Triple-Overtime Heartbreaker Magnifies Raptors’ Poor Start

It all looked much brighter in training camp… new faces, new hope, maybe a new lease on life as the only pro team currently playing at the Air Canada Centre. Almost as quickly, that fire of optimism appears to be flickering for the Toronto Raptors.

On Monday night, they played what may be seen later as one of the defining games of their season. The Raps led 97-86 with seven minutes remaining but couldn’t seal the deal as the Utah Jazz stormed back, capped by an Al Jefferson three-pointer with two seconds left in regulation to tie the game at 104. In nine pro seasons, that was Jefferson’s second trey ever: he had previously been 1-for-25 from outside the arc.

So it was on to bonus basketball, but the first OT period decided nothing. Toronto found itself down 125-122 with seconds to go in the second extra frame when it became rookie John Lucas III’s time to shine with a clutch three-pointer to send the crazy game into yet another five-minute period.

DeMar DeRozan equalled a career high with 37 points and set a personal mark of 59 minutes on the court, but in the end it wasn’t enough. Utah sent them to their fourth straight loss a 140-133 win despite the combativeness the Raps displayed. It was the eighth victory in a row for the Jazz over the Raptors in Canada: the last time Toronto beat Utah at the ACC was in December 2004.

Triple-OT seems to be a bit of an Achilles heel for the Raps. They lost the previous one in March of 2011 to the then-New Jersey Nets in London; the last one in Toronto was a one-point loss to the Sacramento Kings in 2001. The Monday nighter shouldn’t have gone that far, though: the home team should have been able to hang on to that 11-point lead — in a perfect world, anyway. The Raptors, of course, are far from perfect even when healthy: to add injuries to the insult, they were missing point guard Kyle Lowry (ankle) for the third straight game and swingman Landry Fields (wrist) for the second in a row.

Yes, they were short-handed and yes, they fought when they needed to and yes, DeRozan did his best to channel Vince Carter at the height of his powers. But it’s still a loss, and it leaves them with a 1-6 record: only the Washington Wizards at 0-6 and the 0-8 Detroit Pistons are lousier in the Eastern Conference — and the league, as it happens.

They have no time to lick their wounds as they travel to Indiana on Tuesday to face the Pacers, who beat them 90-88 on opening night — which happened to be Halloween. If it gets scarier than this for Toronto, they could look back on Monday’s triple-OT heartbreaker as the point where they had a chance to turn a new page, but didn’t.