This Is The Only Answer...

The Memphis Grizzlies walked into Toronto unbeaten on the road and they left that game 5-0. The Grizzlies beat the Raptors 118-102 and Toronto is back at 500 currently with a record of 5-5. The Raptors had the lead after the first quarter but Memphis won every quarter after that and the lead got as big as 16. Now I came into this one talking about how important it was for the Toronto Raptors to get this win given how difficult their schedule is coming up. So it's definitely frustrating that they lost, but I'm not really frustrated with how the players played, as there was only one real answer to win this one against the Grizzlies. Because in this game, there was no Kawhi Leonard, no Scottie Barnes, no Immanuel Quickley, and no Colin Murray Boyles. And even with all of those guys missing, and the Memphis Grizzlies being a strong defensive team, three players that did suit up for the Toronto Raptors had some of their best games of the season. Jakobe Poeltl, Jamal Shead, and Jamison Bell scored 56 of the 102 points the That's half their points from the center that everyone wants traded from their guard that no one thinks can score and Jamison Battle who definitely gets hot for stretches but even his head coach came out and said that he needs to be more consistent. Now the final score wasn't close but the Toronto Raptors kept this a game throughout the entire night. And even though they ended up not being able to pull it out, not being able to get the win, there are definitely lots of positives to take away. But there's one real true storyline that's going to pop up from this loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. And it's really going to determine the direction, the course of this Raptors season. Because there was some excitement out there on Friday night when the Toronto Raptors beat the Milwaukee Bucks, despite being shorthanded. But there's one real difference between the Bucks and the Grizzlies. And even though both cities start with an M, Milwaukee and Memphis, The Milwaukee Bucks are currently 1-9 to start off this year, and the Memphis Grizzlies are 7-3. Against the Bucks, the Raptors could fall behind by 15, win the second half by 23, and get 27 points off the bench from Elijah Martin. And after his career night, Elijah Martin came back and scored two points on one of four shooting, and there was no Colin Murray Boyles in this game who also had 19 against the Bucks. Against a good team without four of your top guys, the Raptors need essentially a perfect game in order to get the W and. It's very rare you get perfect games out there in the NBA. Memphis won the second quarter by 7 points and shot 53% from the field and made 16 threes. By halftime, they had 19 points off 8 Toronto turnovers, and their bench outscored the Raptors 31-10. Toronto actually won the paint in this game, which is interesting, going up against a squad that has Zach Edey, Cam Boozer that can get to the rim, but the damage was done everywhere else. Memphis made 18 of 19 of their free throws, the Raptors went 11 of 17, and Ty Jerome led them with 27 points with rookie Cam Boozer dropping 22. And on the other side, the main scorers for the Toronto Raptors just were not efficient in this game. Jacoby Walters started and went 4 of 13 from the field, and with 4 rotation players gone, RJ Barrett had to carry the scoring, and he did put in a solid amount of points, but he took 21 shots and only made 7. He was shooting just two of eight at the half, and Josh Loomper called it one of his worst games of his season. Now, he did play very well out there in the third quarter, which needs to be brought up as he had 10 points, but he finished the game four of nine from the free throw line, which continues to be the most frustrating thing to me about RJ Barrett, where he's such a good slasher and just rarely, really is a bad free throw shooting percentage, which is extremely unfortunate. But overall, being hoisted into the number one scoring option for this team when he's expected to be the third option, I thought he overall. It wasn't his best game by any stretch of the imagination, I mean, over his last 5, he's averaging 23.2 points per night, not living up to his standards out there in this one, but I think, especially with the resurgence in the 3rd quarter, didn't do a horrific job. Interestingly enough, Kyle Anderson also made his first start as a Toronto Raptors against one of his old teams, because there's really no one else to put into that spot. None of this is an excuse for the Toronto Raptors, but overall, it's going to be really tough without 4 of your top guys going up against a really strong team from the Western Conference. But this is the current reality for the Toronto Raptors. Kawhi Leonard has played two games so far this season, and he's missed the Raptors' last eight. In the two games that Kawhi, Scottie, and Emmanuel quickly all played together, the Raptors won those games one by 43 and the other by 10 against a solid Washington Wizards team. In every other game, the Raptors are 3-5. Even after all that, Toronto did come into Monday as 10th in the NBA in terms of net rating at a plus 5.6. A big piece of that was when the Raptors beat the Chicago Bulls by 43 points. It's still a small sample size. And that was a time when the Toronto Raptors had everyone healthy. But as we remember, Kawhi Leonard was ruled out ahead of the Minnesota Timberwolves game, hasn't played since, and the MRI didn't show a new injury, which is why the team has called this injury management. And on November 3rd, the Raptors said he'd finished his treatment and would start his return to play process in Toronto, and his progress would be updated in one week. As of right now, that week should be up. We should be getting some sort of update from Kawhi, whether it's