TORONTO — It’s far too simple to make every meeting between the New York Knicks and the Toronto Raptors a referendum on the Dec. 30, 2023 trade that sent long-time Raptor OG Anunoby to New York with Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett coming to Toronto as the principals.
The reality was the Raptors couldn’t pay Anunoby the contract he wanted and Anunoby wanted to take his services to Manhattan. And why not: He got $212 million over five years from the Knicks. In that context, netting two good starters for a player that was going to leave anyway in free agency wasn’t a bad bit of business.
There’s little doubt who the best player in the deal was and Anunoby has helped the Knicks win three playoff series in two seasons as arguably the best ‘3-and-D’ player in the sport.
But after season-and-a-half of tanking, Quickley and Barrett have shown they can be useful players on a winning team. Barrett is having possibly the best season of his career in between injuries, shaping his game to the Raptors’ needs in a way that many didn’t think was possible even a year ago. Quickley’s overall performance has been uneven, but as he’s shown multiple times this season, and most recently when he earned Eastern Conference player-of-the-week honours as the Raptors finished their recent road trip with four straight wins, when he plays well (25 points on 61 per cent shooting last week), Toronto often wins.
But here’s the problem: The supposed benefits the Raptors are enjoying with them in the lineup don’t seem to materialize against the Knicks.
The situation couldn’t have been set up better for the Raptors Wednesday night. Not only was Toronto coming in hot after their 4-1 road trip, the Knicks were coming in groggy, having played Tuesday night in Manhattan and arriving in Toronto sometime in the wee hours of the morning
They were also missing Mitchell Robinson, the human bulldozer who hoovers offensive rebounds and blocks shots and who the Raptors struggle to match up with at the best of times and certainly not when Jakob Poeltl (back) remains out of the lineup.
The two teams were in a virtual tie for third place in the Eastern Conference standings and this seemed like a perfect chance for the Raptors to improve their record in the season series to 1-2 with a chance to even it up when they meet for a fourth time at Scotiabank Arena on March 3. Those kinds of things can matter in a tight playoff race.
The Raptors peed down their collective legs as the Knicks blew Toronto away in the third quarter and coasted home with a 119-92 win. Toronto (29-20) might have visions of itself as a team that can make noise in the East come playoff time, but there is nothing that has happened against the Knicks (29-18) that suggests it’ll do more than whimper. The Raptors lost to New York by 16 on Dec. 9, 22 on Nov. 30 and 27 on Wednesday. Their record isn’t much more encouraging against the Boston Celtics (three losses by an average of 10+ points per game) and Toronto has not played first-place Detroit yet.
A win and Toronto would have been in a virtual tie with Boston for second place (trailing only a few percentage points but each six games behind Detroit), instead Toronto is tied with fifth-place Cleveland, ahead of the Cavs only because Toronto has the edge in the season series.
Not that any of this is front of mind for Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic.
“What I’m gonna say now is true: Until today, I did not look into standings one time,” he said before the game. “I told myself, I’m not gonna look into standings until the all-star break, so I really don’t know where we sit … all I want to do is focus on the game today and do everything in our power to play a great game, compete, and I hope we win it.”
They did not play a great game; they did not win it.
There were two quarters that told the story.
The Raptors came out in the first 12 minutes and looked poised to shove a tired Knicks team off the floor. They forced New York into six turnovers with Scottie Barnes and Collin Murray-Boyles making life miserable for Knicks stars Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, who were a combined 1-of-5 for the period. Meanwhile, the Raptors’ energy and physicality generated 10 trips to the free throw line, where they converted nine chances and an edge in fastbreak points and points in the paint. But Toronto made five turnovers itself and shot just 8-of-20 from the floor. The Raptors were leading by 10, but it felt like it should have been more.
But the momentum really swung in the third quarter when the Knicks — trailing by four at half — gave the appearance of the rested team playing at home. Brunson and Towns didn’t do much (they had just a single field goal between them in the third and scored 21 points combined for the night), but everyone else was running downhill.
Anunoby had nine points on five shots along with three steals on his way to a big boy line of 26 points (on 11-of-18 shooting) and six steals. Mikal Bridges was 7-of-8 from the floor in the third, scoring 19 of his game-high 30 points. Knicks reserve point guard Tyler Kolek looked like Steve Nash, dribbling through the Raptors’ paint at will, dropping passes to wide-open teammates. He finished with 10 assists in 20 minutes. The Raptors were fuelling all of this with nine of their 20 turnovers, which the Knicks converted to 14 points, a big reason the Knicks shot 60.9 per cent from the floor for the period.
“They just came out and started attacking us,” said Sandro Mamukelashvili, who had nine points on eight shots (and three turnovers) coming off the bench after shining as a starter in the last three games of the road trip. “We had a few bad turnovers, a few bad missed shots that led to their easy buckets and it kind of spiralled.”
