It\u2019s always a little risky to make too much of any single moment in any season that starts in the middle of October and runs until mid-April, with 82 games played in 30 different cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But if what has been a fun and refreshing three quarters of a season for the Toronto Raptors<\/a> goes down the tubes in the final 20 games or so \u2014 and things are getting greasy quickly \u2014 the image of New Orleans Pelicans guard Dejounte Murray<\/a> straddling Raptors guard Jamal Shead<\/a> with 1:25 to go in Wednesday night\u2019s 122-111 loss will be tough to shake.\u00a0<\/p>\n It’s not just that Shead ended up on his back after Murray hit a tough three to punctuate a lengthy one-on-one duel which started at halfcourt with the pesky Shead getting aggressively into Murray before stumbling, giving his Pelicans counterpart the space he needed to get his shot off.\u00a0<\/p>\n You could make the case that it\u2019s a moment that encapsulates the Raptors’ recent struggles \u2014 certainly their fourth-quarter struggles \u2014 in a nutshell: good effort, but not good enough, as their opponent is the one executing under pressure and the Raptors can only wonder why they can\u2019t get a shot to drop when needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n But more deeply symbolic was the image of Murray standing over Shead, fists clenched and yelling and the Raptors essentially doing nothing about it, other than Immanuel Quickley<\/a> making his way to Murray in what can only be described as a gentle admonishment.\u00a0<\/p>\n And good for Quickley. He at least responded to the play, which ultimately earned Murray \u2014 who scored 27 points in 32 minutes in just his seventh game back after tearing his Achilles tendon last season \u2014 a technical foul.\u00a0<\/p>\n How to describe the rest of the Raptors’ responses?\u00a0<\/p>\n Despondent?\u00a0Indifferent? They did eventually scrum at midcourt, with the usual interference run by referees and team security staff, but it seemed mostly performative at that point.\u00a0<\/p>\n What would Dillon Brooks have done if he was a Raptor?<\/p>\n Or Kyle Lowry, or DeMar DeRozan, or Serge Ibaka when they were?\u00a0<\/p>\n Professional sports generally \u2014 and the NBA specifically \u2014 are far more sanitized than they used to be, and mostly for the better. No one needs to see Kevin McHale clotheslining Kurt Rambis again.<\/p>\n But winning at the highest level still requires a fight, figuratively and sometimes literally. Two teams want the same thing; one team has to take it. Things can boil over.\u00a0<\/p>\n Remember what Lu Dort did to Nikola Jokic last week? A nasty, unnecessary trip against a true rival, which Dort later acknowledged. But remember how Thunder centre Jaylin Williams confronted Jokic in defence of Dort anyway? Or how Jokic looked quite convincingly like he was going to kill someone \u2014 likely Williams \u2014 before the whole thing cooled down?<\/p>\n Now imagine anyone among the current configuration of Raptors hard-fouling someone out of spite. Or actually wanting to fight someone in response to a hard foul \u2014 or even just because they were pissed off.<\/p>\n When was the last time Scottie Barnes got mad at anything other than a no-call?\u00a0<\/p>\n Teams take after their coaches, and we\u2019ve seen enough to know that Darko Rajakovic has plenty of fight not too far from the surface of his Serbian soul. Still, it\u2019s almost always veiled by his relentless positivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s time to let some of his inner dog out.\u00a0<\/p>\n I feel confident in saying the Raptors have a locker room of nice guys and good people. It\u2019s admirable.<\/p>\n But you wonder if that\u2019s a blessing and a curse. Sometimes you need someone to bring you to the fight. Who is that for Toronto right now?<\/p>\n Rajakovic didn\u2019t want to make a big deal of the incident in the moments after a loss that dropped his team from fifth place to seventh in the Eastern Conference playoff race, a half-game behind Miami in sixth, a full game behind Orlando in fifth and just two-and-a-half games up on\u00a0ninth-place Atlanta and three up on 10th-place Charlotte. All those teams are surging while the Raptors are flatlining.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t give it too much,\u201d Rajakovic said when asked about the incident after the game by Sportsnet sideline reporter Danielle Michaud. \u201cGuys are competitive. It was pretty over the board, what he (Murray) did. But I have to see it on film, but I don\u2019t want to make it more than it is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Rajakovic has other things to worry about, like how his team is 29th\u00a0in fourth-quarter offensive efficiency, ahead of only the 16-51 Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n But having gone through the film myself, a couple of thoughts:<\/p>\n \u2022 What was Murray on about?\u00a0If I had to guess why Murray reacted the way he did, it would be because Shead was daring to get so aggressively into his legs and body with the game already decided, essentially. Just before Shead fell, he took a swipe at the ball as it went across Murray\u2019s nether regions. Maybe Murray thought that was a little too close for comfort? He seemed to be saying “he grabbed me” when he was stomping around afterwards. Even before Murray hit his three, the Pelicans were up 15 with less than two minutes to play. The combination of Murray having the best game of his injury comeback, Shead challenging him in a way that was pure Shead but kind of unnecessary and then Murray dropping him and hitting the three probably added up to the urge to let Shead know about it in the rudest way possible. But I\u2019m just guessing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2022 Why did the Raptors react so passively?\u00a0A couple things matter, for context. One is that Shead didn\u2019t really react, at least initially. He seemed to be looking up at Murray thoroughly confused about why this person was reacting so feverishly. Shead seemed to be more bemused than threatened or disrespected for the first moment at least. It speaks to Shead\u2019s emotional maturity. It was only after Pelicans forward Herb Jones gave Murray a celebratory shove that took him almost to halfcourt that Shead got up and responded, but it was almost like Shead and the rest of the Raptors \u2014 who all eventually ended up in a scrum \u2014 were reacting to support Quickley, who was in the mix on his own at first. Once Murray kept sounding off, Shead\u2019s temper came up a little bit, but things settled down quickly after that. But I think two things explain the lack of instant response: Shead didn\u2019t pop up or pop off right away, and the Raptors had just gone down 18 and in what was a two-point game just eight minutes prior. Brandon Ingram<\/a> missed the whole thing because his head was down, literally. The vibe was dejection, rather than anger.<\/p>\n But bigger picture and moving away from symbols to facts, the whole situation and the Raptors’ slow air leak of late \u2014 losses in six of their last eight games, a repeated inability to beat quality teams (1-15 since Nov. 24) and a punchless offence down the stretch \u2014 represents a lack of response at the most critical moments of a game or a season.<\/p>\n Still, a strong finish could change perceptions significantly, and with 17 games left and just a half-game out of a playoff spot, the Raptors have plenty of time to walk into the post-season with their shoulders back and heads held high.\u00a0<\/p>\n Would jumping up en masse to confront Murray have changed anything? Will the fact they didn\u2019t mean anything?<\/p>\n Impossible to know. But whether their struggles are because they have too many nice guys or not enough three-point shooters, if the Raptors don\u2019t figure something out soon, their season of promise will very much end with a whimper and not a bang.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s always a little risky to make too much of any single moment in any season that starts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-531826","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\/531826","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=531826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}