Raptorscope

It's a 4 game losing streak and we're out of the Mid-season tournament. Yuck and yikes. Let's get our injured guys back and string together some wins we gotta make playoffs!!!

All-in-all the so called "bench-mob" part 2 is gonna need these types of beat downs to learn and grow, but damn this is hard to watch.

Quickley was out, so I'll be the 1st to say, Jamal Shead was a dead man walking, but can we acknowledge that against Brunson he put up average stats and held his own? Brunson is seasoned like many players on many teams wish we will need to face and have our guys ready to face them.

Sometimes this is the only way to make it work when you're building from the ground up.

The Raptors traded for a ton of talent, and from there seem to be trying to develop players and are building chemistry from the ground up.

This seems like a winning formula and it's just up to the organization to continue to provide resources for their players to grow and up to the players to use those resources as best they can to become better together.

Growing pains are tough but we've already seen the potential we have to be successful and to fail. despite the injuries we have endured, most championship teams at some point must prove themselves without a star player or two.

When the Raptors put them selves in positions to lose they may just do that, and that was the outcome tonight. The Raptors didn't have the urgency they needed to win the game and instead found themselves still complaining about calls at the end of the game after the lakers hit the game winning shot.

I'd day it's ill advised to argue calls against 1 the lakers and 2 Lebron James at any point and I dont think I'm alone in that thought camp. Displaying the immaturity and inexperience that the Raptors are STILL fighting off will hopefully be in the game tape for the Raptors to watch themselves do what sooo many other inexperienced and yes previous Raptor tams have done, which is wallow in grief after not getting calls instead of making winning plays.

I hope the Raptors can ask themselves why Rui Hachimura was so wide open for a game winning shot but to me they must be better than this and better really quickly.

They've put away many games against teams they should beat but now have lost to every veteran team they've come across since then. It's only been 2 teams, the Knicks and The Lakers, but nonetheless they lost both games looking like rookies.

This was an easily winnable game and in my humble opinion the Raptors got lulled to sleep like a rookie tam would by a short handed veteran team.

That's just not a good look. No one is going to point out that R.J. and Poeltl were out, only that Luka was out this game. I joked that the Lakers kept him out so he wouldn't have to run with the Raptors but the Raptors arguably didn't even run that hard tonight.

To me this is a steep decline from what we saw earlier in the season but maybe now that the Raptors have announced themselves, the league has taken notice. That can be great in the long run but right now The Raptors must avoid making these veteran teams look good. Games like tonight are what make a difference in a playoff series and if the Raptors play like they have the past week or so, they WILL be an early round exit playoff team, if that.

It's a back to back tonight so lets hope they win this one with Poeltl back tonight.

They can be better and I suspect they will in the coming games do better. Especially w

The Toronto Raptors didn't waste any time getting back into the win column after the losses this weekend. We can learn from both of those games but what's important is that there doesn't seem to be any remission from the level of basketball the Raptors had been playing during the streak and even in some parts of the games they lost.

R.J. Barrett is missed but it has become quite self evident how much he is need on the court, healthy, because there are palpable lulls on the offensive end without him, His defense has picked up this season as well so I personally am hoping this most recent injury time R.J. is getting is doing more than just recovering his injury, but also waking folks up to how much we need R.J. and how his presence solidified the team.

Portland in the current state their team is in should not pose a significant problem for a team which is (according to Kendrick Perkins) bound for AT LEAST the 6th position in the playoffs this NBA season. I personally think that they're already talented enough to reach the eastern conference finals, whether they would win that or not really depends on how much chemistry they can build this season and who pops up in the east (The Knicks) to face them. I see some strength in a few teams in the out east but if the Raps keep playing and learning to be a cohesive unit, much less for the times when their raw talent makes the me shine, I'm not sure there's a limit to this teams potential.

They're so great and yet have so much room to improve based on their potential. As Marlo (from "the Wire) would say, "Those are good problems".

Buckle up Raptor fans because this team seems ready to solve them.

the Toronto Raptors have only lost one game in this month of November and the season only started in mid-October.

Not to mention the whipping they came back and gave the 76ers in the rematch recently.

some smart guys in the comments keep talking about the Western Conference but maybe they don't know how to playoffs work because that doesn't affect us until the actual finals.

acting like the finals is in the bag just because you came from a harder conference is some self-praising, mental gymnastics that I don't have the subjective eye to place a judgment on, so I'll just call it ill advised.

