There was a very entertaining basketball game going on between the Toronto Raptors and Brooklyn Nets on Friday when all of a sudden it became secondary, and the confusion, frustration, concern and exasperation brought on by trying to keep a season going through a pandemic came to the forefront.
The air went out of the balloon when Nets star Kevin Durant left the game midway through the third quarter, not to return.
The reason? Health and safety protocols, which is 2020-21 NBA-speak for either a positive COVID test, an inconclusive test or that Durant was identified as being at risk due to contact tracing.
All of which was doubly strange since Durant was escorted off the floor during pre-game warmups at Barclays Center because even though both of his game-day tests had been clear, there was a question that he may have been in close contact with someone with a positive or inconclusive test. Initially those results were inconclusive and Durant was allowed to play and he entered the game midway through the first quarter, coming off the bench for the first time in his 14-year career.
But later on, another test of the person close to Durant came back reportedly positive, according to a statement from the league provided ESPN, and Durant was removed from the game for good and will likely not be travelling to Philadelphia where the Nets play the 76ers on Saturday night.
Durant’s changing status and the concerns it raised tossed a wet blanket over the game, which Toronto won 123-117 to push their winning streak to three games, improve their record to 10-12 and move into seventh place in the East before they take on the sixth-place Atlanta Hawks on Saturday night.
The whole episode was bizarre and disconcerting.
“We get tested every single day and he’s been negative,” said Nets star James Harden. “So I don’t understand what the problem is … if now we’re talking contact tracing, he was around all of us, you know? So I don’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to play and then he was able to play and then taken back off the court. If that was the case, we should have just postponed the game.”
It also introduced a cloud over the immediate future of both teams. If Durant wasn’t safe to play, what impact did he have on his team and the Raptors during the 19 minutes he was out there?
As of last night the Raptors were cleared to fly to Atlanta for their matchup against the Hawks and the Nets were headed to Philadelphia, albeit without Durant, who missed four games due to contract tracing concerns earlier this season.
The league office’s credibility has taken a blow too, with the confusion of the Durant situation coming on the same day the league reportedly decided to push ahead with an all-star game in Atlanta in March that has already been widely criticized by the players most certain to play in it, including LeBron James, Harden and – based on the frustration Durant expressed on his Twitter feed after the game — likely him as well.
“That's the biggest thing right now, is safety,” said Raptors guard Kyle Lowry, who has worked closely with the union and the league executives on the NBA’s plans to return to play after the pandemic. “We all want to do our jobs, and we all want to provide for our families, and also have people working back in the arenas and doing their jobs, security people, and concession stands … we want to continue to push our league and continue to grow our league and our business, but at the same time we have to continue to be safe and understand what's going on and with the variants of the virus, all things are just different.
“Every day, there's a new something, or a new rule, or a new something that we can't control. All we can do right now is continue to try to be as careful as possible. You know, just continue to be adaptable and be adjustable.”
In the midst of everything that was going on there was a game, and the Raptors proved perfectly adaptable on the floor.
While the Nets' collection of stars had top billing, it was the Raptors' big names that ended up dominating. Lowry was the engine that drove a 13-5 fourth-quarter run that was the key to Toronto getting over the top. He finished with a season-high 30 points on 18 shots, including 6-of-9 from three, while adding seven assists.
“He was really, really, really good from start to finish,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “He just really took his shots with confidence, made really hard drives and then at the end of some of them he found the right guy to dump it off to. So he was doing it all.”
He had plenty of support from Pascal Siakam, who took advantage of the Nets' lack of interior presence to put up 33 points and 11 rebounds for a season-high of his own.
The Raptors shot 50.5 per cent from the floor and 13-of-32 from three but limited themselves to 10 turnovers, which may have been the difference as the Nets shot 49 per cent from the floor and 17-of-42 from three but turned the ball over 18 times and didn’t have any of their big guns score more than 17 points, with Joe Harris leading the way with 19.
Apart from the strangeness around Durant, the game unfolded somewhat as advertised, and it was as entertaining as might have been expected.
Even with just 19 minutes from Durant, the Nets were still able to put up points in bunches, and for all the defensive emphasis the Raptors like to bring to the floor, they needed to score to keep up. Their offence did its part as Toronto was able to take a 92-90 lead into the fourth quarter and was able to keep up with the Nets down the stretch.
The Nets can score when they want, it seems, but they give it up, too.
For the most part it hasn’t hurt them all that much. Before hosting the Raptors the Nets were 7-3 since the Jan. 16 trade that brought Harden over from Houston, even while giving up 118.2 points per 100 possessions. Scoring 121 points per 100 possessions will do that for a team.
But the defence?
“It’s still early for this group, but we know that is an Achilles heel,” said Nets head coach Steve Nash. “That’s something that has to be a priority for us.”
Maybe, maybe not.
While other teams have to manufacture offence, the Nets seemingly score at will. It’s not just that Kyrie Irving and Durant are both scoring upwards of 28 points a game, averaging 50 per cent from the floor, 40 per cent from three and 90 per cent from the free-throw line, or that Harden has averaged a league-leading 12 assists a game with Brooklyn while scoring 24 points a game himself. It’s that Harris is shooting 49 per cent from three and DeAndre Jordan is shooting 81 per cent from the floor, feasting on put-backs and lobs against scrambled defences.
The Raptors held the Nets in check early, leading 34-23 after the first quarter and building 17-point lead midway in the second, but then – with Durant on the floor and beginning to heat up — the Nets began to roll. Their full arsenal was on display in a six-minute stretch during the second quarter when Brooklyn scored 28 points almost casually on a mix of lob dunks and threes, spread around the lineup.
For the quarter, the Nets scored 40 points on 65 per cent shooting, including 7-of-10 from deep with 12 assists on 13 made field goals. Put another way, the Raptors scored 33 points while shooting 58 per cent and 5-of-8 from three and lost ground.
“That was a really unpleasant portion of the game,” said Nurse. “The game was flowing swimmingly there for us and it just felt like the whole thing changed.”
Toronto led 67-63 at the half, but had been put on notice. The Raptors rose to the challenge, though. They stayed committed to their defensive effort and made just enough plays down the stretch to keep the Nets mostly contained – though Brooklyn missing Durant probably contributed to that.
"I probably didn't handle it great, just trying to juggle all those balls and different information, what does it mean,” said Nash, the former Canadian national team star who is learning on the job as rookie head coach. “I probably got a little distracted about thinking what it means long term for our team you know we we've already been playing guys a lot of minutes and Kevin's not playing, are we going to run the remaining guys too many minutes?
"So maybe I got a little bit distracted by the big picture and, you know, but that's the way this year's gonna be, we're gonna be in and out of COVID situations, minute pileups and all the difficulties that we're going to face this year and it's going to be similar for everyone so we just have to try to adapt and, you know, be able to bounce back from little setbacks like this and unfortunately we couldn't bounce back to win the game.”
What impact Durant’s absence may or may not have on the Raptors in the coming days is another question.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiXmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnNwb3J0c25ldC5jYS9uYmEvYXJ0aWNsZS9kdXJhbnQtc2l0dWF0aW9uLWNhc3RzLWNsb3VkLXJhcHRvcnMtaW1wcmVzc2l2ZS13aW4tbmV0cy_SAV1odHRwczovL3d3dy5zcG9ydHNuZXQuY2EvbmJhL2R1cmFudC1zaXR1YXRpb24tY2FzdHMtY2xvdWQtcmFwdG9ycy1pbXByZXNzaXZlLXdpbi1uZXRzL3NuLWFtcC8?oc=5
2021-02-06 03:53:00Z
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