TORONTO — The best teams often have the shortest memories.
Always focused on the next play or the next game as not to dwell on the moment — high or low — and risk making mountains out of molehills.
Undoubtedly one of many clichés in basketball, but for good reason.
An approach the Toronto Raptors have been steadfast in upholding through all their ups and downs, a quarter of the way into the 2025-26 season.
“You want to have your focus on execution, on preparation, on things that you really control. Winning is not in your control,” Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic explained pre-game on Friday. “There are so many things that are out there that can happen … So that’s why coaches are really trying to focus on that process of improving the product night in and night out.”
Controlling the “work” as Rajakovic described is what ensured the Raptors didn’t fall off the tracks entirely after a 1-4 start or crash too hard when their bullet train of momentum — a.k.a. a nine-game win streak, tied for fourth-longest in franchise history — came to an abrupt stop following back-to-back losses.
And that mindset is exactly what they’ll need to rely on after falling to the Charlotte Hornets 111-86 on Friday night and dropping to 15-9 on the season, just 24 hours removed from losing on a buzzer-beater orchestrated by franchise tormentor LeBron James.
“We always talk about (wanting) to be a winning team, we want to win every single night, we want to compete every single night. But if you put winning as your primary objective and goal, then you’re losing focus on details that really lead to winning or losing games,” the third-year bench boss responded when asked bout his team’s continued mindset before they fell in a season-low scoring performance.
Aside from the wins and losses, the other thing that hasn’t been in the Raptors’ control is a dogged schedule that’s had the team play five games in seven nights, including a pair of back-to-backs.
“Physically we were worn down,” Rajakovic said after his team shot just 37 per cent from the field, marking the fourth instance in the Raptors’ last five games (each losses) the team converted under 50 per cent. “I’m really proud of our guys tonight. I really thought that we tried, but when you’re trying and you’re missing layups, you’re missing wide-open shots, it’s hard to keep it up.”
If there was one player who had any “juice” on Friday night, as the Raptors coach described, it was Immanuel Quickley, who finished with a season-high 31 points on 11-of-22 shooting from the field and 4-of-10 from deep.
A fitting performance from the player who has most routinely echoed Rajakovic’s mantra of process over product — presumably a factor in the lead guard’s turnaround after averaging just 13.3 points on 50.0 per cent true shooting through October.
Quickley’s hot night began as early as the opening frame, which included scoring seven consecutive points by muscling his way into the paint for a layup and a couple of free throws, with an above-the-break triple sandwiched in between as the Raptors sauntered to a 24-18 lead.
“You really need to be able to be in the moment and be present, whether you win nine in a row like we’ve done or drop a couple in a row, the 26-year-old said after the loss. “The process is the most important … you have to take everything, the highs, the lows, the good and the bad.”
Quickley’s highs continued throughout the opening half as he followed up a seven-point first quarter with seven more in the second, none more important than a banked-in floater at the 5:01 mark that quelled a near-five-minute scoreless drought from the Raptors — while surrendering a 17-0 run — eerily reminiscent of their late-game collapse in Charlotte a week prior.
Toronto finished with just 42 first-half points on a ghastly 38.6 per cent shooting from the field, in stark contrast after scoring 40 in just the third quarter against the Los Angeles Lakers a night earlier.
Still, Quickley led an ultimately futile rally, chipping in another 12 points in the third as he helped cut an 11-point halftime deficit to 78-70 heading into the final frame. Backing up Quickley in the comeback effort was his, well, backup point guard, Jamal Shead, who scored seven of his nine points on the night in the third quarter — then darted a pass to Jamison Battle for a left-corner three, which made it a single-digit game once more.
That would be Battle’s only consequential moment of the game as the sharpshooter was later ruled out due to a left-ankle sprain. Rajakovic noted post-game that imaging on the injury returned clear and that Battle would be considered “day-to-day at this point.”
A blow to a Raptors’ second unit that was outscored 40-28 by the Hornets. The bench ensemble, known for its routine energy injections, had little to offer Friday despite Rajakovic going seven-deep off the pine in hopes of mitigating tired legs on the second night of a back-to-back.
“All of our decisions were a little bit slowed down as a result of that (fatigue),” Rajakovic said. “Last night we had 39 assists, tonight we had 19 assists. That’s the same team. Those are the same guys. This is the same group of guys that, until five, six days ago they had a nine-game winning streak. So it’s a good team. I believe in my guys.”
