Living in a post-Lowry world at the moment, things aren’t very pretty for the Raptors right now.
TORONTO – Late in the first quarter a funny thing happened at the Toronto Raptors game. DeMar DeRozan was on the floor but not really involved in the play, and they scored anyway.
And they scored not at the end of some awkward, forced, otherwise bad offensive possession thanks to a lay-up by rookie Jakob Poeltl, who finished a slick pass from P.J. Tucker, who got the ball after two or three other passes, all seemingly made with a purpose.
But that was the exception, a lonely beacon of smooth, smart, team play on an otherwise scary street. Otherwise? It looks like Toronto could be flailing around in a dark, Kyle Lowry-less neighbourhood for some time to come as their 105-96 loss to the visiting Washington Wizards would seem to suggest.
The Raptors (36-25) set a franchise low with just three assists through the first three quarters, while totaling just 11 in 48 minutes. The Wizards counted 32 helpers as they moved the ball around and made open shots at the end of it. Cory Joseph, Delon Wright and Fred VanVleet – the Raptors trio of point guards – combined for just three assists while the Wizards’ John Wall had 13 on his own.
Washington (36-23) arrived having beaten the Golden State Warriors the night before. They started the season 2-8 but are 30-12 since Dec. 1, the best mark in the Eastern Conference in that span. There’s no shame is dropping a game to the Wizards at this juncture, even at home.
But it’s how Toronto played in the process. Much has been made about the Raptors new-look defence with the additions of Serge Ibaka and Tucker, but it’s hard to win in the NBA if you can’t score and it’s hard to score if your offence relies on DeRozan to make like Michael Jordan night after night.
That’s been the Raptors’ formula since Lowry has been lost to them for at least a month following wrist surgery Tuesday – DeRozan came into the game averaging 37 points in his fellow all-star’s absence.
DeRozan was again productive as Toronto’s first, second and sometimes third option — he had 24 points on 20 shots — but if Toronto’s hopes of maintaining home court in the first-round of the playoffs depend on a ‘DeRozan-or-bust’ strategy, the month of March won’t end soon enough.
The Raptors need to do a lot of things to be productive without Lowry, their sparkplug, but one of them is to find a way to score.
“Our staff, we’re going to have to come up with something to give us a rhythm offensively without Kyle in there, how we want to play,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey.
“We had three assists in the first half, that can’t happen. And 11 for the whole game. The ball’s got to move and get in a rhythm and we were a little out of sync and I felt that carried over to the defensive end.
“No excuses, it’s on us, all of us and we’ve got to be better.”
Maybe that will happen Friday when Toronto travels to Washington for the third and final game in their season series, which is now tied 1-1. It’s the first of a five-game road trip for Toronto and it’s hard to be optimistic that things will be significantly different two days from now as the Raptors shot just 36.7 per cent from the floor, made just six threes and had just as many turnovers as assists.
The loss dropped Toronto a game behind the third-place Wizards in the Eastern Conference playoff race – also known as the race to avoid finishing fourth and playing Atlanta in the first round and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the second.
The game turned in the second quarter when DeRozan went to the bench. In just under four minutes the Raptors didn’t score a single field goal – nor did they come particularly close. On the floor was Powell, Wright, Patterson, Poeltl and Tucker.
For most of the past two seasons these were the moments when Lowry would shine as he would lead the Raptors’ second unit on search-and-destroy missions.
Now?
Powell (17 points, 16 in the fourth quarter when the game was out of reach) was a feel-good story when he was a scrappy second-rounder pushing hard for minutes behind Terrence Ross. But now that Ross has been traded and Powell’s got a fixed roll in his second season and part of that role is to create some offence, it’s almost like he’s forgotten what made the Raptors confident they could afford to move Ross, who was their second-best three-point shooter and capable of instant offence, if it didn’t always arrive exactly on demand.
In three games since the all-star break before last night Powell had scored just 14 points, making only one three. With DeRozan on the bench Powell tried to make plays but they came off as forced and predictable.
Wright didn’t look assertive enough to create an action and Patterson (scoreless on six shots) still seems to be finding his legs after missing so much time with his knee injury. As for Tucker?
He was hired for his defence.
“We just have to figure out how to play together,” said Powell. “It’s what, Delon’s fifth game back? He’s getting into the flow of the rotation. We got P.J. [new] on the team too so everyone is still trying to figure everybody out on that second unit but that’s going to come just with playing defence. That’s going to come with us pressuring the ball, being active. The offence is going to take of it’s self. But that second unit – myself included – has to do a better job of locking in on defence and bring better energy to the game.”
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The Raptors made it easy for the Wizards to play on the defensive end. For long stretches it looked like they (the Wizards) were playing a bad high school zone, with five red shirts standing, facing the ball, not doing much, but then again they didn’t have to as the Raptors moved neither the ball nor bodies.
As if to underscore the predicament, the Wizards’ under-the-radar trade deadline acquisition, Bojan Bogdanovic, went on a three-point shooting spree that the current edition Raptors can only dream about for now. He knocked down three triples and five of the six shots he took in his 25 minutes of playing time. He finished with a game-high 27.
By the time DeRozan checked back in the Raptors were down 20. By the time he scored Toronto was down 23, 50-27, as the Wizards run reached 26-1.
In that light there was some honour in keeping the game from getting completely out of hand and Toronto did win the fourth quarter decisively, but that was well after the sewers backed up and the streets flooded.
The Raptors are in a post-Lowry world for the moment, and it’s not pretty.
