Raptors 106, Bucks 87
Quick Reaction
Box Score
Let’s start with a few caveats:
- It’s been three games.
- Really, it’s been four halves.
- They’ve all been against fringe Eastern Conference playoff teams.
- Two of the games have been at home.
- One (Sunday) involved a team missing four players, including key rotation pieces.
- The team started really hot last year, too.
- It’s been three games.
And let’s continue with a few concerns that haven’t been allayed this week:
- The team is thin at the three.
- The team is thin at the five.
- The team has decent depth overall, but an injury at either of those positions would require some suboptimal shuffling of the rotation.
- The offense has still stalled out for stretches, especially early in games.
Now, allow me to step outside of my normal bubble, where I was the most pessimistic here at Raptors Republic (and at The National Post and Raptors HQ) with a 44-38 prediction, and where Eric Koreen brands the two of us “#TheReasonablists” for never getting too high or too low. And allow me this:
- The Toronto Raptors look really, really good.
So yes, the small-sample caveats apply, and the long-term concerns still exist, but it would be hard to characterize the opening week of the season as anything other than encouraging.
The Raptors have opened the 2015-16 season with three consecutive wins, something the franchise has failed to do since 2008-09 and has managed three times overall. It’s something Dwane Casey, now the franchise record holder for career wins behind the bench, hasn’t experienced, with starts of 24-7 (2-1), 6-12, 4-19, and 4-13, working backward from last year. It’s a trio of quality wins against decent teams, two of which were never in much doubt in the fourth quarter. It is, without question, cause for optimism. The Raptors have looked good and they’ve managed to scrap out possessions and series when they haven’t looked good.
They looked downright great on Sunday in cruising to a 106-87 victory over a Milwaukee Bucks team that many have penciled in to a playoff spot. Save for a short-lived, Greivis Vasquez revenge-fueled push at the start of the fourth quarter that briefly cut the lead to six, there wasn’t a lot of drama from the middle of the second quarter onward.
The Bucks were able to get some offense going in the third quarter, but their inability to hit from outside (5-of-19) made defending them fairly straightforward. Monroe’s passing and the driving and cutting of Giannis Antetokounmpo don’t make things easy, but short on outside threats (O.J. Mayo was injured and Rashad Vaughn barely played), the only recourse the Bucks had was to take the long looks the Raptors conceded to try to shut down forays to the rim. The Raptors’ new, more conservative scheme is a good match for the Bucks, and only a perfect 24-of-24 mark at the stripe kept the Bucks from total offensive impotence.
The Toronto defense has looked good for three games now, but it was the more fluid offense that stood out. The Raptors scored their 106 points on an estimated 93 possessions, much higher than their per-possession scoring rate in the first two games, which were played at frenetic paces. Casey has said he wants to play faster and get shots earlier in the clock, but Sunday’s pace seemed like one that suits the Raptors’ style better than the higher tempo of the first two games (the Raptors were dead last in preseason pace, for whatever that’s worth).
The Raptors had 22 assists on 41 field goals, which isn’t abnormal, but the ball movement on display in the second half was remarkable given the standard that’s been established here the last few years. The Raptors had 13 assists on 18 second-half field goals, eight of which came from long range. Patrick Patterson and Terrence Ross getting red-hot from outside didn’t hurt, but even a cold half from DeMarre Carroll, perhaps the team’s best player swinging the ball around the perimeter, couldn’t slow things down.
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Cory Joseph deserves credit for how he ran the offense, and his final line (four points, six assists, three steals in 19 minutes) doesn’t do his game justice. He was a solid change of pace following Kyle Lowry, who was at his aggressive best with 15 points, five rebounds, seven assists, and four steals in 29 minutes. Ross and Patterson helped keep the ball moving, too, knocking down shots, attacking closeouts, and making the extra pass.
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Even the simple stuff was working.
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As dangerous as it can be to buy in to anything Ross, he’s looked far more decisive and aggressive attacking, and he’s slowly putting together the next step of what to do once you’ve blown past a guy. He was also passing the ball well and moving well without it, and both of those things seemed to be contagious Sunday.
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My game notes had a dozen offensive plays highlighted for GIFs or analysis, nearly a dozen more than I’m used to having. This can’t necessarily be expected every night – these plays are less pretty when the shots don’t drop at an 11-of-25 rate, and the passes may become less frequent when they don’t – but the second halves of the first two games were of a similarly fun nature. Sunday’s game was some of the best ball movement and some of the most consistent defense we’ve seen from a Raptors team in some time.
It was a thorough two-way victory, one that didn’t task any player other than DeMar DeRozan with going over 31 minutes and one that spread the ball around between the starters and the team’s four key reserves. Nine players played at least 19 minutes, each of them taking at least five shots, and each of them except Bismack Biyombo finishing with a positive plus-minus, for as much as those things matter to you.
Not captured in the ball movement discussion is that Jonas Valanciunas once again looked great on the offensive end, scoring 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting and adding eight rebounds, plus a pair of heady steals. Greg Monroe was a tough check, and Valanciunas muscled with him on the block and stayed out of foul trouble. Monroe’s passing is a little too advanced for Valanciunas and Monroe was able to pull Valanciunas away from the rim some, leaving the Raptors susceptible to quick baseline cuts from Milwaukee wings. Biyombo’s somewhat poor performance was a little surprising through that lens, as his presence down low – he didn’t match up with Monroe much – rendered those same Bucks cuts ineffective. For the most part, when the Lithuanian was on the floor, the Raptors were cruising.
If Valanciunas can continue to play well, it will only open up the offense further. He commands double teams on the block and has slowly improved as a screener (he badly telegraphed a slipped screen tonight, mind you). Teams are still biting on his pump fake because he can knock down the 18-footer, like he did Sunday. Defensively, Valanciunas is being asked to do less now, and he’s able to make a greater impact as a result, dropping back in pick-and-roll coverage and preventing attacks to the rim rather than scrambling to thwart them in-progress. Of all the encouraging signs through three games, Valanciunas’ steady two-way play may be the most important for the long-term health of the club.
The Raptors didn’t necessarily need to start hot, but it’s for the best they did. They’re about to play 10 of 12 on the road, and with four new players in the nine-man rotation, new defensive schemes, a lack of focus on the offense in the preseason, and a lame duck head coach, a slow start could have conspired to hang a cloud over the team. Three good wins should conceivably help galvanize the core and, if it were necessary, earn Casey and his changes some additional faith and buy-in.
It is, I think, OK to be excited after the season’s opening week.
