The Toronto Raptors will face a former assistant coach Wednesday night when they try to end a three-game losing streak in their meeting with the visiting Milwaukee Bucks. New Bucks coach Adrian Griffin was an assistant to Nick Nurse with Toronto for five years through the end of last season. Nurse is the new coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, who posted a 114-107 win over the Raptors on Saturday night in Toronto.
The Raptors have not won under new coach Darko Rajakovic since taking their season opener last Wednesday. Both teams played Monday night, with Toronto losing 99-91 to the visiting Portland Trail Blazers and Milwaukee recording a 122-114 win at home over the Miami Heat.
The Heat upset the Bucks in the first round of the playoffs last season, leading to Griffin being hired after Milwaukee fired coach Mike Budenholzer. The Bucks will be playing their first road game after winning two of three at home to start their season. Portland closed out the game against Toronto on Monday with an 11-4 surge to win for the first time in four contests.
The Raptors shot 4-for-29 (13.8 percent) in 3-point attempts. “I thought that over the course of the game we did not have enough pace in our halfcourt offense,” Rajakovic said. “Every time. … in transition and with open court we were getting good looks. Every time we’d become a halfcourt team our pace and our cuts and our screening (have) to be much faster. Lot of times we’re entering our offense very deep in the shot clock, 14 seconds left on the shot clock and that’s something we have to address and get better at.” Scottie Barnes collected 20 points and 12 rebounds for Toronto. Pascal Siakam also had 20 points but was 0-for-6 in 3-point attempts.
“I feel like we should have won this one,” Barnes said. In their game, the Bucks led by as many as 25 points at the start of the fourth quarter. The Heat cut their deficit to six points before Giannis Antetokounmpo made a three-point play with 1:16 to play. “It got a little stagnant at the end,” Griffin said. “That happens. We’ll learn from that. I have to do better. I don’t know if I need to put another ball handler in there, but this is learning for me. But overall, I thought the team responded great from (Sunday night’s loss to the Atlanta Hawks). In a short turnaround. It was great.” Antetokounmpo had 33 points and Damian Lillard added 25 for the Bucks. “Defensively we had one or two miscommunications, but at the end of the day that’s going to happen,” Antetokounmpo said. “But you have to keep on playing through that and I think the team kept on playing through that and again, we got the win but we didn’t have to do it that way. They came back to the game. Obviously they made tough shots, they got some offensive rebounds, second chance points, they made their 3s, they had a transition 3. But at the end of the day, once you’re up 20 you have to put them away.” “You have these moments where you have the opposite thing happen from what you want to be happening,” Lillard said. “It’s pretty easy to be like, man, we need to be better at this, we need to be better at that. But I think this early in the season we haven’t been in those situations specifically.”