So the Raptors got killed on the boards again last night and outscored in the paint by a boatload. It was so dismal in the trenches that the Raptors' ineptitude could have inspired the invention of a whole new line in the boxscore. Call it Fourth-Chance Points.
The NBA doesn't keep such a stat, at least not for public consumption, but in one remarkable stretch in the second quarter, the Chicago Bulls, nobody's juggernaut, took four shots, snagged four rebounds and scored two points. And they did it all without a Raptor so much as getting a finger on the rock.
Derrick Rose missed a shot and got his rebound. Andres Nocioni missed a three-pointer and Luol Deng got the rebound. Then Deng missed two shots and got both his rebounds.
And, finally, to cap it all off, Deng gathered himself and scored as the Air Canada Centre boo-birds cawed their disapproval.
"Box out!" a balding man hollered from the vicinity of courtside. Funnily enough, it wasn't one of the Raptors coaches. They are, one assumes, justifiably tired of repeating themselves.
Still, all those problems in the paint aside, the Raptors made it a game, eventually losing 102-98. They kept it close because, for all their lack of ruggedness, Chris Bosh and Andrea Bargnani combined for 56 points on a highly efficient 32 shots.
But Bargnani - as impressive as his career-high 31 points were in their inside-outside variety - wasn't the only No. 1 overall NBA draft pick in the building. Chicago's version of same, Derrick Rose, the rookie point guard who went first overall last June, was far more difficult to contain when it mattered.
He's the kind of talent Raptors fans drool over, because he's exactly what Toronto lacks - a creator of shots and a crunch-time scorer. Rose scored six of Chicago's final 10 points and 17 of his 25 points in the fourth quarter. He scored almost all of them going to the basket, turning nothing into something with unteachable ease.
If it was a fluke, you'd tip your hat. But Rose's outburst amounted to, by this count, the 14th time in 24 losses that an opposing perimeter player had torched the Raptors for 10 or more fourth-quarter points. Ray Allen had 14 fourth-quarter points a couple of games ago. Devin Harris has dropped 16 and 17 in a couple of memorable fourths.
And while a lot of teams have the luxury of riding a hot hand to a win, the Raptors just can't say the same.
Jamario Moon, Toronto's starting small forward, has started 104 NBA games and never had a single 20-point game (his career high is 17). Anthony Parker, the starting shooting guard, has had two 20-plus-point games all season. Those aren't guys to ride.
You can make the point that, for all of Bosh's and Bargnani's good work, neither guy made a play when it counted. Bosh got his shot blocked by Joakim Noah with six seconds to play and the Raptors down a bucket. (And Bosh, too, had missed another opportunity to pull within two points with 1: 02 to go.)
But it's tough to blame the big men in a league in which the down-to-the-wire guys are almost exclusively ball-handling perimeter types like Rose.
Jay Triano, the Raptors' interim head coach, was recalling Rose's elusiveness before the game. Triano was a coach on the U.S. select team that scrimmaged against Bosh's U.S. Olympic squad in the lead-up to Beijing.
"Any time the select team stalled ... he was the bright light," Triano said. "He was just finding a way to score."
It was the same story last night and the Raptors - who give up fourth-chance points and last-chance rallies like few others - had no answer.
That's not going to change until the roster does.
