That's outrageous. What happened tonight, this is completely BS. This is shame. Shame for the refere, shame for the league to allow this. 23 free throws for them, and we get two free throws in a four-quarter. How to play the game. I understand respect for All Stars and all of that, but we have star players on our team as well. How's it possible as Scottie Barnes, who is All Star caliber player in this league, he goes every single time to the rim with force and trying to get to the rim without flopping and not trying to get foul calls. He gets two free throws for a whole game. How is that possible? How are you going to explain that to me? They had to win tonight? If that's the case, just let us know so we don't show up for the game. Just give them a win. But that was not fair tonight. And this is not happening first time for us. Scottie Barnes is going to be all-star. He's going to be the face of this lead. Week. And what's happening over here during the whole season, I've been holding you back. It's a complete crap.

Are you getting any explanations at all? That offensive foul, did you see? Did you get any expl?

No, no, there is no explanation. They just come up there, they review and they see what they want to see. They don't want to hear us, what we got to say. They don't want to hear the players. They don't just want to protect us. Over the game, they got 36 free throws, 23 free throws in a four quarter. What are we talking about? What are we talking about? How are we going to supposed to play?

Free throws, free throws, free throws. While they have plagued the Raptors all season, it wasn't missing them that cost them this game. It might have been not getting them that killed Toronto's chances of beating the Lakers in Los Angeles without the help of their starting center, Jacob Pertle. It was announced before the game that Pertle is out indefinitely with a left ankle sprain and will be reevaluated in two weeks. And so they were left with no one to guard Anthony Davis, who finished with 41 points, 11 rebounds, 6 assists, and of course, 13 made free throws despite a valiant effort from 35-year-old Thad Young, who started in Pertle's place.

Just next man mentality, no matter how or what the situation is, just always be ready. Just always have that next man mentality. When your yaka goes down, your number is called, you got to just be ready. I put in a lot of time, a lot of preparation each and every day with our play groups and playing with the coaches and playing with other guys on the team and just making sure that I'm always going to be there as a leader and be vocal. Just going out there and just making sure that I'm helping my team as much as possible and doing it to the best of my abilities.

Now, while most of the conversation will be about the officiating, the missed calls, the bad calls, et cetera, this was actually a pretty fun game until late in the fourth quarter. The Raptors and Lakers exchanged blows in the first half as R. J. Barrett, who finished with 23 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists, kept Toronto within striking distance before Emmanuel quickly took over the third quarter, scoring 11 of his final 21 points in that quarter, knocking down four threes in the process. The new guys for the Raptors continue to Excel in Toronto system, And what's just as good is that the Raptors stars in Scottie Barnes and Pascal Siakam shined in this one as well. Barnes finished with a team high 26 points, three rebounds and six assists, propelling the Raptors in the fourth quarter with 11 points in that frame. And Siakam dropped 13 of his final 25 points in the fourth, but it still wasn't enough to put away the Lakers.

It just says that he's all for us. He's all for us as a family, as a team. We're We're always going to stick together. We're always going to be behind one another. And he's always been behind us since day one, coming in here. He's going to continue to fight for us. And we love Darko to death. We definitely thank the world of coaching, and we appreciate him going to bat for us. But this was a tough game for us. Things happened towards the end of games and throughout the course of games. Calls are made, calls are missed. It It happens. We just got to move on to the next one.

Look, there's no question that the Raptors weren't getting a friendly whistle. Iq picked up two quick fouls in the fourth quarter, including one that was a flagrant to foul him out of the game. The Lakers shot 23 free throws compared to just two for the Raptors in the fourth quarter. And while eight of those were intentional, it does illustrate just how lopsided the calls were and why Darko is probably going to get fined by the NBA for that postgame rant. Now, aside from the official there was a basketball game as well, ladies and gentlemen, and there were a lot of things to highlight besides the fouls. Thad Young was good in his minutes. Siakam was relentless as a scorer as usual. Barrett's bully ball style continues to be relentless in its own way, and quickly is an enigma that we will cover for years to come. But so is Scottie Barnes, and I wanted to highlight just how good he was in that fourth quarter. Folks, Scottie Barnes had some momentous plays in that fourth quarter, but maybe none more momentous and more incredible than this one right here. Christian Wood attacking a closeout. Great contest by Thad Young, but just incredible weak side block by Scottie Barnes, gets the recovery, stays with Jared Vanderbilt, and gets the block here as well, completely nullifying a Lakers possession right there.

Just incredible stuff from Scottie. Shows you how dangerous he can be as a weak side rim protector, maybe potentially even as a guy who can be an option for them at the starting center spot, maybe, depending on the type of matchups that they have. He had three assists in the fourth quarter as well. This was great. Little staggered pick and roll that gets Gary Trent Jr. Open for the three. Trent was also awesome in this one, had 11 points, a lot of timely shots. This is off a pick and roll between IQ and Scottie Barnes, something that I want them to explore more often. Scottie rolls here. Iq isn't able to out the advantage, but a nice pitchback pass to Scottie, and Scottie is able to take advantage of the, I would say, the seal from IQ there. Get Christian Wood off his spot, get downhill, and now Anthony Davis is forced to collapse in to negate the drive. And so that helps because you get a Pascal Siakam corner three, and he has been killing it from the corners in the last month or so. Another great pass here from Scottie in the pick and roll.

