In Game 1 of the Toronto Raptors’ first-round series with the Washington Wizards, Paul Pierce showed what he meant by the “‘it’ factor,” contributing a game-high 20 to a 93-86 Wizards’ win.
The Raptors must respond in tonight’s crucial Game 2, and the best way to do that is to tweak the gameplan.
Here are three adjustments Toronto should make on Tuesday night.
Commit to boxing out
While it’s true the Wizards’ halfcourt defence can be a tough nut to crack and the Raptors should look to get out in transition for easy buckets, pushing the tempo simply can’t come at the expense of finishing off defensive possessions.
Toronto actually put forth a strong, concerted effort on the defensive end in Game 1, holding the Wizards to just 39.4 percent shooting and 28.6 percent from deep. Those are excellent numbers that ultimately were wasted by the fact the Raptors allowed the Wizards to grab 19 offensive rebounds.
It’s true the Raptors are a poor defensive rebounding team (they finished 26th in the league this season grabbing just 30.8 per game), but they aren’t bad enough to give up 19 offensive boards to Washington, a team that ranked 17th in the league in offensive rebounding (10.5 per game) in the regular season.
In Game 1, the cause of all the extra possessions for Washington came down to fundamentals—the Raptors bigs weren’t boxing out hard enough.
The adjustment is simple, just make a greater effort to box out and finish off defensive possessions and Toronto will be in much better shape.
Attack the basket
Far too often the Raptors opted to settle for jumpers in Game 1 when there was an opportunity to take it to the hole.
The Wizards don’t have much in the way of shot-blocking, so when in doubt, Toronto should always be looking to go straight in there and attack Washington’s big men.
At the very least, the officials should reward the aggression with trips to the free-throw line—a key factor in being able to stop John Wall’s fast-break assault.
Believe in your offence
With that said, Toronto’s offensive identity is still that of a jump-shooting team. Rather than pushing for too much change on the offensive end, the Raptors must believe that things will normalize and their shots will start falling.
During the regular season, the Raptors’ average PER was a respectable 16.0; in Game 1 it plummeted 5.4 points to a dreadful 10.6. Additionally, the Raptors fielded the league’s third-best offence, scoring 108.1 points per 100 possessions during the regular season, but only managed an offensive rating of 85.9 in the playoff opener.
Given the huge discrepancies between the team’s offensive performance during the regular season and in Game 1, it’s fair to assume that Toronto will play closer to its average level of play in Game 2.
It’s unreasonable to think that Lowry will foul out for a second time on Tuesday night, or that Lowry, DeMar DeRozan and Lou Williams—the Raptors’ top three scorers—will go a combined 12-for-46 again.
The Wizards are going to try to pack the paint to dare the Raptors to shoot—it worked too well in Game 1 not to return to the strategy. As long as Toronto can get back to its normal level of offensive execution, the Raptors will be able to make Washington pay for inviting them to shoot.
