Just over a month ago, I asked if there was any point to the rest of the Toronto Raptors season. At the time I felt like we had learned all that we were going to learn about these Raptors and that there was nothing they could show down the stretch to alter that evaluation.
I believe I was right.
However, I also believe in the Playoffs. I believe in them as something ‘other’. It can be hard to describe, especially in an age where we all crave analytical data to underpin our every assumption or assertion, but nonetheless, I believe.
It’s not that I believe that seven or fourteen games in April and May should or will change the evaluation of a team that has played .500 basketball since the calendar flipped to 2015. In fact, I believe the opposite quite firmly. I believe too many teams have torpedoed their futures by overvaluing their performance in the postseason relative to their performance in the regular season, and that too many teams have overvalued an individual player’s performance in that same manner. A small sample size should never negate a large sample size without tremendous extenuating circumstances leading the way.
That said, the Playoffs are a different beast, and they do reveal things that the regular season cannot approximate.
Part of what they show is simply tactical. When two teams are forced to go up against each other again and again for two weeks, fissures eventually begin to show. Last year, the Raptors’ inability to put any noteworthy size on Joe Johnson created an almost unplug-able hole in Dwane Casey’s game prep and it was probably the largest tangible advantage that Brooklyn brought to bear in beating the Raptors in seven games. While Terrence Ross was always considered slight for the small forward position, his size became series-defining problem for Toronto, and it affected both their future plans (by drafting a small forward and signing a small forward in free agency, both of whom are 6-foot-9) and Ross’s spot in the team’s longterm planning.
Part of what the Playoffs also show is how good your best options are, a vital factoid for longterm team building. During the regular season you spend long stretches of games with reserve players logging meaningful minutes, or seeing injuries to key guys totally re-configure entire rotations. In the Playoffs, though, the best players and the best units are deployed for the bulk of games, and over seven games you get to see how well your best stacks up against someone else’s best. Sometimes a team can post gaudy win totals in the regular season with their depth, but when it comes time to square off against an opponent in the Playoffs, you need your best to beat their best, and if they can’t you have some hard questions to answer in the offseason.
The most important thing that you discover in the Playoffs, though, is who is built for the Playoffs. As an NBA squad, the only real measure of success is a title, and how close you are to one determines the pecking order in the league. Some players take their game to new heights when the lights shine the brightest, while others can’t seem to elevate above their regular season output or even wilt under the increased pressure of the postseason. It was one of the reasons that Raptors fans weren’t as devastated when Chris Bosh left as they were when Vince Carter did: as the fulcrum of a Playoff team, Bosh struggled where Carter excelled. It was hard to find many fans that believed that Bosh could catapult the Raptors deep into the Playoffs, whereas Carter was one shot away from the semi-finals in 2001 (after putting on a dazzling series against Philadelphia that culminated in that shot).
That’s the area where these Raptors can still affect their futures. Will Lowry continue to be the engine that makes the entire machine run in the Playoffs, or will DeRozan shake off a rocky first postseason to emerge as the go-to force for the Raptors? Does that tandem, Lowry and DeRozan, represent a workable top duo in a league with combos like James-Irving, Curry-Thompson and Paul-Griffin? Beyond their dynamism as a combo, how do those two ball-dominant-but-defensively-troubling guards blend with Jonas Valanciunas, himself ball-dominant big that has trouble cleaning up the leaky defence in front of him? Can that troika, with it’s obvious fit issues, exploit their strengths while mitigating their weaknesses to a strong enough degree that they develop into a postseason force?
For the Raptors, the rest is just window-dressing. We know the team needs substantially better defensive pieces before next season tips-off. We know that the Ross-Johnson power forward combo doesn’t fill enough of the holes created by the Lowry-DeRozan-Valanciunas grouping. We know that defensive rebounding is problem. We know that focus and leadership is a problem. The Playoffs won’t negate any of that stuff (even if it appears lessened by a favourable matchup).
The vitality of the top of the Raptors’ food chain, though, is of key importance. If these three, either individually or as a unit, cannot excel in the Playoff cauldron, it’s better to learn that now than after the team has mortgaged themselves to the hilt building around them and their particular quirks. Last year against Brooklyn, that three-man combo was ranked the 23rd-best three-man combo in terms of Net Rating that the team trotted out. That by no means screams ‘break them up’, but it bears watching because you don’t want to ignore where your efficiencies and inefficiencies lie when you are going up against teams that have the time and inclination to exploit your every weakness (and, likewise, when you have the time to assemble and deploy your best lineups and strategies from your own collection of troops).
Then there is the more ephemeral stuff: does this unit come together or fracture when the going gets tough in the postseason? Will they work together to dig out of holes or will they start flying solo? Will they play well with the lead or will they squander it? Can they take the physical play or will they wilt under it?
I’m almost always willing to give a young team a free year if it’s their first Playoff appearance (much like I allow for a lot during a player’s rookie campaign). The Raptors got that last year. Both as a unit and for guys like DeRozan and Valanciunas who had never been the Playoffs before, period. This year, though, they have to show something. They have to show growth, as individuals and as a unit. They have to show that they can lead a team. It has to be more than simply eking by against a favourable matchup, they have to demonstrate control of a series. They have to show that they can dictate the terms of how a series is going to be played. Even when Toronto won last year, Brooklyn was the one dictating the terms of the series. That can’t happen in round one this year.
Or, put another way: because of the regular season we already know that this is a deeply flawed roster that needs a lot of tweaking to take the next step forward, but these Playoffs can help evaluate how deep those flaws run. The Playoffs aren’t about superseding the lessons of the regular season, they are about testing the extent of their potency. The Raptors can’t eradicate the sins of the last three-and-a-half months, but they can go a long way towards setting how severe their repentance will have to be.
