For better or worse, every game between the Toronto Raptors and Miami Heat over the last decade has felt like a stress test on the aesthetic limits of basketball.
There have been low-scoring, drag-out playoff series replete with injury. There have been last-game-of-the-season injuries that shifted fortunes for the playoffs to come. There have been record-setting poor shooting nights against heavy usage of zone defences. It’s rarely been pretty. It’s often been interesting, if you can find your way through the eyesore.
Friday’s game — a 121-111 loss for the Raptors — always figured to play its part. The Raptors were coming off their best three-point shooting night of the season after an opening six weeks stretching the lower limits of three-point shooting in the modern NBA. The Heat, on the other hand, dare opponents to shoot threes with a zone defence frequency double that of the next highest team, a concession to help them protect the paint without significant size down the roster.
Combined with an Emirates NBA Cup court that looks something like a hydration test, if you know what I mean, there was a good chance this one could get ugly.
Toronto actually did its part in hitting the triples they opted to take, shooting 11-of-29 from outside. That volume is paltry; in general in 2024, in specific against the Heat’s style of defence and in extremity against Miami shooting 21-of-54 on threes of their own.
The Raptors are playing at a major math disparity most nights, which requires them to nail all other aspects of their offence — offensive rebounding, fast break scoring and getting feet in the paint, three things they’re doing about as well as any team in the league so far — to click. Toronto used those advantages for a 62-36 edge in paint scoring Friday, but 19 turnovers undercut that progress, and Miami’s zone eventually made a second-half cameo that stalled the Raptors just long enough for the Heat to make their getaway run.
It’s the type of night you’re going to see from the Raptors this year, even in the midst of a solid run of play. On the last game of a road trip against a very well-coached (and comparatively veteran) team, they were outgunned and lost the plot in the second half on all those hustle-and-effort elements that sometimes let them close that gap.
More shooting on the roster would help on those nights, but it’s at least a few more days (weeks?) away with Gradey Dick and Immanuel Quickley on the sidelines.
Here are some other takeaways from the first game of this Raptors-Heat home-and-home.
• The Heat are a fascinating lens to watch Scottie Barnes through. Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler are both players, at either end of the floor, who Barnes may be able to look at as examples. In Butler’s case, he’s the rare multi-time All-NBA player who’s done so with modest, high-but-not-superstar offensive usage rates, impacting games with defence, playmaking, versatility and toughness. In Adebayo, there’s a potential triple-double in the size of a big, with all the same versatility on the defensive end.
Barnes looked every bit their peer in this one, posting a triple-double of his own with 24 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists. It’s the sixth triple-double of Barnes’ career, and now only Kyle Lowry (16) has more in franchise history.
The playmaking stood out here, with Barnes making a number of difficult transition and high-low passes to reward teammates for getting on the break or making smart cuts. He and Jakob Poeltl showed way more chemistry than they had in recent games, too, adeptly identifying and exploiting Miami’s switching in the first half. In the second half, Barnes took it on himself at times to hunt those mismatches, hustling on the break to get an early crossmatch and seal before the Heat could scram-switch away or slow Toronto’s attack down. Barnes’ defence was also excellent, as it has been since he returned.
Even in a loss and with five turnovers, it was a very positive game for him. (The Raptors played his minutes to a draw, if that’s something that registers for you. That included a short, fun stretch with Barnes and the team’s four rookies on the floor together.)
• Poeltl had a great first half attacking those advantages and finished with 24 points on 10-of-11 overall before fouling out late. The Raptors probably got a bit too focused on trying to find Poeltl in the second half, stalling out their offence a couple of times. You appreciate the idea, but that has to be identified and executed quickly, or a team as smart as Miami will learn how to play against it quickly.
• It was a tale of two games for RJ Barrett, who continued to look savvy as a playmaker against tough defensive coverages, scoring 25 points and dishing seven assists. He had a role in finding Poeltl throughout, and those two have an excellent half-court chemistry. But Barrett also went on tilt on a few possessions, tallying six turnovers and a few avoidable misses. More notably, he’s in a stretch of sustained poor defence, and even if he’s never going to be a lockdown guy, the Raptors need him to be a better tone-setter by not getting lost on inbound plays or switch miscommunications.
• Ja’Kobe Walter drew the start again and looked better than his six-point, three-rebound stat line. Toronto challenged him to be an on-ball defender and he did a solid job of it, while also making good offensive reads that didn’t necessarily result in Raptors points. He has some potential juice on the ball on both ends of the floor. It’s been great to see him play big minutes in consecutive games after an injury-plagued start to his rookie year.
• Less than five minutes into the game, Barnes picked up a technical foul for arguing a foul he committed on Butler. It was amusing to see Barnes push his luck by making the technical “T” gesture at the referees in response, and sarcastically letting out a “let’s go.” Had it ended there, it could have been no harm no (metaphorical) foul, as Butler missed the free throw. However, Darko Rajakovic relented to Barnes’ protest, burning his challenge and a timeout on the low-leverage play.
• Back on Nov. 6, a handful of Chris Boucher miscues required Rajakovic to call a timeout, during which he appeared quite frustrated with the veteran. Boucher responded with one of his best games of the season, scoring 17 points in a loss to Sacramento. On Friday, Rajakovic again had to use a timeout after a series of Boucher mistakes punctuated a poor first-quarter bench run. In this case, the timeout came a little late — potentially because Rajakovic was trying to avoid using one after burning a timeout on the Barnes challenge earlier in the quarter — and the response wasn’t quite the same.
It would be unfair to hang the rough night for the bench entirely on Boucher, and he did play better from that point on. Still, it was an unsightly night for the second unit after a pretty good run of play lately.
Jonathan Mogbo, by the way, briefly left the game after appearing to tweak his knee guarding Adebayo. On paper, he’s a potentially useful piece against this Heat team and how they play, so he should see more than 15 minutes Sunday if he’s good to go.
• Speaking of bench players, Jamison Battle wasn’t quite as electric as he was Wednesday, shooting 1-of-5 on his threes against the Heat. The spacing he provides continues to be impactful, though, and while this wasn’t the best defensive matchup for him, he’s consistently shown a good defensive effort level.
I bring this up because I’ve been asked a lot about Battle’s two-way contract being converted to a standard NBA contract at some point. It’s much too early for this. Battle has appeared in all 20 Raptors games, but two-ways can be active for 50 NBA game days; the Raptors’ 50th game doesn’t come until the day after the trade deadline, about a month after a decision is required on Bruno Fernando for the rest of the year.
Battle will likely get converted at some point (and should), but there’s little reason to burn that flexibility before the deadline in the event a roster spot is needed for a trade or they want to trial someone on a 10-day after (if) Fernando is let go.
• The Raptors and Heat square off again Sunday, and it will be interesting to see how Rajakovic adjusts to some of the Heat defence from this one. We don’t have much of a window into Rajakovic’s game-to-game adjustments in a playoff-style environment yet, and what, if anything, the Raptors try to exploit differently will be notable. Erik Spoelstra, meanwhile, will probably have some tweaks in store, too, especially with how Barnes and Poeltl were able to attack mismatches here.
• Have a wonderful weekend!