tomorrow, the day after, but Darko Rajakovich has maintained that he has not started practicing with the team just yet. Barnes and Quickly have missed two straight games now, and both are day-to-day with no real timeline. So for people calling about this sky's falling after losing to the Memphis Grizzlies, all the trades, all the packages, every move in the world is not going to solve the problem of missing four of your top guys. But when you do have a short bench, you end up getting extended roles for different people, and you see the players that are able to step up in moments where they're given more responsibility. And we saw a few of those names in this game today. And we do have to start with the guy that is thrown in literally every single trade rumor for the Toronto Raptors, and that is Jakob Poeltl. And there's a reason Jak has been thrown in the different trade rumors. In his first six games, Poeltl scored a total of 31 points. That's right, a total, 31. He had zero in Minnesota, and a sore left shoulder kept him out of both LA games. In Denver, he came off the bench to get back up to speed, but in the two games since, he's had 37 points on 18 of 26 shooting from the field. That's more in two nights than he had in his first six games combined. And the defense has been looking a little bit better as well. A little bit, there's still a bunch of moments where he wants, you know, gets Raptors fans to pull their hair out as they watch him try to guard a defender out there in north-south driving straight to the basket. But nonetheless, his rim protection's been a little bit better. He's definitely playing with a lot more fight and a lot more heart, starting with the second half against the Bucks and most of the game here tonight. And you see it in the hustle stats. He has nine steals and blocks in the last two games after just having five in his first six games. And against Memphis, he went nine of 12 with six offensive rebounds and four blocks. So he's pulled down 19 rebounds over his last two games with 11 of them coming in Milwaukee and just looks a lot more mobile out there, which has been confirmed by beat reporter Josh Lewenberg that he has been more healthy. The back that's bothered him for years has only acted up. Once in a while lately, according to Lewenberg. So again, I've jumped the gun in the past talking about Yak being back and him stepping back in the role and being the player that we gave that extension to because at the time, the extension didn't look horrific because of how important Jakob Poeltl was to this team. And of course, he fell off a cliff last season. The first six games of this year were even more disastrous, but if he's playing with this level of fight, this level of energy, sure, he's not going to be able to guard defenders in space. We know that. He's not going to be able to knock down the three-point shot. We know that. But if he can get rebounds, play positional defense around the rim, be a decent passer in that mid-post area, and finish around the basket when guys like Jamal Shead are setting him up, then the Raptors will be in a lot better shape, in a lot better position than they would have been if he didn't take that leap forward from where he was at the start of this year. But speaking of Shead, the guy that's been setting up Poeltl has been by far the best story on this team. Jamal Shead scored 13 points in his first 10 minutes of action against the Grizzlies and went 3 of 3 from behind the three-point line in the first stretch. That was half of the Toronto Raptors' points in the first quarter. He finished the game with 20 points on 6 of 17 shooting, 11 assists, and his four threes ended up tying a career high. And three nights earlier in Milwaukee, he had 16 assists, which beat his career high, which was previously 14. That's 27 assists in two games since Emmanuel quickly has gone out. His scoring's nearly doubled as well, 9.6 points per game over his last five, which was just 5.2 over the first five games of the season. On defense, he's drawn 14 offensive fouls in 10 games, and that's the most in the NBA, and he's only playing about 23 minutes a night. When him and Calum Murray-Boyle share the floor, Toronto's a plus 25 over 174 minutes. So he has some chemistry out there with the big man, and the eye test also shows it with Yakka Purtle. Obviously, I talked about Yak hustling a little bit more, being more mobile, and just being a lot more locked in than he was at the start of the season. But a lot of those scores that Purtle is getting right now, Coming from Jamal Shedd, handing the ball off him, drawing traffic, drawing the second defender, and there's some big second defenders out there on the Grizzlies, speaking of Zach Eadie, but he's getting the ball to Purtle, who's able to finish it right at the rim. And Shedd's just setting him up on a silver platter. And in Milwaukee, in his 16th assist night, the Raptors were a plus 23 with him on the court. He's already passed Rayford Olson for 15th in assists in Toronto Raptors history. And of course, the shooting isn't there every single night. That's the biggest thing regards Jamal Shedd. That is keeping him from being that elite, elite point guard in the NBA. But even without that, Emmanuel quickly, he knocks down more shots. He's been a little bit inconsistent to start off the season as well. But Jamal Shedd just gets the most out of his teammates, the way he feeds them up. It gives them those easy shots, whether it's graves in the corner, whether it's a drive, a handoff to a big man down low. The way Shed orchestrates an offense is just a pleasure to watch. It's a smaller point guard myself when I play. I love those elite passers, and it's one of the reasons I'm a Shed head and love what he provides out there to this team. If you guys like what Jamal Shed did in