Toronto Raptors forward Brandon Ingram has shot a combined 8-24 while his team has fallen behind 2-0 in their series against the Cleveland Cavaliers.David Dermer/Reuters
When the Toronto Raptors traded for Brandon Ingram – a soft-spoken, oft-injured, perma-project – they tied themselves to a vision.
Their team was young, but now it was complete. Whatever it would develop into, Ingram would be its offensive centrepiece. Whatever promised land they were headed toward, Ingram would lead the way.
Currently, where the Raptors are headed toward is a dirty weekend in Las Vegas, followed by six weeks of watching other, better teams chase an NBA title. There are a lot of reasons for that. Ingram is just the most obvious.
At the best of times, Ingram will surprise you with his ability to make hard things look hard. But when the guy you’re counting on to create offence is shooting a combined 8-for-24 in two playoff games, things are hard all over.
After getting run over in Cleveland, and then backed over a couple more times, the Raptors came home to Toronto worse for wear. They took a day off. Then, after a good night’s sleep, they returned to work looking de-energized.
Ingram (left) and the Raptors won all three of their regular season games against the Cavaliers, but those wins came early in the season and before the team traded for star guard James Harden.David Dermer/Reuters
A team that thinks it can overcome a 2-0 deficit is loose. On Wednesday, the Raptors were flaccid. A couple of them looked like they wanted to put their head down on the podium and talk that way.
The head coach was already banging away on the word “young” and trumpeting how much all those kids were learning while bent over the Cavaliers’ knee. Ingram, in particular, seemed to have moved beyond grief and arrived at acceptance.
“I’m confident that I won’t miss all my shots,” he said.
Now that sounds like winning basketball. Please don’t riot trying to get into the fan zone for Thursday night’s game. There’s going to be plenty of space for everyone.
The Raptors will lose this series to Cleveland, which is what everyone thought before it started. What’s left to decide is how badly they intend to do so, and what it means going forward.
If it continues as it has, they have a Brandon Ingram problem. The guy is not young (28) and he’s not inexperienced (10 years in the league). If he isn’t a finished product, he’ll never be one.
Finished products who are meant to score do so when they must, just as players who defend as an identity do that. If things aren’t working on a particular night, they make changes on the fly. They have the ability to course correct.
One bad game in the postseason? It happens to everyone. Two in a row? Okay. Sub-optimal, but not unheard of.
Three? Three means we’re entering DeMar DeRozan territory – a wonderful regular season player whose hands turn to stone in the playoffs. Remember how that went?
“People are trying to create narrative that is not there,” coach Darko Rajakovic said Wednesday. “[Ingram is] trying really hard.”
First off, whenever a coach starts talking about narratives, you know it’s over. He’s no longer thinking about winning. He’s thinking about how to spin the loss. Your most reliable option – blame the media.
Second, no one’s saying the guy isn’t trying. They’re saying the complete opposite, which is worse.
If Ingram’s not trying, he can start, and things will improve. But if he’s trying, and still chucking up boulders like he’s storming a castle, the Raptors have to have a serious off-season think about what they’ve built here.
James Harden (left) of the Cleveland Cavaliers has averaged 25 points and seven assists in a pair of wins over the Raptors.Jason Miller/Getty Images
Scottie Barnes can turn into Scottie Pippen, but if Ingram isn’t able to carry his part of it, the Raptors are never getting any further than they are right now.
In all likelihood, that will be the case regardless. The NBA is built on teams that have overlapping layers of superstar-level talent, built through elite draft picks and/or free-agent coups.
The Raptors don’t have any elite drafts in their future. They don’t pull free-agent coups any more. They are what they are right now – a competent, often fun-to-watch team that is never going to scare anyone serious.
In Toronto, maybe that’s enough. The franchise went 25 years without threatening to win a title, and never had a problem selling seats.
The one wrinkle was the one year they did win. Has that permanently reset expectations? Can this club be perpetually mediocre again and expect to be loved? All you can say for certain is it’s probably best not to find out.
That means selling people on the idea that things are getting better, even if they’re not.
Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell (45) talks with guard James Harden (1) during the first half during a game against the Toronto Raptors.David Dermer/Reuters
That further means that Thursday’s Game 3 against the Cavaliers isn’t a must-win in the traditional sense. Nobody actually thinks Toronto is coming back to win this series.
It’s a must-win in terms of next year, and the year afterward. The Raptors need to convince their fans that they are a growing concern. That means winning a game after it looks like you’ve given up.
If they blow Thursday, there’s still Game 4 on Sunday. That’s a 1 p.m. start after a Saturday night off and James Harden is on the Cavaliers. Every night club in the city probably has an alarm going off in the manager’s office: ‘Battle stations. Battle stations.’
Just get it back to Cleveland for one more game – that’s the Raptors’ goal for the year now. Even if they end up refusing to come out of the locker room for the second half of that game, it’s something you can lie about afterward by saying you can build on.
Getting swept is a worse case. Getting swept while Ingram is unable to shoot his hat size, that is the worst case.
That would be admitting that you’re out of ideas, and have neither the cap space nor the conceptual space to come up with new ones.