be tougher, with a bit more resolve, against the league\u2019s best. It was noticeable in second-half collapses against New York and Orlando in recent weeks, too, and the Pistons will only grow more physical when fully staffed. The all-star break is well-timed for a Raptors team inching closer to full strength, but they\u2019ll need that health to lead to renewed chemistry, and, somehow, greater toughness, quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO – It was clear before tipoff that the story of Wednesday\u2019s game would, some way or another,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-469588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469588","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=469588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}