Magic 3s bury Raptors

It started with a defensive miscommunication between Scottie Barnes and Jamal Shead. That gave a great look for Desmond Bane, who nailed his third triple of the final quarter to put the Orlando Magic up five points. 

RJ Barrett missed his forceful lay-up and found himself way out of bounds. CMB tried to snag the rebound over Wendell Carter, the latter made a pass right away to Bane, who surveyed the court for an advantage. Seeing none, he dribbled to the open area. Splash. 

Bane shot a perfect 4-4 from downtown (6-for-6 from the field) in the fourth quarter and made seven of his 10 triples this game. That’s the same amount of 3s the Raptors made throughout the game. 

3-point shooting must be infectious as Anthony Black hit his only triple of the game after Bane made three in the final quarter. The Raptors relied on their old habits by going to BI (somewhat rightfully as he had 35 points). But when he couldn’t score in isolation, others couldn’t step up. He passed to Barnes in the short corner, who elected to throw a grenade pass to RJ Barrett for a 3-point look with less than four minutes, down six points. He missed it by a mile. 

The Magic took a timeout and Barnes almost mugged Jalen Suggs in the open court. Suggs was on all fours, but that somehow turned into a dunk by Carter, stretching the lead to eight. 

CMB got deep in the paint and instead of finishing inside – he had a Ben Simmons-esque moment earlier in the second quarter – he kicked it out to BI for a 3. BI made four of his team’s seven 3s last night. But not on this possession as Black came out to contest. The wide rebound led to an easy-peasy fast-break dunk for Black who leaked out early. The Magic led by 10 with a little over three minutes. 

BI’s magic started to wear out. He tried to attack Black one-on-one, but didn’t have it in him to pull-up for another middy. Bane took a hard, a really hard, dribble pull-up 3 on Mamu and buried it. IQ switched onto Paolo Banchero and was forced to foul him on two possessions late in the game. Mamu picked Black up full court, stayed with him, but fouled him at the rim. The game was over. 

Like the other second-tier Eastern Conference teams, the Raptors are still figuring it out. They can beat the best at times, but can’t do it on a consistent basis. But the sky is far from falling. The Raptors won the last game against the Magic on a coin flip – but a comeback win of that magnitude should never have happened in the first place. From a process standpoint, the Raptors were better in this game. The outcome was not. You win some, you lose some. You draft Barnes ahead of Suggs, you draft Malachi Flynn before Bane. Such is the game of basketball.

The Raptors went on a 14-8 run to close out the first half. After a back-and-forth third quarter, the Raptors established a nine-point lead on a possession where the ball touched every players’ hands and zipped around with pin-point precision. It ended with BI hitting a triple. Outside of him, IQ hit two 3s, Walter one. They pushed the lead to 14 – their largest of the game – by the end of the quarter and Barrett beat the buzzer. 

Aside from poor three-point shooting (2-for-9 in the fourth, 7-for-28 in the game) and the Magic shooting 17-for-34 (50%), the Raptors were ok process-wise in the fourth. Even when the Magic made a 9-0 run at the start, nothing went terribly wrong. CMB came out to the perimeter to guard Banchero and lost him off the dribble. This wasn’t good, but it was also necessary to try it. They had a nice offensive play where they ran a double stagger for BI, hit Mamu inside as he dove to the basket. Mamu made a beautiful touch pass out to Scottie on the wing for a wide-open 3-point look, but he just couldn’t get the shot to go down.

The Raptors’ lack of shooting was more obvious last night than their lack of size inside against Carter and Banchero.