The Raptors weren’t feeling great after blowing one against a top opponent Wednesday and falling 110-107 to San Antonio.

A third straight loss at home, a 1-11 record against the NBA’s five best teams overall and a frustrating habit to fold late are all reasons for frustration.

But at least one Raptor is trying to accentuate the positives.

“Physicality was there, rotations, talking, a few shots didn’t go our way, a few shots went their way, they went on a run in the fourth. It sucks. I wish we won that game,” Sandro Mamukelashvili told the Toronto Sun.

When asked if the team could learn from all the close contests, Mamukelashvili nodded.

“Of course. These are the games that get you ready for the playoffs. These are the games that makes the team get closer, get stronger and understand each other,” he said. “Hopefully we get a few more tough ones before (the end of the year) so we can kind of play under pressure, understand the importance of the games.”

Mamukelashvili, who was with the Spurs when Victor Wembanyama was breaking into the NBA, also noted he presents some obvious challenges.

“Same phenom he always was. Plays hard, defensively, you can’t really score on him. He’s so big,” Mamukelashvili said.

CMB WILL HAVE TO PLAY THROUGH PAIN

Collin Murray-Boyles has opened eyes this season with his tremendous defensive play and Wednesday might have been some of his best work yet. He gave Wembanyama trouble, frustrating him at times with his strength, low centre of gravity and quick hands.

The plan to start the rookie over Jakob Poeltl worked perfectly — until he banged his sore thumb again trying for a steal, eventually forcing him out of the game.

Murray-Boyles has had a sore thumb for weeks and is playing with some protection on it, but constantly seems to aggravate the injury. That’s just the way it’s going to be, according to head coach Darko Rajakovic.

“That’s what it is. It’s like it’s sore and every time he gets hit it’s just like it’s a lot of pain, and he just needs to manage that pain,” Rajakovic said when asked about the issue by the Toronto Sun.

“We have a couple of days before we play the next game and hopefully it’s going to help him, but it’s something that he’s going to be dealing with for the rest of the year.”

DEFENSIVE MONSTERS MEET

Wednesday brought together two of the NBA’s premier defenders. Wembanyama already has established himself as the league’s most impactful defender and is seen as a shoo-in to win his first — likely of many — defensive player of the year awards if he meets the 65 games-played minimum. But Toronto’s Scottie Barnes deserves to join him on the all-defensive team.

Barnes has 170 combined steals and blocks, two more than Wembanyama, and most in the NBA (Tyrese Maxey is next at 155, Derrick White and Barnes are the only players with at least 60 of each) and coaches are noticing his jump from good defensive player to special.

“You can see that he’s definitely taking it upon himself to be very aggressive and physical on the ball,” Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson said.

“And I think the one thing that stands out about him and a few other guys in this league is he looks to guard primary players on the other team, regardless of their position or skill-set. And that’s a unique ability that not everybody can do by just combination of size, athleticism and capabilities.”

RJ BARRETT BOMBS LATE

Lost in the aftermath of Wednesday’s game was a disastrous outing from RJ Barrett. Rajakovic had noted Barnes wanted a break to start the fourth quarter and that Brandon Ingram (and Immanuel Quickley) were not available at that point because they’d played 12 and 11 minutes in the third, respectively.

That left a lot of the heavy lifting to Barrett, the team’s scoring leader each of the previous two seasons and third this year.

Earlier in the season that might have been fine, Barrett arguably was playing the best defence of his career while being solid offensively, but a couple of injuries later, his offence has fallen off and his defence has been nowhere close to acceptable.

When the 12-point Raptors lead got chipped away at by the Spurs in a few minutes to start the fourth, Barrett was the most to blame. He missed some shots, but worse, consistently got beaten by opposing Spurs who got open shots against him.

By the time he subbed out, the game was tied.

Later, Barrett failed to corral a rebound that appeared to be right there for the taking after Ingram tapped it off a missed San Antonio free throw with 10.7 seconds left. Had he done so, Toronto would have had the ball with a chance to tie or win.

Barrett was a woeful minus-14 in the fourth alone.

With Ja’Kobe Walter starting to break out, it might be time to go with him late in games, given his huge edge as a defensive player over Barrett until the veteran gets back to where he was earlier in the season.

However, we don’t want to single out Barrett, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Barnes disappeared in the fourth, the offence completely broke down overall (6-for-23 in the quarter) and others defended three-point shots badly, but Toronto has now blown an NBA-high five fourth-quarter games where they led by double digits.

Toronto’s ranks 26th in fourth-quarter offensive efficiency, negating its fifth-best defence in those quarters.

Oddly, the team has the NBA’s fifth-best offence in third quarters and ranks 18th in offence overall.

CAPTAIN CANADA HAPPY

Speaking of Canadians, it’s nice to see ex-Raptor and long-time Team Canada captain Kelly Olynyk on a powerhouse.

Olynyk only made the playoffs five times over his first 12 NBA seasons, three times getting eliminated in five games or less. He has had a taste of the NBA Finals (with Miami in the Bubble in 2020) and made another conference final with Boston in 2017, but deep runs have been few and far between.

So even though he’s playing his fewest minutes ever (and didn’t even get into Wednesday’s game), you can bet he’s enjoying being a veteran mentor on a stacked team clawing its way to the top.

Olynyk will become a free agent after the season, but before then likely will get a rare crack at an NBA title.

Sportsnet reported Wednesday Olynk hopes to play again for Canada at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles after finally making an Olympics in France in 2024 after years of battling to get Canada there.

The rise of the Spurs could be a far quicker process than Canada’s return to international hoops prominence.

@WolstatSun