this game, make sure you guys hit the like button on this video. It's completely free, and the best most liked video we've had this month is 372 likes. I think we can break it out there in this one, so make sure you guys hit that like button on this video. There's one other player I really want to highlight, and that is Jamison Battle. Because the biggest thing with Battle, we know he can shoot, we know he can knock down threes, but it's really the confidence. How does he go to these games? You know, is he going to fire them away? Is he going to continue taking shots if he misses a couple? And in the first quarter, he missed both of his threes, which is usually recipe for Jamison Battle having a colder night. But then he hit his next five and 14 of his 18 points. And that third quarter was one of the moments in this game where the Raptors really had a strong push back. He finished the game 5-11 from the three-point line, and on nights where he got as hot as he did, he needs to fire them up at that rate every single time. The rest of the team went 8-27 regardless of their shooting against the Grizzlies, so we're seeing how important Jameson Battle is to this team. His teammates are seeing it, the coaches are seeing it, and he's getting more opportunities. Over his first five games, he averaged 5.2 points for the Toronto Raptors, and then over his last five, he's averaging 13 points a night. A lot of his scoring comes in these bunches. He just goes on these electric runs, similar to what we saw out there in the playoffs for Battle. We saw it in the Lakers game, where he ended up putting in 20 points with 7 of 14 shooting against the Lakers. And the night after that, he went 4 of 6 from behind the three-point line against the Clippers. His career high is still 25, but that was back in the 24-25 season, but we've never needed his shooting more than we've needed it now as a team. The roster has been begging for someone to come off the bench and be able to knock down shots at an elite rate the way Jameson Battle does. And once Kawhi Leonard, Scottie Barnes, all these guys are back into the lineup, that's going to be even more valuable for the squad. But now after this loss, this week of basketball becomes a lot more important for this Toronto Raptors team. We saw how good the healthy Toronto Raptors looked, of course they played the Bulls who have been struggling this year, and the Wizards who actually have been very solid, and we made them look like a team that might be struggling this year without the big sample size, and in those games, Scottie Barnes was fantastic, Kawhi wasn't hitting his usual shots, but he still is Kawhi Leonard and you feel his impact out there on the court, the top dogs were doing top dog things for the Raptors, but in those early games, The players, the three guys that we specifically mentioned in this video and saw play very, very well against the Grizzlies here tonight, they really struggled. In those first two games, Battle scored three points and six points, Jamal Shead scored two and five, and Battle played 11 and 12 minutes, not really having much of an impact. They were the role players on a team that won by 43 and a team that won by 10. Now, at least three of those role players have come out of their slumps or at least come out of their shell a little bit in terms of being guys that we can actually rely upon to have impactful moments, the Toronto Raptors. And if they're able to maintain this once Kawhi, Scottie, IQ, CMB all come back, then the Raptors are going to be very well positioned. And it's a very different team than the encouraging squad that we saw the first two nights of the season. Obviously, minutes have a factor to play in this. I know there's going to be a lot of discourse regarding Emmanuel quickly in Jamal's shed. Specifically, who should be sharing the point guard responsibilities between those two because Quickly is, of course, the better shooter, but Shed is just such a good playmaker. He's leveling up a lot of guys out there on this team. But games like tonight where guys get extended opportunity are going to be very, very important for Darko Ilovic making decisions for the actual big moments as the stars end up coming back healthy, who are going to be the players actually in the rotation with them. So if we're putting it all together, the only real answer for the Toronto Raptors is just finding a way to get back to being relatively healthy. The team has been healthy. The team has been whole for about two of their 10 games so far this season, and they're undefeated in those two outings. Obviously, we're going to be talking about trades, talking about moves and all of that type of stuff. But for the problems the Raptors are facing now, in order for Bobby Webster to get a good look out there at this team, health is the biggest issue. It's a good sign that even without the stars, the Raptors are able to beat the bad teams like the Milwaukee Bucks, but it hasn't proven the ability to beat the good teams just yet. Obviously a good sign that if Purtle, if Shed, if a battle end up continuing their performances like they've had, Elijah Martin starts to show off a little bit more. Of course, he wasn't great tonight, but very good against the Milwaukee Bucks. Then the Raptors bench is going to be a lot more deep than it was in those first few games of the season. Once Scottie and IQ and Kawhi Leonard, all these dudes come back. But obviously, we should get a Kawhi Leonard update very, very soon, so we'll keep you covered on that. But let me know in the comment section down below who surprised you most over the past couple days of basketball. Whether it's Jamal Murray, Jamison Battle, comment down below. And if you want some of the latest Raptors news, updates out there on the trade market, check out this video right here.