TORONTO — Practically the only thing Tuesday night’s Toronto Raptors game didn’t have was Kyle Lowry. There were big shots, awful misses, punches, massive dunks in transition, an implausible comeback, a last-second collapse, a post-game dust-up, and, eventually, a 90-89 Raptors loss at the hands of the Miami Heat.
It’s a lot to process for Raptors head coach Dwane Casey as he gets his team ready to host two of the NBA’s best teams — the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors — later this week, with Lowry potentially still sidelined and Serge Ibaka possibly suspended after trading fists with Miami’s James Johnson.
We’ll see how it all plays out. But here are three troubling stats from Tuesday’s defeat that the Raptors will want to address between now and then.
Miami grabbed 20 offensive rebounds
Rebounding was by far the biggest discrepancy between the two teams, and explains how Miami managed to pull this win out despite being held to 40 per cent shooting, including 4-of-22 from beyond the arc. Letting a team recover 20 of its misses, and end up with 17 second-chance points, isn’t found in too many winning formulas.
“It’s attention to detail,” Casey said. “Hitting someone before the shot’s missed. We didn’t do those things.”
Ibaka’s third-quarter ejection — following a scuffle with Johnson that Ibaka didn’t provoke but didn’t de-escalate either — certainly didn’t help. He was leading the Raptors in rebounds at the time with five.
Neither did the fact the Raptors played on the road the night prior and didn’t land in Toronto until 3:00 a.m. ET Tuesday morning. Every team deals with rough stretches of the schedule. But circumstances like that are always going to take sap some vigour when it comes to the hardy elements of the game, like battling on the glass.
Still, the Raptors played three centres Tuesday (Jonas Valanciunas, Lucas Nogueira, and Jakob Poeltl) and they combined for only four boards. Raptors guard Norman Powell had six on his own. Delon Wright had seven.
“We weren’t locked in collectively,” Raptors guard DeMar DeRozan said. “We let them get easy points. We played great defence. We just couldn’t get a rebound when we needed to.”
Meanwhile, the Heat got anything they wanted under Toronto’s glass, with three players coming up with three or more offensive rebounds. Hassan Whiteside had six; all the Raptors combined had seven.
“They had three guys with double-digit rebounds,” Casey said. “We got stops. Now let’s clean up the rebounds.”
Toronto shot 7-of-21 from three-point range
It was a topic of discussion in the Raptors dressing room between halves. After shooting only six times from distance in the first 24 minutes (and hitting just one), Toronto needed to be putting up more shots from beyond the arc.
The second half was an improvement, as Toronto shot 6-of-14 from range. But this is a team that wants to be shooting a high volume of three-pointers, with a goal of putting up 30 a night. And Tuesday night’s 21 were a season low.
“It had a lot to do with our spacing on offence. Being able to shrink the defence inside the paint, kick-outs, and have them scrambling. And we didn’t do that in the first half, so we weren’t able to get enough threes up,” Powell said. “I think it was just the flow of the game. We were trying to get our guys open.”
Powell said one first-half issue was his team’s use of double drags instead of single drags, a busy ball-screen set in transition that pulls a lot of players into a small area of the floor. The Raptors were doing that because they wanted to get their ball-handlers some downhill momentum heading towards the basket. But it came at the sacrifice of looks from beyond the arc.
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After discussing it thoroughly during the break, the Raptors did a better job in the second half. And it was back-to-back threes from DeRozan and Wright that helped get Toronto back into this game in the dying minutes as Miami was trying to pull away. But if the Raptors had shot from distance like that earlier in the night, they may not have needed the comeback.
“We scratched and fought to get ourselves back into the game,” Casey said. “We always focus on the last few possessions. But the stuff was building up. The lack of ball movement, spacing, cutting, playing with force — we didn’t do it. We dug ourselves a hole, shot ourselves in the foot.”
DeRozan shot 10-of-29
This is by no means an indictment of Derozan’s play. He’s been the best Raptor on the floor all season, and one of the best players in the entire league for that matter.
It’s merely a reflection of what happens when you take Lowry out of the Raptors lineup. There are ripple effects. And one of them is that the opposition can key in more aggressively on guarding DeRozan, at least until another Raptor proves they’re a legitimate scoring threat on the night.
Tuesday, without Lowry playing beside him for the first time all season, DeRozan was the frequent target of double teams. And while he found his man out of them a few times, more often than not it resulted in an awkward attempt — and a miss.
After the first 24 minutes, DeRozan was shooting 3-for-13, and although he had much more success in the second half, shooting 7-of-16, he was never able to get over that slow start. And it didn’t help that the officials were letting players on both teams get away with plenty of contact, which meant DeRozan got to the line only four times.
“There were a lot of mistakes that I hesitated on tonight. You know, coming off screens, letting them get a chance to contest,” DeRozan said. “A couple shots I thought I was fouled on. But I didn’t let that discourage me. I knew at some point I was going to figure it out.”
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DeRozan had a strong fourth quarter, making a pair of vintage plays in heavy traffic which nearly made this night look very different. When he drove into the heart of the Miami defence with four seconds remaining, missing his initial shot before putting back his own rebound, it looked like he’d stolen his team a game.
But regardless of result, there are clearly some hitches to work out in this Lowry-less offence — particularly when it comes to floor spacing — in order to let DeRozan play at the near-MVP level he has been.
It wouldn’t be surprising if Lowry missed another game, if not more, due to the bruised tailbone and back spasms he suffered in a gnarly fall against Brooklyn Monday night. And with the Cavaliers and Warriors coming to town Thursday and Saturday, the Raptors don’t exactly have pushover opponents to work out the bugs against.
“The whole game is completely different without Kyle,” DeRozan said. “Everything. You can kind of tell with our ball movement, it wasn’t all the way there like it would normally be when Kyle’s out there. He’s a general on the floor. He sees things when they need to be called.
“But that’s no excuse. We still fought hard. We still had an opportunity. And we lost it by one.”
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