TORONTO — The Toronto Raptors rebounded from one of the most demoralizing playoff losses in franchise history and seized control of their opening-round series with the Milwaukee Bucks by making crucial rotation adjustments that completely opened up their game. Now, they wait and see how the Bucks will adjust back.
“We think about that after every game — win, lose or draw,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey before his team boarded a flight for Wisconsin ahead of Thursday night’s Game 6. “We try to anticipate what they’re going to do. That’s part of the chess match.”
The masterstroke Casey and his coaching staff pulled prior to Game 4 was to insert Norman Powell into the starting lineup, pushing Jonas Valanciunas to a secondary role off the bench. That gave Toronto more energy at tipoff, better spacing, varied ways to attack, and the ability to switch more effectively on defence. The Bucks spent their next two games trying to figure out how to counter — to no avail.
But with Milwaukee a defeat away from its season’s end, the Raptors are fully expecting to see some different looks from Bucks head coach Jason Kidd and his players come Thursday. Casey isn’t entirely sure yet what those adjustments might be. But he’s pretty certain they’re coming.
“There’s a lot of variables. There’s a lot of what ifs,” Casey said. “If [the adjustments] are big, we probably won’t know about them until the game starts. But we’re prepared. There are some things they can do differently [on offence], and we’re prepared for that. They can do some things different defensively, and we’re prepared for that, too.”
Of course, the Bucks don’t generally tweak their defensive schemes much at all. Throughout the first five games of this series, DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry have seen the same traps, blitzes, and swarms over and over again.
Part of the reason the Raptors were able to move the ball so effectively in Game 5 — and why the scoring was so spread out with six players in double digits — was Toronto’s primary ball-handlers merely getting used to playing against that pressure.
DeRozan and Lowry passed effectively out of traps, the man who received that pass moved the ball quickly to an open teammate, and 57.7 per cent of the shots the Raptors took fell in as they capitalized on open looks.
Still, the Raptors will be expecting the Bucks to make some changes on defence Thursday night. Their backs are against the wall — if they’re not going to try something different now, then when?
But it might not be dramatic. The Bucks could keep their schemes relatively the same, and bet on the Raptors not shooting as well as they did in Game 5. If Powell doesn’t go 4-for-4 from beyond the arc, and Serge Ibaka doesn’t hit eight of the 10 shots he took, and DeMarre Carroll doesn’t shoot 67 per cent from the floor, that game would have been a lot closer than it was.
And that could translate to the offensive end for the Bucks as well. Toronto’s effective shooting on Monday helped limit Milwaukee’s opportunities in transition — after a made shot, the ball comes up the floor slower, and your defence has the ability to better set itself up for the ensuing attack.
But if the Raptors don’t shoot as well, the Bucks will have more opportunities to push the pace, more chances to get Giannis Antetokounmpo the ball in transition, and more looks against a scrambling, ad-libbed Raptors defence playing on its heels. That’s when the Bucks have been at their offensive best in this series.
But no matter what new wrinkles Milwaukee shows Thursday, the Raptors can make life a lot easier if they continue to take advantage of unguarded shooting opportunities.
“We’ve got to go do our job,” Lowry said. “We’ve got to prepare our team for what we can control. We don’t know what they’re going to do or what they’re going to do differently. We’ve just got to go out there and control what we can control. And that’s playing hard and making sure that we take good shots and get back on defence.”
Offensively, the adjustment everyone on the planet is expecting Milwaukee to make is to feature Greg Monroe earlier and more often, with an insertion into the starting lineup perhaps more a likelihood than possibility at this point. Monroe has had a quietly strong series, and looked much more confident offensively in Game 5 than Bucks starting centre Thon Maker. Monroe’s 14 points off the bench in Game 4 were a rare offensive bright spot in a game that saw the Bucks score only 76 points.
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Casey has been trying to match Valanciunas’ minutes with Monroe’s through the past two games of this series, as the Raptors centre has been much more effective against him than he has been against the super long and deceptively quick Maker. But if Monroe starts, it’s unlikely Casey would match that with Valanciunas, as the Raptors starting lineup has been the catalyst to their success over the last two games.
“I’m sure that’s a possibility. The thing about it is, we don’t know,” Casey said of the Bucks starting Monroe, opting not to reveal any details of how he may or may not counter the move. “You can’t spend a lot of time on one thing. There’s a lot of different things they can do.”
One of those other things would be for the Bucks to completely blow up their rotations and play Antetokounmpo at centre, something that would force the Raptors into some very uncomfortable positions. With a plethora of three-point threats around him, the Raptors would have trouble both defending Antetokounmpo in pick-and-roll situations while also paying close attention to the shooters on the perimeter.
In that scenario, Milwaukee’s wings could also attack the Raptors close-outs and force Toronto’s defence into disarray, which would only create more opportunities for Antetokounmpo to get into the paint where he’s next to unstoppable.
So, there’s a lot that can happen in Game 6. Only time will tell what adjustments the Bucks do or do not make. But the Raptors know one thing for certain — avoiding a Game 7 is important.
A win Thursday night would provide three full days to rest weary bodies, game plan for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and reset mentally while preparing for a series that could be a defining one for this era of the franchise. The last thing any of these players or coaches need is a Game 7 Saturday night in Toronto against a Bucks team with nothing to lose.
For his part, Casey’s confident his players will be ready for whatever comes at them.
“There’s no magic wand to wave over players and be able to tell how they’re going to react,” he said. “What we can do is make sure they’re prepared physically and schematically for what we’re doing. If we have to motivate players at this time of year, we’re in trouble.
“But I think our players understand what time of day it is.”
