In their fourth road game in five nights, the Toronto Raptors ran out of gas in the the fourth quarter and the Dallas Mavericks jumped all over them. Dallas would come back from nine down to win, 99-92.
It’s a bit of a trend now. Per @SNStats, Toronto is shooting 32.3% in fourth quarters over the past three games — all losses. The poor shooting is different from what we have come accustomed to, as the Raptors have been a decent fourth quarter team over the past calendar year. If you’re watching a close game heading into the fourth, you’ll get hit with a barrage of stats from Matt & Jack about how successful we’ve been.
As some other Raptors Republic writers noted, through Twitter, last night’s Quick React or otherwise, games like this are bound to happen. Toronto was playing well until the fourth when their shooting woes combined with adjustments from the Mavericks and the Raptors got trounced, 25-15.
All night, the game had a bit of a weird feel to it. Dallas has been hit with an ice storm and the American Airlines Centre was just void of energy. The on-court microphones were picking up everything and even shots off the rim sounded a bit odd.
Both teams opened the game totally loose. The pace was quick: players were jacking up shots early in the clock if they had a glimmer of space. DeMar DeRozan was forcing it, taking a couple of step-back jumpers and getting blocked in the process. With the on-court mics picking up a ton of sound, you could hear the Mavs yelling “get down, get down, get down” any time DeRozan started slowing his dribble and angling for a shot.
Still, Toronto put up 29 in the quarter. They had a lot of attacks to the rim, got some free throws and generally gave themselves an opportunity to take high-percentage shots. 29-25 after one quarter in the fourth game in five nights? You’ll take that.
After a 10-4 run to end the first, head coach Dwane Casey stuck with a bench line-up. Chuck Hayes (!), James Johnson, Lou Williams, Terrence Ross and Greivis Vasquez were an effective group because of their ability to force turnovers. That group looks defensively limited, and they are, but they forced five turnovers in five minutes. Toronto looks good when they run because they will give the ball up and find open shooters. This gave Vasquez and the 6 Man Lou Will a three each. Toronto pushed the half-time lead to six, 55-49, but it should have been more as the Raptors coasted in the last couple of minutes.
Bizarrely, Matt and Jack took time out of an entertaining game to have a positive discussion on Terrence Ross. Last night, he forced steals, but he gave us little else, so I have no idea what prompted the discussion. The two discussed his potential as a defender and fawned over what he provides on that end. I’m not going to delve too much into the numbers, but when I last checked a couple weeks ago, players shot better when Terrence Ross was guarding them from nearly everywhere on the court. I’m not a producer, but I find it weird to have this happy-go-lucky discussion about a player who is questionable to be re-signed. It’s almost like the broadcasters own the team or something?
Anyways, onto the second half, where things would ramp up a bit. Toronto extended their margin early in the third behind some Rondo-baiting, meaning, luring the Celtic-turned-Maverick into tight spaces and preying on his fear of contact. This is a thing now, by the way. Rondo is so afraid of contact, he’ll get near the paint and try to pass out of it through a tornado of limbs instead of attack. He turned it over twice and Toronto scored transition opportunities.
Then, it blew up.
With Toronto holding a 62-53 lead, Dallas was reeling. Head coach Rick Carlisle was trying to tell his point guard, Rondo, something and your boy Rondo waved him off. Then they exchanged words and, unfortunately for the Raptors, Rondo got benched. Mavs Moneyball has a good, hot-take-free review of the incident.
Maybe you’re thinking “unfortunately? how is that unfortunately?” Here’s the thing: so far, Rondo hasn’t helped the Mavericks offence. I’ll leave it to ESPN’s Tom Haberstroh to explain.
From there, Toronto would fizzle out. They settled for a lot of long jump shots, something that is seems to be a habit of Toronto. The Raptors only took six shots in the paint, connecting on three. Compounding the poor shot selection was the fact that they shot 4-13 from everywhere else. Dallas had trimmed the deficit to a manageable three points.
Here is where Toronto would really test our patience. These are the dog days of the schedule and there are a ton of good teams left fighting for playoff spots. I don’t want to watch Toronto hoist up mid-range shots and not attack the rim. I may be bored with their vanilla offence but I swear these players are too. Look at this shot chart:
Some of those misses in the paint were floaters (low-percentage shots) or contested looks. You just can’t close out games if you aren’t passing the ball and making the defence react. Even worse, Toronto got only two free throw attempts. This is not a winning formula.
And hey, guess what, that’s what the Mavericks did. They would drive and kick, finding open shooters or drawing help and creating alternatives lanes. Full credit to Devin Harris, who played well off the bench and hurt us the entire quarter. He blew by anyone guarding him and had a couple lay-up opportunities.
Toronto didn’t contain anyone on the perimeter, and we know that they are content to give up the middle, but the help wasn’t there. At least two of those paint finishes were wide-open looks off the pick and roll. Dirk was the screener for some of those buckets, so I don’t know where the weakside help is.
If you went to make yourself a drink at the start of the fourth, you probably came back to the TV and immediately finished it after glancing at the score. Dallas took this one over in a hurry, but Toronto has to shoulder some blame for poor man-on-man defending and questionable shot selection.
It’s frustrating to watch but this is who they are. The storylines are set in stone by now and their style won’t change soon. However, the Eastern Conference landscaped changed with the last night’s annual Derrick Rose knee injury announcement. Chicago has been inconsistent all year, and even if Rose had not played up to his old powers, giving his minutes to Aaron Brooks or Kirk Hinrich isn’t a good thing.
Washington is floundering too. It seems like Atlanta, Cleveland and Toronto are the top-three in the East but given the obvious warts and playing style, it’s hard to see Toronto falling anywhere but last in that tier. With a month and a half left in the regular season, we’ll see if Toronto can iron out some out the wrinkles. We’ll get started on the turn-around with a home game against Golden State. Welp.