Almost exactly a year ago the Toronto Raptors were late arriving for their team practice the day before the pivotal Game 4 of their opening-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks.
It turned out later that the reason for the delay was a long and heated film session, with players and coaches expressing themselves loudly and, to a degree, in opposition.
The subject was the Raptors’ inability to score—the sixth-best regular-season offence was putting up just 89 points a game and shooting a measly 39.5 per cent from the floor against the Bucks. Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan were struggling—again.
If you want to draw a line from how the ‘old’ Raptors became the ‘new’ Raptors—at least offensively—you could do worse than starting from that contentious video session in Milwaukee.
What exact form the new-look Raptors offence would take wasn’t clear at the time, but everyone involved new something had to give.
“I mean, before we even got to the point where we changed the offence, for me to come back I knew something was going to change,” said Lowry. “We didn’t know what it was going to be, but we knew it would be different.”
Jump forward a year and the results are evident. Through three playoff games against the Washington Wizards the Raptors are scoring in bunches—113.5 per 100 possessions, fourth among playoff teams and better than their 111 rating in the regular season, which was third. Last year they went from a 109.8 regular-season rating to 101.5 against the Bucks.
You’d be tempted to say mission accomplished, but, in the playoffs, there are always problems. This time it’s the other end.
Just like a year ago, the Raptors were late for their scheduled practice in advance of Game 4 of their opening round series. Once again it was because a team video session went longer than anticipated, and once again it was because Toronto was coming off a disappointing performance in Game 3.
But other than that?
The broader circumstances couldn’t be more different, and not just because the Raptors were playing the Wizards instead of the Bucks.
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Yes, there were plenty of mistakes to be pointed out on the game film from Toronto’s 122-103 loss on Friday night in advance of Game 4 Sunday, but the mood was a little lighter with Toronto leading 2-1 in the series rather than trailing.
“[We had a] very long video session, pulled no punches in the video session,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. “Mood was good, guys owned up to their mistakes in situations, so I would say it’s good.
“Nobody should be happy—we all should be teed off and ticked off that we got spanked the way we did last night. So from that standpoint we’ll see how we respond tomorrow.”
But perhaps the biggest difference from year ago was the subject of the video. This time around, the NBA’s fifth-best defence has provided as much resistance to the Wizards as a colander does a kitchen tap; pretty much everything is getting through.
Toronto is giving up 113.8 points per 100 possessions to the Wizards through three games. How bad is that? The Phoenix Suns had the worst defensive rating in the NBA this past season and they only allowed 110.5 points per 100 possessions.
What did the video show?
“I think we weren’t into the ball as much. They did some things differently. But that’s what every game is in the playoffs. Every game’s a different game,” said Lowry. “They played extremely hard, extremely well. They did things they wanted to do last night and we didn’t give any fight as much. We fought, but we didn’t give enough.
“So we’ve just got to be more locked in and in tune with what they’re trying to do, and we’ve got to execute what we have to do.”
Correcting their defensive woes will likely be, at least, a two-step process.
The first is, ironically, to tidy things up offensively. Toronto kept giving the ball away and allowed Washington to get out and sprint. They finished with 21 fast-break points, many following Raptors errors. In all, 19 Raptors turnovers turned into 28 Wizards points.
“You can’t really judge your defence until you come out and give it a chance. Let’s get back, take care of the ball, get a quality shot, good floor balance getting back and that way we can judge our defence from a set standpoint,” said Casey. “But when you turn it over that many times … some of it is just taking out a gun, pointing it at your foot and shooting ourselves in the foot.”
The Wizards can run but they looked even faster because of Toronto’s six ‘live-ball’ turnovers, the type where one team essentially hands the ball to the other, ruining both their own chance to score and almost inevitably giving their opponent a freebie on the other end. The Wizards scored on all six of the live-ball gifts the Raptors provided, piling up 14 free points.
“As a team we were much more aggressive defensively,” said Wizards head coach Scott Brooks. “And that created a lot of opportunities for us offensively. It always comes down to that. We’re one of the best teams in the league when we get a stop and get out in transition.”
So in order to tighten up defensively the Raptors need to be a little more precise and a little more firm with the ball on offence.
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But that should be fairly simple to fix. A trickier question is what to do with the way Wizards guard John Wall is creating so many problems in the paint and mid-range areas. By design, the Raptors try to chase ball-handlers and shooters from off the three-point line and then collapse to the paint. The premise is to make difficult the two most valuable shots in basketball—open threes and lay-ups. What they are willing to live with are contested two-point shots, ideal from outside the paint.
But Wall took advantage on several occasions, working pick-and-roll actions so he could get himself a wide-open foul-line jumper—a long two, in other words.
On paper, this makes sense as Wall shot a respectable 37 per cent from deep on the season and 69 per cent at the rim. But from the restricted area out to the three-point line? He shot just 29 per cent and he shot them a lot—nearly 43 per cent of his attempts this season were ‘low-value’ twos. By way of comparison, James Harden, the likely MVP, used just 22 per cent of his nearly 1,500 field-goal attempts to take shots other than lay-ups and threes and—incredibly just four per cent—or 58 all season from 16 feet out to the three-point line.
But tactics that prove most efficient over the long haul don’t necessarily mean much when you’re trying to win one game in a series. The Raptors gave Wall easy looks from the 15-to-18-foot range and he was 5-of-9 in Game 3. He was highly effective when he ventured deeper in the paint too, going 7-of-10 from inside 10 feet and whipping passes to the perimeter for open threes when the Raptors collapsed.
The question the Raptors will face in Game 4 is do they stick with a plan that should work over the long run but didn’t for one game? Or do they change up what has worked all season?
The simplest answer might be to do what they’ve been doing, but do it better. There is no reason any shot—even one taken by a poor mid-range shooter like Wall—should be routinely uncontested.
“It starts with our defence,” said Casey. “But that didn’t just start (Friday) night. It started in Game 1, Game 2, but we were just able to score at a high clip that it overshadowed that. We have to … get back to a defensive mentality instead of that outscore-them mentality. Sometimes your offence travels and sometimes it doesn’t. We got to make sure that constant is there from a defensive standpoint … We gotta take that challenge.”
It’s a different challenge than the one that revealed itself on film a year ago, but it needs to be met. They can’t wait until the off-season to figure it out.
