I’m scared of this one because it has the potential to turn ugly. The Raptors are playing their worst basketball and the Bucks have won 3 out of 4, albeit against Philadelphia, Minnesota, and New York. The latter being in the UK where they took the time to humiliate the Knicks on a whole other continent.
The Raptors are making disbelievers out of believers lately. Their early season success is a distant memory which is now fogged by an extreme case of one-dimensional offense and a defensive disconnect that has gone from being an item of concern to a systematic problem. The latter is made more appalling by the advertised nature of this team: one that is built from the back and looks to defense to carve its identity.
As disingenuous as the defensive masthead is, common-sense tactics shouldn’t be above the line of expectations. Against the Pelicans we saw the Raptors put the notoriously slow Vasquez on Evans, only to get burned (Casey’s explanation, discussion on podcast). It was another game where the Raptors got out-rebounded with their best rebounder (Valanciunas) playing the same minute as their worst defensive player (Vasquez). The Lithuanian was also glued to the pine with the game hanging in the balance while the opposing big (Ajinca) went to town against Patrick Patterson and Tyler Hansbrough.
Tonight against Milwaukee, I fully expect the Bucks to remember the 42-point shellacking they received at the ACC earlier in the season and try to right that wrong. The Raptors, embarking on a 3-game roadtrip and a stretch that sees them play 4 of 5 on the road, are there for the taking. They’re like fattened cows being led to the slaughter, and the well-rested Bucks await.
Well, one Buck won’t be there and that’s Larry Sanders who was suspended by the league for 10-games for violating the league’s anti-drug program. I don’t watch much of the Bucks (planned to and then Parker got injured) but I do know that Brandon Knight poses much of the same issues as Tyreke Evans did – he can’t shoot but can drive and the Raptors aren’t very good at stopping that. I can’t see the Raptors making a change to effect that overnight, even against a Bucks team that received news that Kendall Marshall would be out for the season on account of a torn ACL. If the Raptors can’t beat the Pelicans missing Davis and Holiday at home, there’s no reason to believe they can beat Milwaukee’s B-team the way they’re playing.
Right now it seems that all it takes to beat the Raptors is for the other team to show up, and the Bucks’ modest 21-19 schedule sometimes betrays the amount of decent NBA players they have on the roster: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Ersan Ilyasova, Zaza Pachulia, Jared Dudley, O.J Mayo, and Jerryd Bayless. The way the Raptors are playing defense, any of those guys are capable of having a 30-point game, and odds are one of them will.
Milwaukee is the league’s fifth best defensive team, and the Raptors offense is ranked 19th in their last seven games, The Bucks, over that span, have the league’s second-best defense so this is a matchup of a team figuring out their optimal defense against one that’s perplexed as to what it’s missing on offense. And figuring out what’s missing seems a hard nut to crack, as Blake pointed out:
When your success is based on an ethereal chemistry that can’t be described or quantified, it’s sudden disappearance is difficult to remedy.
— Blake Murphy (@BlakeMurphyODC) January 18, 2015
Words of wisdom, indeed. Looking deeper at it, the turnover on this team was so low that you would think chemistry would not be an issue. All we did was flip John Salmons for Lou Williams, and acquired James Johnson who has been great. So unless you’re telling me John Salmons, Nando De Colo and Steve Novak were the glue that bound us together last year, I’m not buying the chemistry dip.
The introduction of Lou Williams into the fold has impacted matters. Last year due to a lack of a great scorer off the bench, the Raptors were forced to play team basketball, and this year they’ve been blessed with a player who is a good offensive player who can create his own shot. This injection of talent may have inadvertently impacted the overall approach Casey has taken, because it has seen a shift in roles.
The most surprising of which is Patrick Patterson, who is now reduced to a three-point shooter and no more. Last year 30% of his shots were threes, and this year 54% of his FGAs are from long range. He has seen dips in PER, TS%, DRB%, ORB%, STL%, BLK% and huge dip in usage rate (17.9 to 12.6). We have taken a versatile stretch four and turned him into a poor man’s Steve Novak, and it’s largely because of the nature of our second unit’s offense: more focused on individual production rather than making use of everyone on the floor.
I’ll save all that for another piece since this is supposed to be a Bucks preview. I don’t do individual matchup analysis because matchups change and players never end up guarding who they’re “supposed” to be guarding. This is especially the case with Dwane Casey in charge. I will say this though: the Bucks are the higher energy team and the Raptors are barely a team. The Raptors advantage in talent is more than negated by their current form.
The one saving grace of the Raptors is that they force a lot of turnovers at #11 in the league (which they don’t convert to points so it doesn’t really matter). However, the Bucks are better at even that because of their length, and they’re ranked #2 in the league at forcing 15.5 turnovers per 100 possessions. Shaky ball-handling which has been a staple of the Raptors over the last few games is going to be put to test again, and if the Bucks get running off of turnovers and get a modest lead early, this tired Raptors team playing on a back-to-back doesn’t have the belief, energy, or guts to come back.
At the very least, Vegas still believes in the Raptors as they’re a 1.5 point favourite. Let’s go Raptors, please.
Read more from RR today:
