The Toronto Raptors held a players-only meeting last night before coaches joined the conversation, and afterwards Dwane Casey came out to apologize for the display of basketball his team had just put on.
So, yeah, it wasn’t a great night.
The Raptors lost 123–102 to the Oklahoma City Thunder at home, but the game was even more lop-sided than the score would lead you to believe. Toronto was down 32 with four and a half minutes left in the fourth quarter before the Thunder trotted out what might be the league’s funniest garbage-time lineup: Semaj Christon, Norris Cole, Jerami Grant, Alex Abrines and Doug McDermott. Russell Westbrook notched yet another triple-double despite the fact that he played just 28 minutes and checked out for good with two minutes remaining in the third.
The loss puts Toronto’s record at a still-respectable 6-5 since Kyle Lowry went down with a wrist injury, but just 2-4 in their last six — a period in which they played just two above-.500 teams.
And from the sounds of Casey’s press conference, changes to the rotation are coming for Friday night’s tilt with the Detroit Pistons, themselves losers of two in a row.
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While the team definitely seems in need of a shake-up, their problems go a lot deeper. And the first of them is so obvious it feels stupid to mention. But still:
They don’t have Lowry.
You can easily argue the Raptors were a deeply flawed team even with Lowry — the defence with him on the roster has been inconsistent at best and ugly at worst, and that hasn’t changed with him out despite the odd flash. But the success they had early on was largely dependent upon him and his particular set of skills — skills that few teams could replace on the fly.
The other problem is that the team is seeing several well-worn criticisms become bigger issues in Lowry’s absence. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been ailing the team in the 11 games since the injury:
Three-point shooting
Who knew everyone would miss Terrence Ross this much this soon?
Outside of Lowry, the Raptors haven’t been a great three-point shooting team this year — take away their star point guard’s contribution from the games he played in and the team was making threes at 34.7-per cent clip, which would be good for about 22nd in the league over the full season.
But since Lowry went down the number is even worse: They’re hitting 30.9 per cent since Feb. 24, fourth-worst in the league over that stretch.
And here’s the weird thing: Watch the team and you’ll get the sense that Patrick Patterson is a major culprit here. But on the whole his three-point percentage since Lowry was sidelined is only slightly down from his career average — and, in fact, he’s hitting at a far better clip in March (37.5) than the departed Ross (23.8).
But the problem is two-fold: 1) Patterson is acting like he’s in a slump, taking fewer shots than he should (he’s averaging three attempts per game, down from 4.1 for the season); and 2) pretty much everyone else has fallen off a cliff. The newly arrived Serge Ibaka leads the team among players taking at least one a game at 36.7.
DeMarre Carroll still isn’t himself
This is an awkward discussion. Carroll is by all accounts a total professional and has had a run of bad injury luck and slower-than-expected recovery. But he’s not himself — or at least not the guy the Raptors chased in free agency before the 2015–16 season. He’s a step slow on defence and not making shots on offence. In his eight games since Lowry went down, he’s hitting just 32.6 per cent from the field and 16.7 from three.
And yet, up until Tuesday night he’d gotten big minutes in each of the recent games he’s played in, ostensibly limiting the ability of other players to seize the role.
If Carroll were making the average NBA salary or if he weren’t under contract long-term, he’d be sitting. But Masai Ujiri paid him big money to be the Raptors’ three-and-D specialist, and it seems like everyone’s been crossing their fingers and hoping that one of these nights that player shows up healthy and good to go.
Still, if there’s anyone likely to lose a starting spot in Detroit tonight, it’s Carroll. A minutes limit and some time versus other teams’ second-units might be good for all involved.
Lack of assists
When you’ve got two players who want to play — and can have success playing — iso ball, you’d expect a relative lack of assists. But — outside of DeRozan — if this current team is going to score, they’re going to need to create easier opportunities, not just replicate the kind of opportunities Lowry gets for guys like Norman Powell or Cory Joseph.
And yet they’ve been doing a worse job of that than they were before Lowry went down. With Lowry the Raptors were averaging 18.1 assists per game, good for worst in the league. Without him, they’re averaging 15.5. That’s a full five fewer than the next lowest team on the list (the Orlando Magic) during the same time frame.