The Raptors’ dream is turning into a nightmare

That Raptors’ nine-game winning streak seems far away now… The last win, against Indiana, was 12 days ago, and as we know, in the NBA, that’s an eternity. Toronto has fallen from the clouds since then, with five losses in six games, the last one at home against Boston. And our colleagues from SportsNets they found a great metaphor to describe Team Canada for almost two weeks.

They’re talking about the Raptors “lethargic”, training “who hopes to get 10 extra minutes of sleep so they can return to this perfect sleep”. Besides that “No matter how many times you hit the snooze button, that dream won’t come back, it’ll just be a hazy memory, and every time you close your eyes, you’ll get more tired, delaying the inevitable”.

Against the Celtics, the alarm actually forgot to go off. Darko Rajaković’s team scored 77 points in the first half. We had to wait until we got back from the locker room to get an answer.

“We have to do it for 48 minutes, not just at half-time”

“They weren’t the same. The energy was different, the urgency too. A few players stepped up in the second half and helped.”notes the Toronto coach. “You can’t take anything for granted in this league. Every night is a new opportunity to fight, to prove things to yourself. What happened yesterday, whether positive or negative, no one cares anymore.”

To stop this bad streak, Darko Rajaković “It requires more urgency from the whole team, more toughness because when we do that, like in the second half, we’re a very different team and we can go up against anybody. We have to do it for 48 minutes, not just half time.”.

However, Toronto had their chance in the final quarter. But Derrick White did very poorly with his two baskets to win. It would be a dream to win, to end Boston’s streak, playing only one half. But it was too good and the Celtics negotiated this “time for money” trade better.

“It’s good that it’s happening at the beginning of the season. We have to learn from this. Boston is missing players, transferred or injured, but they had situations where you have to do well at the end of the match.” welcomes Brandon Ingram.“They have a formula, they know what to do. This is our next step. Sometimes we have succeeded in these situations, but when we face teams that have experienced it before, we have to be sharper.”