Dwane Casey has revealed that defense is pretty important. The news came in a post-practice scrum where he orated to eager reporters about the importance of stopping the other team from scoring:
“Our whole theme from here on out is going to be defence. We’re going to score enough points. We’ll find a way to score. … We’ve got to make sure we continue to improve defensively. The defence we play is the most important thing because that’s going to get us ready for the stretch run and the playoffs.”
Confident in his scoring, Casey has now shifted his attention to the defensive side of the court where the Raptors boast the sixth worst defense in the NBA. The move comes as a welcome change for fans who have gotten weary of the perimeter, interior, help, and rotation defense the team has been playing.
Casey will now try to accomplish in 8 games what he’s been unable to do in 74. Though this sounds like an impossible feat, we should note that…oh wait, this is an impossible feat.
The offense still enjoys a healthy #4 ranking, but the Raptors clutch offense since the All-Star break is 21st in the league. Correcting the former will be critical. DeMar DeRozan’s resurgence as someone who can get to the FT line should help in that regard. Defenses have shown that he can be contained through relatively simple schemes, so it’s whether Casey can extract efficient secondary offense from the likes of Patterson, Williams, and Valanciunas, that will decide a series. The challenge here is, of course, that the Raptors don’t appear to have much of an offensive playbook beyond a series of dribble hand-offs.
Casey also wished upon a speedy recovery from Kyle Lowry, and classified his absence as “injury or whatever it is”, which I thought was interesting:
“I wish we had a magic wand to erase the injury or whatever it is, but we’ve got to make sure we go ahead and try to get a rhythm without him until he’s ready to come back. The point guard sets the tone for your team defensively, and in our situation, our offence also starts with Kyle a little bit too.”
Stay tuned for more such quotes between now and the playoffs. They really can’t come fast enough.
