Raptors chase perfection in beatdown over Bulls

What constitutes perfection? In the NBA, is it when a team overcomes trials and tribulations? As our prophet 50 said, joy wouldn’t feel so good, if it wasn’t for pain. Well, the Toronto Raptors just had one of those wins over the Detroit Pistons. 

Is that perfect, or is it when everything works, without exception, for a smooth and easy win flying down the highway at top speed without a bump in sight or a cloud in the sky? Toronto’s season-opener over the Atlanta Hawks was one of those wins, where everyone played great, and everything worked, and all was well. 

Certainly, most people prefer the former. Truly, 50 knows ball. The latter is pretty nice, too. It’s easy to get bored of those games. For weeks, the Raptors beat every team they should and lost to any team better than themselves. That got boring fast. In those days, not even the wins smelled great. But after back-to-back wins over winning teams in the Phoenix Suns and Pistons, a free-and-easy win has space to breathe once again.  

All this to say: The Raptors beating up on bad teams feels a whole lot better when they’ve got a couple meaningful wins under their belt. And the Raptors’ 139-109 win over the Chicago Bulls sure felt like perfection. 

Take Immanuel Quickley for instance. Far too often, his best games have coincided with his best shot-making games. That’s normal, but the best point guards are able to give fantastic impact even when their shots don’t fall. Quickley hasn’t found enough of that this season. But against the Bulls, he surely did. In the first quarter, he didn’t score. But he defended smoothly, rotating well and keeping active hands in passing lanes. He made great point-guard reads, pushing after a make to lob RJ Barrett for an uncontested layup, keeping the ball whirring, and ensuring the ball found the hot hands. That’s elite work without scoring.

And then he started scoring. In the second quarter, he drove for a hanging, fading fadeaway jumper that was completely uncontested because of the speed of his pivots. He hit a triple above the break as he formed up around an Ingram drive, another on a stepback. That first-quarter creation and second-quarter scoring is what it looks like when everything works. In the third, Quickley skittered away from an Ingram double-team, and he caught the ball against a closeout. Then, in order: he drove the closeout, pass-faked to get past that first line of defence, euro-stepped around the second line, jumped and hung in the air before throwing an over-the-head pass to Barnes in the dunker spot. Point guardery!

Barrett and Brandon Ingram did most of the scoring for Toronto. Barrett worked at the rim and behind the arc, churning his way though bodies on drives and hitting his catch-and-shoot jumpers. He moved defenders out of the way with the last steps of his drives. Meanwhile, Ingram worked in the mid-range, as usual, but with the Bulls’ defenders a little too small and a little too slow and a little too disengaged to actually stay with his footwork. His jumpers were far less contested than usual, and he basically couldn’t miss, finishing 6-of-7 from the floor. They finished with 23 and 18 points apiece, respectively.

Scottie Barnes’ performance was casual but certainly no less impressive. With Quickley and Ingram doing most of the initiating, Barnes did much of his work from the corners, catching in the middle, or garbage-manning in the paint. He’s far overqualified for such tasks, but he’s also exceptional at them. He worked in the post when he got his chances, hitting fadeaways over his shoulders. When he wasn’t in the corners, he played as a screener and roller. His catches in the middle were instant doom for Chicago’s (admittedly terrible) defence, as Barnes found shooters with ease. He ran in transition when he had the chance.

Jakob Poeltl wasn’t the star he was against Detroit, and he was as always very reliant on his guards’ abilities to create for him. But Jamal Shead tried to slot passes into his window as Poeltl was rolling into the paint. Barrett, too. At times, Poeltl found his roll met early, and then he found Barrett strolling in from the corner for some slick continuation. In the fourth, he drove for his own layup. It was perhaps the most agile he has looked on offence all season.

Not to be outdone, Darko Rajakovic trusted his deeper bench far more than he did against the Pistons. (Which makes sense, the Bulls are not good.) Jamison Battle responded with some versatile play, even screening and spraying, as well as his usual dose of shot-making. Shead Nash’d drives and commanded the game in true, old-fashioned style (he didn’t shoot).

Ja’Kobe Walter hit his jumpers and even threw in some offensive rebounding as a means of finding some non-traditional routes to value. He gathered a chasedown block in transition, which led to a Sandro Mamukelashvili one-handed punch in transition. In the third quarter, he stutter ripped into a drive and found Mamukelashvili in the dunker spot for a layup. Later Walter drove from the corner, pump-faked, and scored through the foul. We’ve seen far too little of those types of drives from him in the NBA.

The lead was 20, then 30, then 40. Toronto forced turnovers. They were faster and bigger and stronger. On the other end, the Raptors used their size to dominate the paint and score with ease, forcing then finding mismatches.

The entire fourth quarter was garbage time. (Gradey Dick, to keep the good times rolling, hit a triple in the waning seconds.)

The Bulls actually scored alright. Well, no. But they shot fairly well, at least in the first half. But in a beatdown like this one, simply hitting triples wasn’t nearly enough to keep Chicago in the game. Every Bulls drive seemed to have a dig waiting for it. Help was always present. It has gone without saying for this season, but Barnes’ defence was spectacular. He destroyed whatever set the Bulls ran simply with his presence on the court. In the third quarter, with the Raptors up more than 20, he sprinted back in transition to poke the ball away from a Bulls’ transition ballhandler. Yes, the Bulls hit a fair number of triples. But the Raptors’ defence was very committed to a good gameplan.

And so the Raptors found perfection against the Bulls. It wasn’t the same high as the Raptors found against the Pistons in their last outing. But everyone found what worked and simply stayed in that lane. Such games are a breath of fresh air. As long as they are interspersed with tough wins.