TORONTO — For a few tenuous moments, it appeared as though 24 minutes of strong defensive play on Monday night by the Toronto Raptors would be completely undone by 12 bad ones.
After limiting the New Orleans Pelicans to 40 points in the first half, the Raptors allowed 35 in the third quarter and watched their 16-point halftime advantage turn into a one-point deficit entering the fourth.
“I thought that turnovers and shot selection led to problems that we had with transition defence and them scoring quite a bit,” Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic said.
“And that was exactly the message that I delivered to our guys, that we got to get back to defending on a high level, and that we need to move the ball and play for each other.”
Rajakovic’s words seemingly worked wonders.
The Raptors responded with a 17-6 run to start the fourth quarter that was punctuated by the ejection of Pelicans coach Willie Green for arguing a call. Scottie Barnes hit the subsequent pair of technical free throws to put the Raptors backup 10 en route to a 113-104 victory.
Toronto (14-32) has now won four straight and six of its past seven contests, while New Orleans (12-35) dropped its third straight.
It was the latest victory in what has become a surprising turnaround for a Raptors team that remains 13th in the Eastern Conference and five games back of the play-in tournament.
The common theme throughout the winning stretch has been defence — the Raptors have allowed more than the 104 points they conceded Monday just twice during their current run.
Toronto limited the Pelicans to hitting just 21.4 per cent of their three-pointers as they shot 43.9 per cent overall from the field.
And the game turned when the Raptors held the Pelicans to four points in the first four-plus minutes of the final frame.
Rajakovic said the defensive uptick is a result of improved effort.
“I'm coaching for 28, 29 years, and still did not find a defensive schemes where four players play defence and one is not giving great effort, and that defence works.
“That was happening to us quite a bit early in the season, that three guys, four guys doing what they're supposed to do, and one player might be late half of a second or does not follow the game plan, and that creates a lot of breakdowns. Right now, we have all the guys locked in."
One of those guys is Scottie Barnes, who followed up Eastern Conference player of the week honours earlier in the day with a 21-point, 11-rebound double-double and eight assists to boot.
Starting centre Jakob Poeltl also had a 21-point double-double while hauling in 14 rebounds.
Rajakovic called Poeltl the Raptors’ “connector.”
“You have a game plan, but sometimes that stuff just goes out the window and you have to make something up on the fly. And in those situations, it's important to have the right communication, get everybody on the same page,” Poeltl said.
The Pelicans also didn’t pose the toughest of opponents — they rank in the bottom third of the NBA offensively and were without star scorer Brandon Ingram, who is still recovering from an ankle injury suffered on Dec. 7.
Still, Chris Boucher — who scored 14 points off the bench and said after the game that he’s hearing opponents refer to him as a “hot shooter” amid a scorching shooting stretch of his own — said progress on the defensive end begins with will.
“I think whoever’s in front of us, I think everybody’s taking pride in guarding them and we’re playing together, too. … If there’s a switch and somebody’s smaller, you gotta hit 'em out. We’re moving on a string,” Boucher said.
The Raptors’ recent winning form may still be a blip. After all, the team recently endured a stretch of 16 losses in 17 games, while back-to-back wins over the Atlanta Hawks last week tripled the team’s road victory total to three.
But for a young team like Toronto, a blip could be important as proof of concept moving forward.
“We’re trying to do something that I believe is going to bring us results in the long run, but I also know that it’s not going to happen overnight and it’s going to really demand a lot of work,” Rajakovic said before the game.
“I think we have great buy-in from our players. They really own it, they’re really playing hard.”
SOCCER ROYALTY
Canada’s Christine Sinclair, soccer’s all-time leading international goal-scorer, sat courtside in a sweatshirt bearing the logo of the Toronto Tempo, the city’s incoming WNBA expansion team. The crowd at Scotiabank Arena welcomed her with a standing ovation.
Fellow soccer star Dwayne De Rosario was also in the house to mark 500 days until the 2026 World Cup comes to Canada.
And for good measure, decorated Canadian Olympic gymnast Ellie Black was seated courtside as well.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2025.
Myles Dichter, The Canadian Press
