Scottie Barnes<\/a> took too long to assert himself offensively while playing point guard in place of the injured Immanuel Quickley. His 10 assists extended his streak of games with double-digit assists to six, but Toronto needed more than his 14 points on 5-of-14 shooting. He was also 4-of-8 from the line. Jakob Poeltl couldn\u2019t match Achiuwa\u2019s physicality.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Raptors let the Kings hang around, maybe hoping they\u2019d just hand the game to them in the end. But instead, Sacramento figured, hey, why not win one for a change?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Toronto gave up 34 points to the Kings in the fourth quarter. They hit four threes and were 11-of-11 from the free throw line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fittingly, it was DeRozan’s triple from the corner in front of the Raptors bench that pushed the Kings’ lead to six with 1:05 to play after Toronto had pulled the game within a single possession, and then it was Achiuwa who sealed it with a driving lay-up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If playing meaningful basketball in March and April, the Raptors’ season to this point has been a success. But how they cope with something on the line will determine their final grade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A home game against the Kings was supposed to be an open-book test. The Raptors flunked it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one\u2019s frustrating,\u201d said Barrett. \u201cWe\u2019ve been fighting hard all year, so you want the reward of making it to the playoffs and fighting for the championship, so nights like tonight, they hurt, especially when we know how much work we put in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially now after tonight, if we don\u2019t come out and fight with everything we have got for these next couple of games… we have to play like our lives depend on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s still a Raptor: Wednesday night\u2019s visit with the Sacramento Kings was DeRozan\u2019s 587th\u00a0as a non-Raptor. An entire career for a lot of players. But he played nine seasons and 675 games for Toronto. He\u2019s played 63 playoff games in his career
\u2014 a total that won\u2019t change after a lost season with the lottery-bound Kings. But 51 of them were as a Raptor, helping the team scale its highest heights until they won the 2019 championship thanks in large part to the return \u2014 Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green \u2014 the Raptors got in the trade that sent DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But playoff success has eluded him since. Failure too. He hasn\u2019t been in the post-season at all since the Chicago Bulls lost in five games in 2021-22. He lost in the first game when he was with the Spurs in 2018-19. When I spoke with him briefly before the game, he said that his old pal Kyle Lowry is trying to get him to play 20 years, and while DeRozan is durable enough \u2014 he\u2019s averaged 76 games his last four seasons and has only missed two so far this season \u2014 he\u2019s not sure he\u2019s got three more years in him. Diar \u2014 a longtime fixture on the sidelines at Raptors games (and famously cheering against the Raptors) and the oldest of four daughters with his wife, Kiara \u2014 is 13 and starting high school next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But at the same time, DeRozan is interested in finishing his career off with one more crack on a competitive team. He said he\u2019d be open to a different role \u2013 DeRozan has started every game he\u2019s played since the 2009-10 season \u2013 if necessary. \u201cIf it makes sense,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the meantime? He\u2019s made the most of his time with the Kings. He\u2019s averaging 18.5 points a game on 49.5 per cent shooting and still gets to the free-throw line. Kings head coach (and former Raptor) Doug Christie gushed about his reliability and the example he provides to a young team. He passed Dominique Wilkins for 17th\u00a0place on the NBA all-time scoring list Wednesday. \u201cI mean, it’s always an honour passing the greats that came before me,\u201d DeRozan said. \u201cEspecially people I know, you know, I\u2019ve always had a great deal of respect for Dominique, so passing him is definitely cool.\u201d With 26,688 points, DeRozan now trails only LeBron James, Kevin Durant, James Harden and fellow King Russel Westbrook among active scorers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
15th\u00a0man watch:\u00a0Wednesday night marked the end of Markelle Fultz’s 10-day contract. It\u2019s expected that the Raptors will sign someone else on a 10-day deal on Thursday. Fultz got into five games for Toronto but didn\u2019t really play any meaningful minutes, which was not encouraging given Quickley was out with plantar fasciitis for all of the six games the Raptors played when Fultz was with them. One name that was circulating as a possibility for a new 10-day was Tyreke Key, who played with Raptors 905 the past two seasons, was on their Summer League team last year and signed an Exhibit 10 deal with the Raptors before training camp. The six-foot-two guard out of Tennessee has shot 40.1 per cent from three over 90 G-League starts the past two seasons. If the Raptors do add someone on a 10-day Thursday, they would still be able to sign one of their two-way players to a standard NBA deal on the last day of the regular season (April 12th) and have them eligible for the post-season. For the second game in a row, AJ Lawson was the first Raptors wing off the bench for Darko Rajakovic against the Kings.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cHe just needs to continue putting the work in. He already does a lot of great stuff that can help the team. I definitely see him as a player that belongs in the league with a full contract.\u201d<\/p>\n
So Precious:\u00a0\u00a0The former Raptors is often the forgotten man in the \u2018OG Anunoby trade\u2019 that brought Quickley and RJ Barrett to Toronto midway through the 2023-24 season. Not as forgotten as Malachi Flynn, who is now playing in Turkey, but it can be hard to stay in the spotlight playing on a Kings team that is in tank mode. But Achiuwa has put together a decent season, and he’s finishing strong. Even before his big night at Scotiabank Arena, he averaged 15.4 points and 9.5 assists on 57 per cent shooting over 14 games in March. He\u2019s an unrestricted free agent this summer and could be an intriguing depth big for a lot of teams. His market might be comparable to that of Raptors big Sandro Mamukelashvili, another depth big, albeit with a different skill set. Per league sources, Achiuwa could slot in for something in the six-to-eight-million-dollar range on a short-term deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 The downside of playing meaningful basketball in the late stage of the NBA season is that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3770],"tags":[7,6,681,680,476,3820],"class_list":{"0":"post-693386","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-raptors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-raptors","11":"tag-toronto","12":"tag-toronto-raptors","13":"tag-torontoraptors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116333733379559231","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}