Finally having the starting lineup available for the first time all year in a 128-104 loss at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks Monday left Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic with plenty of options of what to do with his bench rotation.
“We have 18 players in the roster. All of them are very important for us. All of them have had the chance to play in different parts of the season so far for us and that’s going to continue,” Rajakovic had said pre-game.
The sixth man role Monday went to Ochai Agbaji, who had started 33 of his team-high 35 games heading in. Agbaji entered early for RJ Barrett, who was on a minor minutes restriction.
“I think it’s going to be very important for him to find a little bit of chemistry with the second unit,” Rajakovic said of Agbaji. “Last year, he was very efficient on the court together with Kelly (Olynyk). So now he’s going to have more opportunities to be in that role with Kelly on the floor as well. We’re going to try to develop that chemistry, chemistry with Bruce Brown. It’s going to be interesting to see how those guys start to jell together. and what it brings to our team.”
Sure enough, Rajakovic went with Brown and Olynyk, along with rookie Jamal Shead (though it only lasted a couple of minutes before Barnes replaced Agbaji). In all, Agbaji struggled, missing all four three-point attempts and five shots in all, with four rebounds in 24 minutes as the bench got clobbered by the Bucks. Olynyk was quiet, as was Brown and Shead shot 1-for-6, but did add six assists.
Rajakovic had also talked pre-game about how to continue developing the team’s youngsters since this is a rebuilding season. He said again post-game that Shead is part of Toronto’s future (and it appears, at least for the moment, that he’s leapt over Davion Mitchell, an impending free agent who didn’t see the floor at all).
“We’re just looking at different players, different options,” Rajakovic said. “I think Jamal had some really good games that he played for us. He’s a young player. He’s the future. We’re going to take a look at him. It doesn’t mean that Davion will not be playing in the future, but we cannot play them all at the same time.”
Rajakovic also said Monday the likes of Ja’Kobe Walter, Jonathan Mogbo and Jamison Battle would be getting plenty of time, although it might not all be in the NBA.
“We know where we’re at as a team, as an organization,” Rajakovic said. “We want to continue giving opportunities to young players. There are going to be games that some guys will be on assignment with 905. There’s going to be some games that our veteran player players might sit out for a couple of games and for the young guys to play. We’re going to continue counting on all the players, continue seeing different lineups and developing all of (them),” he said.
Veterans Mitchell, Chris Boucher and Garrett Temple didn’t play, while centre Bruno Fernando also sat and the expectation was his partially guaranteed contract would be waived before Tuesday’s deadline.
Walter played only 11 minutes, Mogbo seven.
WHERE’S THE FIGHT?
The lack of fight shown in recent games by the Raptors is troubling. A team that once battled right to the end, losing all kinds of close contest is more commonly getting blown out these days. At least Barrett and Barnes took some ownership and vowed things would change.
“You can do Xs and Os, but if you don’t play hard, you don’t play with that level of compete that you need to bring to the game, it’s going to be tough to win,” Barrett said.
“We’ve shown that we can do it already. There’s no excuse for what’s happening right now. We’ve shown we can do it already. We have to all be better, we have to all lock in completely and make sure we’re ready to bring a certain level of fight and compete from the jump all thew way through. That’s all of us. It starts we me, Scottie and Quick, but it’s all of us. We have to be together and play harder than we are right now.”
Added Barnes: “We lost by 30, so it didn’t go well. But we’ll be better from this, learn from this and we had a great talk (post-game),” he said. “Every game we’ve just got to grind it out, we’ve got to be better than this. Just continue to keep working on offence, build our spacing and our habits each and every single day. We’ve got to get better, but we’re holding guys accountable and guys are taking accountability, so it’s just going to lead to great things from there.”
LOSING THE MATH GAME
No team loses the three-point battle more decisively this season than the Raptors. Against a great shooting team like Milwaukee (third in the NBA in accuracy) it looked worse than ever.
“I think that was on us,” Barnes said. “We (weren’t) closing all the way out. We practice that every single day, closing out to shooters. They have a lot of guys that can shoot the ball really well on the team. Guys that shoot in the 40s, so we know that after the ball is going to get out of (Giannis Antetokounmpo’s) hands, that we got to close out the shooters, run them off the line, make them drive,” he said.
Barnes says if the Raptors pick up the pace they can help close the gap.
“I think stats-wise, we’re one of the worst teams at getting up three-point attempts, but once we play with that pace, it just helps everything. Even if we’re attacking the ball, getting to the paint, at least that makes us more aggressive from the start of our offence, you know, at least we start early from having teams collapsing and being able to kick out or going up with shots. That just allows us to be able to play more free and helps us form our offence, get the party started with 20 seconds (left on the shot clock),” he said.
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