I find myself browsing to the NBA standings page quite frequently these days. If I’m waiting at a bus stop I’ll just pull out the nba.com standings, knowing full well what they are, just to see the ridiculous 35-17 the Raptors have next to them. It’s like I’m prolonging this moment knowing that I’m going to get hurt again. The nitty gritty stuff about losing to the Bucks and Nets at home is dwarfed by the sheer magnanimity of being 35-17. 35-17!
Do realize that this is a franchise that has been so horrible, so hard to watch, and so mismanaged over the years, that failure wasn’t something you dreaded or feared, it was expected and anything other than abject disaster was met with a healthy sense of scepticism. It’s like those spam phone calls you get with an automated message telling you that you’ve won a cruise to the Bahamas. You know it’s complete BS and you hang up immediately. Only this time, you’ve actually won a cruise to the Bahamas.
There is no denying that there is a huge element of luck to the Raptors success. In fact, Masai Ujiri tried very hard to do stupid things to this team by trying to blow it up and almost trade Kyle Lowry, only to pull off a Homer Simponesque escape. It’s much like that Simpsons episode where Homer’s throwing trash out his window and piling it up in his lawn, only to become Sanitation Commissioner. That luck, though, has been long overdue and something that I’ve come to accept.
Right, we were talking about 35-17. The Raptors happen to have accumulated that record with zero contribution from their 13-15 guys, and marginal appearances from there 11-12 spots. It’s hard to recall the 13-15 spots in a Raptors roster providing this little of a contribution. This is in large part due to the rotation being set and the first 10 guys having enough talent that you don’t need anybody from that deep in the bench to contribute. Even then, Bruno Caboclo, Lucas Nogueira, and Greg Steimsma, are so entrenched on the bench that they’ve become comic book characters more than NBA players.
The 22-year old Lucas Nogueria is the one that puzzles me, especially because Hassan Whiteside had shown a hell of a lot more than him in summer league, but Nogueria’s illusion of potential trumped the 25-year old Whiteside’s product. Among Ujiri’s many moves, this one is a head-scratcher because, even at the time, it was fairly obvious that Whiteside had more to offer. No point in crying over spilt milk, though.
Those bottom three have combined to play a total of 83 minutes, which is less than half of Chuck Hayes’ 176. On a team that’s lacking a big and seemingly has one with a skill-set that Dwane Casey likes (i.e., hedges out, recovers, covers ground in long strides, apparently block shots), I keep having to remind myself that the reason Nogueira isn’t getting any time is because he’s simply not ready.
Him and his Brazilian teammate are children. Then again, I second guess myself and say why not? Why can’t we throw this 22-year old (which isn’t exactly young – he’s three months younger than Valanciunas) into a fire a little bit? Why can’t we hold him to the high standards we hold Valanciunas to? After all, both are international players who have played professionally overseas. Or is Noguiera the Todd Cleary of the roster, where you sort of have to hide him because he’s so embarrassingly bad?
Throughout this season and starting in the summer there’s also been the whole “best backcourt in the East” BS that’s been going around. This is a discussion that it’s entirely fuelled by Twitter, because people need something to talk about and the games just aren’t enough. Is it DeRozan/Lowry, is it Beal/Wall, or is it Whogives/Ashit? I suppose we’ll never know, and the answer will probably come from how far the teams go in the playoffs. Yesterday, though, James Johnson threw some more fuel to the fire (in a voice that you don’t really associate with him – he’s got a David Beckham thing going):
The game itself should be a good one, as it always is with Washington. They never end up using their bigs to hurt us, so despite there being a perceived advantage on paper, it never fails to materialize since they’re very much an outside-in team than one that likes to leverage their bigs to set their offense up. Come playoff time this all may change but for now their approach to the Raptors has been something we’ve been able to handle easily.
A key player in the Raptors winning 8 out of 10 has been Patrick Patterson, who has made two adjustments to his approach of late:
First, he’s stepping in from the three-point line and is not strictly a floor-stretcher. In a way, he’s putting the four back in the stretch four. In the last 10 games, 48% of his shots have been threes, which is down from 54%. This is a big change which has made him more versatile on offense, and able to contribute in initiating a play, or being part of the middle sequence of it, rather than just finish with a three. Much like inserting James Johnson into the starting lineup, it’s a very obvious tactical shift that was made quite late in the season, but better late than never.
In this stretch he’s also improved his rebounding from 5.3 to 6.2 a game, and one of the other reasons he’s been effective on offensive is that he’s playing more with Jonas Valanciunas, which means he’s not constantly overmatched on the boards and can conserve his energy for closeouts, chasing guys through screens (see Kawhi Leonard in the fourth), instead of getting physically overpowered on the glass.
The key observation here is that if you install Valanciunas in the middle, you can afford to switch 3/4 with Johnson and Patterson, making the Raptors defense more suitable for prevention rather than recovery. Instead of fighting through screens and always getting caught, the Raptors have been switching 3/4 a lot more (and even 2/3/4 in some scenarios – see Clippers), thus conceding fewer wide open perimeter looks. The sample size here isn’t very big to comment on, so this is one to keep your eye on.
Final thought to Dwane Casey and his isolation heavy offense and poor defensive ranking. The only theory that makes any sense here is that he’s adapting to the players he has, and not letting his defensive instincts make the team more rigid. For a guy often accused of rigidity, maybe, in some weird sort of way, he’s showing the ultimate sign of fluidity in letting the offensive talents on his roster dictate the play, rather than instilling a slower pace which he’s proved he’s been able to implement and succeed in (his first season with the Raptors).
My gut tells me that this offense can’t hold and be productive in clutch playoff situations because it relies on one individual beating their man one-on-one on almost every possession, and does not have enough ball and off-the-ball movement. For a team that’s currently 25th in assisted twos, and 29th in assisted threes, introducing a change to a team-oriented, assist-heavy style of play is impossible at this point in the season. Instead, what Raptors fans should hope for is that Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan are able to elevate their games in the playoffs, and that they get the respect from the officials. Because once teams get physical against DeRozan, unlike last year, there’s not much of a team fallback. And if you think Lou Williams’ individual guard play is going to win you playoff games, you’re sadly mistaken.
Let’s worry about that then. For now, we’re 35-17.
