Raptors' Tucker: Losing Game 1 is 'not cool'

P.J. Tucker has not been a part of the Toronto Raptors' long-running slump in playoff Game 1s. In fact, until Saturday night, he'd never even played in a playoff game, for any team.

But Tucker got a taste of the inexplicable curse that's been hanging over the Raptors the past several years - whereby an ostensibly good team with a strong home-court advantage loses at home to an ostensibly inferior opponent - when the Raptors got dusted by the inexperienced Milwaukee Bucks.

Toronto is now 0-9 all-time in playoff-opening games, and 0-5 at Air Canada Centre.

Tucker's teammates could perhaps be forgiven for treating Saturday's loss like business as usual, but this is all new to Tucker, and he's not on board.

"It's kind of weird that everybody today's like 'Oh yeah, we always lose the first game,'" Tucker told reporters Sunday, according to TSN's Josh Lewenberg. "It's like, no no no ... It's not cool."

Tucker was a rare bright spot in the game for the Raptors, posting one of the team's only positive plus-minus ratings and doing about as good a job as one can do defending Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Since joining the Raptors in a deadline-day trade, Tucker has altered the team's DNA, and become something like its seething conscience. No one has been more vocal when the Raptors effort has flagged. No one has done more to inspire teammates to match his own level of intensity.

We'll have to wait until Tuesday to find out how the Raptors respond to their latest Game 1 letdown. But it seems a safe bet that Tucker, at the least, will be extremely up for Game 2.