This time it's with Pascal Siakam who slips the screen, and Scottie is able to see over top, make the pass over Anthony Davis, and a great finish by Pascal. Five points of his 13 were assisted by Scottie, his 13 points in the fourth quarter. And also it was just an incredible game for him scoring-wise. I thought this was the most comfortable maybe he's been in a while of just being able to settle into his shots and be physical, right? And to Darko's point, he's right. Two free throws for a guy who was as physical as Scottie was last night is pretty ridiculous. You see him here take the bump, exchange bumps with Jared Vanderbilt, and then finish in the lane. Then right here, sizing up AD one-on-one. This is no easy feat. And then he takes the bump, rises up over the top of the outstretched arms of Anthony Davis. Just ridiculous to be able to finish over the top and does so gently. Very soft touch there by Scottie. Same thing, that staggered pick and roll that created that shot for Gary Trent Jr. This This time it creates a mismatch for Scottie Barnes, and he takes advantage of it, just bumps Tori and Prince all the way to the basket for the finish over top.

And in the end, dying seconds. I thought this was a foul. He takes the bump for Max Christie, goes up with it, and even on the finish, there's some foul. There's some contact there as well. And ladies and gentlemen, we can get into the officiating if you want. I do think it was pretty egregious just in general. Maybe I would say less so the fouls that were called on the Raptors, but more so the fouls that the Raptors didn't get called in the sense that they could have went to the free throw line much more. The discrepancy is what I take issue with, and I think that's what Darko Ryackovich takes issue with, too. It's like, hey, if you're going to call these calls for Anthony Davis. You're going to call these calls for LeBron James. You should be calling these calls for Pascal Siakam and Scottie Barnes. And to that, I agree with that. It's so easy to be like, this is the issue, and this is why the Raptors lost. And you know what? Probably tonight, one point They weren't able to get the free throw line as much as the Lakers. Maybe tonight was the referees screwing the Raptors out of the game.

Actually, most likely I would say, yeah, it was the reason the Raptors were screw out of the game. If you look at the box score, if you watch the game, the Raptors played exceptionally without their starting center. I mean, Thad Young was just incredible in his minutes. Jontay Porter did some good stuff for you as well. I thought Chris Bouchet had a rough first half, but picked it up in the second half. So your front court rotation was working well. You Scoty, like I mentioned in this thing, Scoty, Pascal, IQ, and R. J. All had moments where they impacted the game in a major way. R. J. Kept them alive for the first two quarters, and then IQ exploded in the third quarter. Scoty was good throughout, and then he exploded in the fourth quarter, as did Pascal. And I just think there's a flow and a rhythm to this team. As I've mentioned in the last couple of recaps, that this team just makes more sense, especially offensively. There's a function to it. The getting downhill, getting in transition, bully ball style that they like to play. It makes a lot more sense with this team, especially because you have the functionality of some depth.

You can trust the Dennis Schroeder for his minutes. You can trust staggering IQ and R. J. Barrett into those bench units. There's just so much more fluidity to what the Raptors can do. Yes, they are going to miss Jaco Pertle. Tonight was a huge example of why they are going to miss Jaco Pertle. Anthony Davis just carved them up. And even outside of the free throws. Anthony Davis was dominant in this game. Like, anytime they hit the roller, LeBron hit AD on the roll, he was able to finish over top. There wasn't that much that young or Shante Porter could do as well of a job as they did. And so I'm not sure what the immediate solution to that is. I would prefer a little bit more Scottie Barnes at the five minutes. Just play smaller and see if you can carve out an advantage with your athleticism. But at the same time, tomorrow night, you're playing the Los Angeles Clippers, or tonight, if you're watching this, you're playing the Los Angeles Clippers. Evita Zubats is this big seven-foot-tall type of guy. What type of big do you want him? Garding him? Maybe you go smaller and try to draw Zubats out.

Yeah, I actually think that probably makes sense, given his limitations on the defensive end. But then there are other questions. You play the Utah Jazz on Friday. How are you going to deal with the size of Walker Kessler and Kelly O'Linnick and Larry marketing? You play the Celtics, Chris Dobbs, Porzingis, Al Hofer. You're going to miss Jack O'Purtle. And the Raptors have had a lot of injury luck so far this season. Obviously, they're a new team post-trade, but the injury bug is hitting them at the wrong time. And we'll see how they're able to recover. We'll see because two weeks of basketball, they're going through a tough stretch of games as well. How much they're able to stay alive will probably determine if they're going to make a play in spot or maybe even a play off spot. It just doesn't seem like if they can't survive this stretch without Jacob, maybe that is the season in terms of the current season. And there's obviously the conversations about Pascal and trades and whatnot. But I think if your goal in mind, if you're the Raptors front office is, Hey, let's get it to the play-in.

These next two weeks will be indicative of how close you will be to that objective. So we'll see what happens, ladies and gentlemen. It should be an interesting one. Regardless, they're fun again, folks. And this game was really entertaining outside of the referees and outside of the officiating. There were some really impressive performances from the Raptors. Scottie was awesome. Iq was awesome. R. J. Was awesome. Pascal was awesome. And that quartet is Really special, to be honest with you. And it's been a lot of fun to watch. So we'll see what happens. We will see what happens, ladies and gentlemen. Should be an interesting month of Raptors basketball left, especially with these injuries. Thank you so much for tapping into these recap. As always, if you would like to tap into the Objective Basketball podcast, we talk about the NBA in general. So thank you very much, and we will see you guys later. Take care.