TORONTO — If the Boston Celtics — the Eastern Conference’s winningest team, the NBA’s highest-rated defence, and the only outfit with a currently conceivable chance to stop the Toronto Raptors from winning the East and securing home-court advantage through the conference finals — looked a little overwhelmed Tuesday night, that’s because they were.
The Raptors just don’t stop. There’s no break. Every team in the NBA can play with pace. Every team can play with physically. But the difference with the Raptors — not just Tuesday night when they straight up mollywhopped the Celtics, 111-91, but for the bulk of the season — is they’re doing it over 48 minutes.
Case in point: After a torrid first 10 minutes Tuesday – in which Kyle Lowry nailed a trio of threes, Serge Ibaka was a perfect 3-of-3 from the field, and DeMar DeRozan spread around three assists while his team surged ahead without him having to even score a point – Toronto’s bench took the game to a whole new level.
Delon Wright and Fred VanVleet took over the ball handling and shot a combined 8-of-9 in their first shift; Jakob Poeltl crashed the boards for rebounds; Pascal Siakam sprinted the floor in transition, creating and disrupting; C.J. Miles hit his first of five threes on the night.
Toronto head coach Dwane Casey let his starters sit and watch as that bench unit ran amok, spurring the Raptors to a 36-19 second quarter while the Celtics scrambled to keep up. Boston’s best player, Kyrie Irving, was on the floor for much of it, and looked completely at a loss as he finished the quarter a minus-12, on his way to a season-low minus-22 for the game.
That’s the difference. While other teams ease their foot off the gas as backups enter the game, or at the very least play less aggressively because their bench players are bench players for a reason, the Raptors arguably get faster and more difficult to contain when their starters check out. It’s an entirely different challenge.
“I think we have literally two separate teams,” Lowry said. “And that’s a great thing to have. We have the bench guys who can come in and play at the starters’ pace. And the starters can play at the bench’s pace. It’s just fun to have a good team that can all mix in with each other. We’re throwing out different looks.
“It’s always great to have different options.”
That’s been one of the most crucial, and underrated, factors to Toronto’s success this season. Not many teams are getting 59 points off the bench like the Raptors did Tuesday. Not many teams are seeing four separate bench players finish plus-13 or higher. Not many teams get nine three-pointers and 16 assists from players who don’t start the game.
“That’s one good thing about that second unit — boy, they get in there, the ball starts humming, the bodies start moving,” Casey said. “They can make a million mistakes, but they make them hard. And that’s something that’s too their credit.”
“You’ve got to give credit to that second group — they come in, play extremely hard, and keep the momentum going,” DeRozan added. “I think a lot of teams, when their bench comes in, they kind of sustain or go in there to just try to buy the starters minutes. Our second group comes in with a lot of energy and they’re liable to win games for us.”
Even the Celtics sounded downright impressed with Toronto’s exhaustive play after the game, shovelling praise on their opposition. You get the sense the league is starting to figure out the Raptors have built something unique here. A deep, young, fast, athletic, relentless rotation that Norman Powell, who was a playoff hero just last season, can’t even find his way into.
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Put it this way: when you’re winning as much as the Raptors are while your two best players are averaging their fewest minutes played per game in years (since the 2012-13 season for Lowry and 2009-10 for DeRozan), you’ve assembled a pretty deep, comprehensive lineup.
As always, we’ll see how it plays out. Teams ebb and flow. Championships aren’t won in February. We all know this. But, through 53 games, the Raptors are proving to be one of basketball’s most complete teams, from the first starter introduced before tip-off, through to the last man off the bench as the game wears on.
There aren’t a lot of NBA teams that can play like that. That can sustain pace and physicality no matter who’s on the floor. That have, as Lowry put it, two teams in one.
“We take a lot of pride in it. That’s our job as the bench, to come in with that spark and that energy and try to change the pace of the game,” VanVleet said. “It’s just about being consistent and bringing it every night. That’s what we’re trying to do.
“Especially in the first, to come in with that speed off the bench, it changes the tempo of the game. Our job is to not have any drop-off when we sub. That’s the problem that a lot of teams face in the NBA. When they take their main guys out, there’s a drop-off there. And when we’re really rolling, there’s no drop-off.”
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