Quick Reaction :: Box – Raptors 92, Bulls 108
Apologies for the scattered post-game report, but I’m still battling a nasty case of bronchitis, reducing my effectiveness to Terrence Ross levels. And there’s not much to say about this game, is there? The Raptors quality of play is such that you can pretty much call a win or loss depending on the type of opponent in front of you. A struggling Minny comes to town, meh, we can pull that off even if we play poorly, but a road trip to Chicago, chalk that one up as an L all night long.
The manner of this loss might be a more depressing than most, because we were so thoroughly outplayed from the start that the gulf between a depleted Bulls squad and a Raptors one missing Kyle Lowry was nothing short of grand. The Raptors defense has now reached comical levels, and I’m surprised somebody doesn’t play the badum-tish sound effect every time a Raptor tries to desperately and unsuccessfully close-out an open shooter. The Bulls got such great looks out of simple sets, and the Raptors defense was so unable to cope with simplistic actions in the first quarter, that you feared what the night lay in store.
Take for example a double-screen set by Noah and Gasol for Dunleavy against DeRozan – clean look from the wing which he drills. Or how about Aaron Gordon catching the sideline inbound, driving to the rim off a screen, laying it back to the rolling screener for a lay-in. Or simple misdirections behind a screen leading to back-cut layups against Terrence Ross. It was so easy for the Bulls that you wondered what the point of having five Raptors out there was, other than to collect the rebound in case the Bulls missed an open jumper. They shot 58% from the field in the first half on their way to a 12-point lead but it may as well have been a 30-point lead, because the Raptors didn’t have the torque or tenacity to ever mount a challenge. The microcosm of the first half had to be at the end of the second quarter when Lou Williams went iso-ball and missed his usual 1-4 clearout, and the Bulls ran a play in 8 seconds to get Dunleavy an open three which he drilled. Embarrassing. The second half offered even less, and the lead soon ballooned to 20+. In the end, the defense was too porous and the offense too rife with friction and static to mount any serious comeback. The token fourth quarter run lacked any sort of conviction and was extinguished before it even started.
Jonas Valanciunas had one shot in this game, and I’m not convinced that even if he had 20 it would’ve made a difference. This was a heartless and gutless defensive performance that would be tough to overcome with any measure of offense. The greater concern is that we have some talented players in James Johnson, who you would think would be easy one to find a spot for in the rotation. He plays hard, doesn’t complain, is efficient, can make shots, drives both directions, and is a great defender, yet despite all that Dwane Casey’s unable to find a hard spot for him in the rotation. The same is true for Ross, as horrible as he’s been, he’s a spot-up shooter whose spot-up shooting isn’t even being utilized. Valanciunas, who has been thoroughly misused and more alarmingly, mismanaged, looks like a chicken with its head cut off. DeRozan is left to create offense the only way he’s been taught how, which is through sheer brute force which more often than not results in inefficiencies. There’s nothing clicking about this team, and there are only 13 games left in the season. In fact, I can’t point to one habit, trait, or quality of this team that you could attribute to sound coaching. Nothing.
You can’t really use injury as any sort of excuse, and the same is true for fatigue. Those are items that every team faces and need to be managed, not surrendered to, which the Raptors seem to have done. As we head into the playoffs, there isn’t a matchup that doesn’t scare the daylights out of me. Our defense can only be bailed out by a spectacular offensive night, and our offense can only be bailed out by a iso-heavy hot-shooting night by one of its inconsistent parts. That’s not a repeatable pattern for success, and relies on sheer chance. I’m left with more questions and complaints than answers or suggestions, because it’s almost like we’ve wasted the season and need a full training camp to reset our defense and instill something resembling a structure to our offense.
We got 13 games left, and at this point it doesn’t matter if we lose all 13 as long as we develop at least a couple good defensive habits which could be useful in the playoffs. For a change, and as I’ve said this a thousand times already this season, the Raptors have to stop this madness of collapsing not just in the paint, but on the perimeter. The defense is so stretched, and guys like Vasquez and Patterson are asked to make such long rotations that they’re winded by the second quarter. Unfortunately, we haven’t used the season to develop any sort of interior defense, so it might be too late to ask Jonas Valanciunas and Amir Johnson to stay put and focus on making interior rotations to cover for each other, because both are so used to pressuring and hedging beyond the elbow. I’m rambling, I know, but man, something needs to change.
Maybe we simply switch to more zone, allowing us to conserve energy and make close-outs easier, but that leaves rebounding exposed and Valanciunas isn’t intelligent enough yet to read zone movements, and Amir Johnson, sad to say, isn’t nimble enough to play in one. Whatever the case may be, Dwane Casey has 13 games to work something into the defense where we’re able to, if not consistently, then at least get needed stops in cases where the game is tight. He’s got a lot of work to do and not much time left. The sad part is that despite the 40+ wins, the season looks to be a wasted one.
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Hey – sign up for the second annual RR 3-on-3 Tournament held in Toronto on June 21st. The last one was a a blast, and this one promises to be as well.
