Watching the first eight minutes of last night’s Toronto Raptors game against the Sacramento Kings, you could be forgiven for falling into despair. They had already given up 40 points and were playing about the worst defensive basketball any Raptors team had played since Andrea Bargnani was barely lifting his arms to get a rebound.
Thankfully, their opponent on the night was the Kings, who started celebrating when they were up 19 in the first quarter, and then proceeded to get outscored by 40 the rest of the way.
But most of the credit goes to the Raptors, who began running their offense through Pascal Siakam, let Malachi Flynn play through mistakes, and went centre-less for the entire second half.