BURSTTORONTO — The best thing you can say about what could be a pretty nasty ankle sprain for Toronto Raptors forward Scottie Barnes is that the timing could have been worse.
How long Barnes will ultimately be out for is hard to know at this stage, pending medical imaging and all the rest of it. He had X-rays at Scotiabank Arena after leaving what ended up being a 113-108 loss to the visiting New York Knicks early in the third quarter, but they were negative. He will be further evaluated Tuesday.
But whatever time away from action the injury ends up costing him will be offset by it coming just as the Raptors are entering the lightest stretch of their schedule thanks to the pause provided by the NBA Cup. The Raptors, who didn’t qualify for the single-elimination phase of the tournament, only have two games to play in the space of nine days.
Whether Barnes has suffered a relatively mild sprain or something more significant, his time away from work — and he’s already missed 11 games this season with a fractured orbital bone — will be a little less because the Raptors simply have fewer games to play in the short term.
Of course that won’t matter too much if Barnes’ injury is more severe and he’s out a month or six weeks or more, but it’s something.
With the Raptors, it’s another thing. Already this season — which is just seven weeks old — they’ve had to navigate significant time lost to injury by four of their five starters and several of their key rotation players.
Barnes injured himself when he jumped to block a shot by Knicks centre Karl-Anthony Towns and his right foot seemed to catch the edge of Town’s foot on the way down. Barnes was a little off balance so more of his weight came down on his right side also. It certainly had all the ingredients for a nasty sprain, put it that way.
To their credit, the Raptors didn’t let the Barnes injury derail their effort. The Raptors were leading the high-scoring Knicks by four when Barnes left the game with 6:47 remaining in the third quarter and seemed to have the momentum. Barnes had hit a pair of triples and had 15 points and five rebounds before he went down in obvious pain and had to be helped off the floor before hopping on his left foot down the tunnel and into the Raptors locker room.
“I never question why this happens,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “Those types of injuries, they’re out of our control, and I’m not questioning anything there. We just have to go through it and it’s one more.”
The Raptors didn’t use Barnes’s injury as an excuse to let down and led 86-83 to start the fourth quarter. In particular, RJ Barrett kept the pressure up on his way to another big night at Scotiabank Arena and the Raptors wing ended up with 30 points, eight rebounds and four assists in his first game against his old team in his home arena.
Barrett was front-and-centre as the Raptors pushed the Knicks to the wire. He tied the score with a finger roll with 4:11 left, drove the lane and found Davion Mitchell in the corner for a three and sprinted out in transition to tie the game with a fast break lay-up through a crowd of Knicks with 42 seconds left. But that was the Raptors’ last bucket.
The Knicks scored on a nifty inbounds play after a timeout that ended with a Towns lay-up set up by Jalen Brunson. Barrett was blocked at the rim by former Raptor OG Anunoby before Towns iced the game with a deep three with six seconds left to put the Knicks up by five, the winning margin.
“Losing Scottie was a tough blow, we were playing so well, especially with Scottie on the floor,” said Barrett. “But it was a hard-fought game, and we had a chance there at the end. Those are ones you wish you got the win, but I think we played pretty well.”
The loss was Toronto’s third straight as they finish their season-high five-game homestand 2-3 before heading to Miami to play the Heat on Thursday. They are at 7-18 for the season. The game was also marked by rookie Ja’Kobe Walter scoring a career-high 19 points in his 22 minutes of floor time. His highlight might have been assisting on a Barrett alley-oop that the Canadian wing had to sky-high to catch and finish.
“I’m not going to lie, that slipped,” said Walter of his pass. “I don’t know how he caught that.”
The Raptors shot 44.6 per cent from the floor and 13-of-35 from three. They had 17 offensive rebounds to the Knicks’ six but hurt themselves by converting just 53.7 per cent of their chances in the restricted area when the league average is 65.7 per cent.
The Knicks, who improved to 15-9, arrived in Toronto with the NBA’s top-ranked offence and showed why by shooting 51.2 per cent from the floor and 42.5 per cent from three. All five of their starters were in double figures and three had at least 20 points, led by Towns with 24 points to go along with 15 rebounds.
Anunoby had 14 points, four rebounds, three assists, two steals and three blocks — including a pair of blocked threes on consecutive possessions in the second quarter — in his first game back in Toronto. He’s been excellent for the Knicks who hope that he along with Precious Achiuwa can provide the extra defensive punch they need if they’re going to advance beyond the second round of the playoffs, which is where their season ended last year.
Not that the Raptors have come up short on the acquisition of Barrett and Immanuel Quickley. Barrett has led the Raptors in scoring since he joined them and Quickley — even though he’s been limited to just three games this season due to various injuries, the latest an elbow sprain that will likely keep him out for another two weeks — showed enough playmaking and shooting ability last season that the Raptors signed him to a five-year contract worth $175 million.
“OG was different, his versatility and size was something we were looking for,” said Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau. “So any time you get a player like that — and of course Precious as well — it was important, you give good players up, so I think was a good deal for both teams.”
It’s a terribly boring way to assess a trade but it just might be true. The Raptors will just have to get healthy to see the full benefits on their end, which could take a while.