Meanwhile, Quickley’s final punch came on a floater to stop a 9-0 run from the oppositition three minutes into the fourth quarter, but it was clear the Hornets — after rookie Kon Knueppel immediately responded with a left-wing triple en route to 21 points — weren’t going to return the favour of blowing a double-digit fourth-quarter lead as the Raptors did a week ago.
Toronto has now lost four of its last five outings, looking more like the team that stumbled in October (2-4) than the one that soared in November (12-3). The Raptors likely fall somewhere in between come the end of the season as their third-place standing in a logjammed Eastern Conference — one game separating seeds three through eight — appears to indicate.
Yet, regardless of rankings, their latest outcome or their recent struggles, Rajakovic’s commitment to what his team’s mindset ought to be moving forward hasn’t changed.
“It’s a long season. The only thing that we do control is our work,” he explained. “Hopefully over here in the next couple of weeks we’re going to have an opportunity to practise a little bit, to really clean up some of the things… but always the answer is the work.”
• B.I. in need of R-and-R?: The Raptors’ leading scorer, Brandon Ingram, has looked like a shell of himself lately, averaging 18.3 points over his last six games on 44.8 per cent true shooting — both well below his season averages. And although neither he nor the team have turned to the schedule as an excuse (vocalizing as much), Friday night’s 3-of-13 showing for a season-low seven points made it hard to think otherwise.
Shots often looked forced, while passes out of doubles felt later than they did to start the season. Ingram finished with four turnovers, bringing his average over his last six contests to a team-high 3.7 per game.
That fatigue could also be attributed to the fact that Ingram has yet to sit out for the Raptors, with his 23 games in two months already well past his 18 appearances all of last season.
• Mogbo’s minutes: Sophomore forward Jonathan Mogbo is sure to need an ice bath after Friday night, considering when he checked in for four minutes at the end, it marked his third separate basketball game in the last 24 hours — four in three days if we’re counting Wednesday.
After playing five minutes against the Lakers on Thursday, Mogbo got a couple of hours of rest before suiting up and starting for the Raptors 905, Toronto’s G League affiliate, on Friday morning — logging 26 minutes.
Rajakovic said that Mogbo’s extended reps have been “amazing,” and the 24-year-old’s effort has been indicative of grasping the “opportunity to work on our craft.”
“The G League, a lot of the times, makes the difference between the guys that really love the game of basketball, and some guys that are just … trying to figure out if they can have a spot on some NBA roster,” the Raptors head coach added of Mogbo, who entered Friday averaging 21.0 points, 8.3 rebounds and 3.7 steals on 65.6 per cent shooting over his last three games with the 905.
• Rookie wall: Whether it was a result of tired legs or otherwise, the Raptors found little success at the rim on Friday.
A reality that was as much a credit to Charlotte’s mammoth rookie Ryan Kalkbrenner as it was to Toronto’s hesitancy to test the 23-year-old up close.
Of the Raptors’ 92 field-goal attempts, only 20 came at the rim, which were converted at a paltry 50.0 per cent clip (sub-10th percentile on the night), as they repeatedly settled for midrange jumpers and floaters in hopes of avoiding the skying arms of the seven-footer.
Meanwhile, Toronto’s freshman forward Collin Murray-Boyles hit the proverbial rookie wall as his streak of scoring 10-plus points was snapped at three consecutive games (just 1,294 shy of LeBron James’s record!) on Friday, thanks to a seven-point showing.
• Friday-night disco: The Raptors and Hornets are no strangers to wild and wacky matchups, but the start to their latest contest was a first, even for them. Friday’s game was hit with a technical delay less than a minute in, courtesy of a strobe-light malfunction right above centre court.
“I don’t think I’ve (experienced) nothing like that ever,” Quickley said of the near-15-minute delay, after the game. While it disrupted the flow of play for almost everyone involved, he didn’t go so far as to admit it played a role in the Raptors’ lethargic effort on the night.
The gap in action didn’t seem to bother Scottie Barnes, at least not right away, as the forward scored nine of his 13 points on the night in the opening frame — starting with a side-step middy before the delay and then a left-wing triple immediately after play resumed.
Team PR later told us that to turn off the defective lights, an operations staff member had to scale the Scotiabank Arena rafters up to the catwalk and manually shut off the appropriate breakers. A noteworthy moment — if you want to call it that — in a game that had very few for the 19,800 in attendance.
