TORONTO — The day after the day before the Toronto Raptors opted not to practice and instead watched film of their collective failings against the Washington Wizards.
The exception was Kyle Lowry, who headed to the Raptors practice court to get some shots up and arrived at the interview podium lathered up enough that he was offered a towel.
He needed the work.
As Lowry goes, so do the Raptors may be an oversimplification, but this isn’t: if the Raptors all-star point guard gets more fouls (six) than assists (four) while making more turnovers (three) than field goals (two) as he did in Game 1 again in Game 2, the Raptors will be heading to Washington down 0-2.
If Paul Pierce is the Wizards’ leader — the last few days have been a delight with him speaking up, backing up his words with a 20-point outing on Saturday, messing with Masai Ujiri after (“I can play the psychological war a little better than he can”) and basking in the glory — Lowry is the Raptors’ engine.
It’s his image emblazoned on the side of the Air Canada Centre with his arm on DeMar DeRozan’s shoulder, not the other way around.
It’s time for him to hold serve.
Lowry knows it, so when the ball goes up on Tuesday, Lowry intends to come out running, if not gunning. He’s not putting pressure on himself to score, but he is putting pressure on himself to lift the Raptors with his energy and pace.
The Raptors only had six fast break points on four attempts, which is about half of what they managed in the regular season. The Raptors don’t play at a particularly fast pace this season as they ranked 21st in the NBA, but need to play faster than slower.
“Honestly our tempo has to be different,” he said. “We have to play our game. I think yesterday we really bogged down and played too slow. That started with me from the beginning of the game. I should have been pushing more and pushing the pace.”
The Raptors could list off any number of ways they lost in overtime against the Wizards, the second time in as many years this group has blown home court advantage in the first game of a series despite playing in front of a rapturous, raucous crowd that even Raptors nemesis Paul Pierce, a veteran of 149 playoff games, described as one of the most electric and hostile road crowds he’s ever had the pleasure of being heckled by.
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Whatever happens, some of them won’t be a factor in Game 2, that’s guaranteed. The tip on Tuesday goes at 8 p.m., much to the relief of Raptors guard Greivis Vasquez who doesn’t want to see that early game again anytime soon.
“I hate that one o’clock game [actually Game 1 started at 12:30 on Saturday],” said Vasquez. “That’s what it is. I don’t want to do it anymore … last year, the same thing happened. We lost the first game.”
Other factors will likely be with the Raptors as long as the series goes, win or lose. Toronto coughed up 19 offensive rebounds to the Wizards and has to consider themselves fortunate that Washington only scored 20 points off of all those second chances.
To a man on Sunday, the Raptors pledged to clean up the glass better, ascribing their failings to a combination of technique and a moxie shortage.
“For the most part it’s about putting your forearm in somebody’s chest, getting your butt in their knees and going to get the ball,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey, who pantomimed the forearm to the chest technique with considerable conviction. “We’ve said that all year, this is the time of year we have to do it. We have to make a decision whether we want to do it or not and it’s a collective thing.”
But the Raptors can’t be expected to reinvent themselves by Tuesday. They ranked 24th in the NBA in the regular season in defensive rebound percentage, grabbing just 73.3 percent of the opponent misses on the year they forced. Meanwhile the Wizards — while not a collection of Moses Malones — were 15th in the league in offensive rebounding.
Casey can ask his club to do more to get to more loose balls and his charges can pledge to do his pleading, but chances are Game 1 won’t be the last time the Wizards hurt the Raptors on the glass. As long as Toronto minimizes the damage, it’s an acceptable outcome.
What they do need to have in place by Tuesday is a reasonable facsimile of ‘good’ Lowry, which explains why the Raptors all-star point guard was working up a sweat on an off day.
His teammates are confident he’ll bounce back.
“I’m not going to be shocked if Kyle came and had an unbelievable game on Tuesday,” said Vasquez who was one of the few Raptors whose stroke was working as he shot 4-of-6 from the floor, including the game-tying triple with just less than 30 seconds left. “He needs to have a short memory. He needs to come to play on Tuesday, and have fun — that’s the main thing. It’s not pressure.”
It is pressure.
When Lowry is at his best, the Raptors are a good team. For the first two months of the season Lowry was a near perfect blend of ball dominant guard — attacking to create opportunities for others while being enough of a threat to score that defences had to honour his aggression.
He has played that way only in flashes since his hot start with injury and fatigue, the accepted reasons why. According to Basketball-Reference.com, of his top 20 statistical performances this season, only four of them came after the all-star break in February and the only one in the past month was the season finale on Wednesday in what was a bit of a laugher, in sharp contrast to the quagmire the Wizards were happy to drag the Raptors into in Game 1.
From Lowry’s point of view the first thing he needs to do is to push the Raptors pace so that they aren’t spending any more possessions standing around and staring at five Washington defenders locking arms and swaying in the paint, daring the Raptors to take their chances to shoot over them.
The Wizards plan to crowd the paint worked perfectly on Saturday as Lowry (2-of-10), DeMar DeRozan (6-of-20), Lou Williams (4-of-16) and Terrence Ross (3-of-11) — the Raptors’ four leading scorers — combined to shoot just 26 percent from the floor and 2-of-16 from beyond the arc.
Lowry has taken it on himself to get his team more shots from preferred spots.
“I think we were happy with some of the shots but we could have had better,” he said.
Lots of things need to be improved if the Raptors are going to avoid falling behind 0-2 in the series. But Lowry can control how aggressively he pushes the pace and how fast the Raptors get into their offence.
He plans to start from there and hope the rest falls into place.
Paul Pierce has done his part for the Wizards. Now it’s Lowry’s turn.