The former Knicks struggled against their old team and remain winless in nine meetings since the trade. Overall, the Raptors haven’t beaten the Knicks since Jan. 22, 2023, a stretch of 11 games and counting.
Barrett finished with 14 points, eight rebounds and three assists in his third game back since missing seven games with an ankle injury. But he was limited to 24 minutes as he works his way back into shape and shot just 3-of-13 from the floor. At full strength, you would think his aggression would yield better results.
But Quickley’s is the stranger case. Coming off the best four-game stretch of his season, you would think that the Raptors point guard would be eager to keep his roll going. He hit his first shot attempt, a three, and then was otherwise invisible, finishing with seven points on 3-of-9 shooting, while committing five fouls and three turnovers.
No one on the bench picked him or anyone else up meaningfully. Ja’Kobe Walter was 0-of-6; Jamal Shead had three points and three turnovers in his 22 minutes. Gradey Dick had some jump, scoring nine points in the first half, but he played just six minutes in the second.
Brandon Ingram led the Raptors with 27 points on 10-of-16 shooting while also making three steals, but his offence seemed to come at the expense of the team’s overall rhythm in the second half and defensively he was as slow off the mark as anyone.
“I think in the third quarter a little bit, we was trying to match-up hunt a little bit,” Ingram said. “We were dribbling at the top of the key, but we weren’t moving and coming down, shooting fast shots that can stagnate the offence. We’ll look at the film and see what we can do better.”
They have plenty of film of themselves needing to do better against the Knicks and only two more chances to apply it. The Raptors’ story this season has had many more ups than downs, but unless they solve their struggles against the teams they are hoping to catch in the East — the Knicks especially — they’re unlikely to have the ending they are hoping for.
Impacting winning: The reserves for the all-star game — positions voted on by the league’s 30 coaches — are scheduled be announced on Sunday. At this point, if Barnes isn’t among the 14 (seven from each conference) reserves that will round out the 10 starters voted on by fans, media and players, there needs to be an investigation. Every coach I’ve heard speak on the matter cites some version of ‘impacting winning’ as where their selection process starts.
This was Knicks head coach Mike Brown before the game: “Winning has a lot to do with it because somebody’s got to score. So (if) we have a team that’s in the 11th spot, they probably have a guy who’s averaging 22 points a game, and 16 rebounds or whatever it is and 10 assists but at the end of the day, the team’s not winning… (sorry coach, but if a guy is averaging 22, 16 and 10 he’s probably an all-star, but we take the point.)
“When you’re talking all-stars or MVPs, it’s about who’s doing it in a situation where that team is winning. I think it’s extremely important to look at the top three teams first and then the top six and then go from there.”
Barnes headed into the game against New York ninth in rebounds, eighth in blocks, 19th in assists and 18th in steals. He’s the only player in the NBA in the top 20 in all four categories and he’s also averaging 19.5 points per game while playing all-NBA level defence. Get the man to Los Angeles.
Defence wins minutes: It’s not often that a five-star high school recruit focuses on defence, but Walter was an exception — his father Eddie, who played college basketball himself, insisted on it. But there’s playing defence while being an offensive-minded player, and the focus on defence that Walter has displayed more and more this season. He told me it’s been a shift in mindset since he joined the Raptors as the 19th pick in the 2024 draft.
“I was always a defender,” he told me. “But I didn’t think I was going to be aiming to be the main guy. But as I got older and when I got here, they were telling me they see what I can do, they see the length and the tools that I have, just make sure I use them all the time. It’s mainly when I got to Toronto that I wanted to kind of be the stopper-type guy … the coaches were always telling me: ‘you can help us win.'”
It was certainly the case when the Raptors used Walter against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday. It was less so against the Knicks as Walter played just 20 minutes, with Barnes and Shead taking most of the minutes against Knicks star guard Jalen Brunson, who finished with just 13 points on 5-of-13 shooting and made four turnovers.
Towering Towns: The Knicks centre has been under a lot of heat in New York and featured prominently in trade rumours. His offensive output is at or near career lows and his frustrations with his play and the way he’s being featured in the Knicks offence have been barely below the surface. There were some signs of that against the Raptors as Towns finished with just eight points on 3-of-11 shooting, but he more than made up for it on the boards as he grabbed 22 rebounds (seven offensive) and dished four assists. The hope was that Raptors rookie Murray-Boyles would be able to match up well with Towns, but for once, the burly rookie seemed a bit over his head against Towns, who is five inches and perhaps 40 points heavier. In his first outing since missing five games with a sprained thumb, Murray-Boyles had just four points and five rebounds in 28 minutes, though he did manage four assists and four blocked shots.
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