RJ Barrett and the Toronto Raptors suffered an embarrassing 123-115 defeat to the last-place team in the Western Conference, the Sacramento Kings. Two former Raptors led the game in scoring with 28 points apiece: Precious Achiuwa and DeMar DeRozan. Achiuwa added 19 rebounds, including 11 on the offensive glass, just one rebound shy of matching the entire Raptors’ starting lineup. 

Surprisingly, offense wasn’t the issue in this contest for Toronto. The ultimate demise of many games this season was the lack of scoring, specifically in the fourth quarter, but that wasn’t the case in Scotiabank Arena. The team shot 55% from the field and 39% from three, over 7% more from the field and 4% from three. 

Barrett supplied 20 points, six rebounds, and five assists in the loss. However, he shot just 1-for-5 from beyond the arc to match five turnovers simultaneously. The former No. 3 pick in the 2019 NBA Draft has played the best basketball of his career over the past month, averaging 21.5 points per game on 55.4% shooting over the last 17 games (via StatMuse). 

Despite the all-around contributions, Barrett expressed major frustration in both himself and the team after losing to a team that had yet to win 20 games before the contest. 

“It’s nights like these where this is a game you’re supposed to win, no matter what,” said Barrett. Process or no process, we can’t lose this game. Just straight up what it is … From top to bottom, we gotta play better … We gotta play better as a unit. I had five turnovers, I can’t have five turnovers, man. This one’s pretty frustrating. We’ve been playing well. We’ve been fighting hard, fighting hard all year. You want to get the reward of making it to the playoffs, and fighting for a championship. Nights like tonight definitely hurt, especially when we know how much work we put in. We got what, six more games? So I think over these next six games, we’ll show and prove who we are.”

Last night was all about the rebounding; the Raptors were outrebounded by 16, and Sacramento’s 19 offensive rebounds boosted the Kings to a 20-4 result in second-chance points. The Raptors have regularly struggled significantly when they are outrebounded, and even the worst teams in the league are able to prove that to be true. 

Losing back-to-back games may prove to be detrimental to the Raptors’ playoff hopes. What once seemed like a lock to be in the postseason is now partially up to chance, as the Raptors have fallen to the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference, and the Play-In Tournament. There are still six games remaining for the Raptors to boost their odds of getting out of the Play-In and achieving a definite playoff spot, as they are currently tied with the Philadelphia 76ers for sixth (Toronto does not own tiebreaker). 

As it currently stands, the Raptors would be forced to play the Charlotte Hornets in the first Play-In game to hold the seventh seed. The Hornets possess a record of 24-8 in their last 32 games (second-best in NBA in that span, via StatMuse), and with one of the best offenses in the NBA, the Raptors should do everything to avoid playing a one-game winner-take-all against them.