Seven game series are different but before I get ahead of myself with these goofballs in the comments, I will say it is soothing to hear them talking about months into the future because they know they can't talk about what's going on right now.l
(unless they live in Oklahoma city, San Antonio or Detroit).

There's plenty time left for the Raptors to make mistakes, but there's also plenty of time to learn from them and and with this amount of talent on the team and a guy apparently I have to remind all of these so-called Toronto NBA fans that Brandon Ingram was originally dubbed "The next KD" (Kevin Durant), and I'm not the one who said that this was the Los Angeles Lakers who drafted him saying that until they betrayed him and traded him for Anthony Davis, so that they could please LeBron James.

it's the Charlotte Hornets' turn.

so far no one has stood up to the Eastern Conference bully Toronto Raptors.

Another big run (12-0) to close the first half. These guys love ending the 1st half strong. and the Cleveland game they ended the first half on the 13-2 run. I hope this becomes a habit.

We could've been really unlucky in this one Raptor fans but this new clear maturity and poise they're showing is something to behold. It feels like a winning culture and the timing in the eastern conference could not be better.

it's the Charlotte Hornets' turn.

so far no one has stood up to the Eastern Conference bully Toronto Raptors.

I finally realized who Jamal Shead reminds me of... T.J. McConnell. That’s a huge compliment if you watched how McConnell played in the NBA playoffs and finals last year nonstop pressure, nonstop winning plays.

The reffing tonight was classic "the Raptors are winning too much" NBA reffing. A foul on Shead against 7 Foot Huff that nobody else in the universe saw, and the usual instant reaction bad calls on out of bounds and rule interpretations. Honestly, I’m glad the Raptors are getting tested like this now instead of discovering it deep in the season. Better to learn how to win through that nonsense early, sort of like the 2018-2019 season vibes.

We could've been really unlucky in this one Raptor fans but this new clear maturity and poise they're showing is something to behold. It feels like a winning culture and the timing in the eastern conference could not be better.

it's the Charlotte Hornets' turn.

So far no one has stood up to the Eastern Conference bully Toronto Raptors.

Gradey Dick missed a couple clean looks early, but honestly he’s doing everything else right. Keep shooting, because once those threes start falling consistently the whole league is in trouble. Gradey really feels like that missing link. The difference between being a first or second round team and actually pushing toward or beyond the Eastern Conference Finals. Not only that, Gradey seems like an important piece to the Raptors culture.

We could've been really unlucky in this one Raptor fans but this new clear maturity and poise they're showing is something to behold. It feels like a winning culture and the timing in the eastern conference could not be better.

it's the Charlotte Hornets' turn.

so far no one has stood up to the Eastern Conference bully Toronto Raptors.

.and if you haven't seen Friday, 😬 I'll be nice and just say maybe it's time.

The Raptors came out with that “no fear” energy as usual, especially Quickley, but you can’t be smacking the side of the backboard like that, come on boss man. For us to be good Quickley has to be taking and hitting his shots. Overall it was a good performance by Quickley and by the Raptors.

Gradey Dick missed a couple clean looks early, but honestly he’s doing everything else right. Keep shooting, because once those threes start falling consistently the whole league is in trouble. Gradey really feels like that missing link. The difference between being a first or second round team and actually pushing toward or beyond the Eastern Conference Finals. Not only that, Gradey seems like an important piece to the Raptors culture.

.& I finally realized who Jamal Shead reminds me of... T.J. McConnell. That’s a huge compliment if you watched how McConnell played in the NBA playoffs and finals last year nonstop pressure, nonstop winning plays.

The reffing tonight was classic "the Raptors are winning too much" NBA reffing. A foul on Shead against 7 Foot Huff that nobody else in the universe saw, and the usual instant reaction bad calls on out of bounds and rule interpretations. Honestly, I’m glad the Raptors are getting tested like this now instead of discovering it deep in the season. Better to learn how to win through that nonsense early, sort of like the 2018-2019 season vibes.

Another big run (12-0) to close the first half. These guys love ending the 1st half strong. and the Cleveland game they ended the first half on the 13-2 run. I hope this becomes a habit.

Brandon Ingram keeps looking like an All-Star.

Mamu still gets zero respect from the refs.

Indiana was short on talent for now, but they’re still dangerous if you give them chances.

We could've been really unlucky in this one Raptor fans but this new clear maturity and poise they're showing is something to behold. It feels like a winning culture and the timing in the eastern conference could not be better.