Pyrrhic victory snaps Raptors losing streak in L.A.

The Raptors steady the ship but lose Jonas Valanciunas in the process

Raptors 102, Lakers 91 | Quick Reaction | Box Score

Let us just get this out of the way off the top: Against most other teams, the Toronto Raptors don’t walk away with a win on Friday night.

Coming off of three consecutive narrow losses, games that were played intensely and could have gone either way with better execution or a few fortuitous breaks, the Raptors came out dead, save for Kyle Lowry. Whether it was the mental or physical exhaustion from the tough losses and the fatigue of the five-game west coast road trip or a matter of overlooking a now-2-10 Los Angeles Lakers outfit, the Raptors didn’t really show up to play.

They’d wind up winning 102-91, mostly because they’re a much more talented team than the Lakers.

Things also turned around when head coach Dwane Casey was forced to use some funky lineups in the second half, as center Jonas Valanciunas fractured the fourth metacarpal in his left hand late in the second quarter. Valanciunas wasn’t playing well to that point and his absence accidentally unlocked effective lineups for the Raptors in this instance, but it makes the ugly victory a Pyrrhic one. The Raptors are thin at the pivot and if Valanciunas misses a significant amount of time, Casey is going to have to get very creative. More on that in another piece later today.

Prior to the injury, the Raptors were relying almost exclusively on Lowry. He had an unbelievable first half, knocking down five triples and scoring 19 points with five dimes. He had a hand in well over 50 percent of the team’s points at the break, and without his singular offensive dominance, the Raptors would have found themselves in a much deeper hole than their 50-49 halftime reality.


Lowry is at his best scoring when he doesn’t need to serve the competing need of facilitating, something he’s been able to focus on more and more as Cory Joseph carves out a larger role alongside him. Some have taken issue with Lowry’s more scoring-focused ways, but it’s a necessity and a luxury in the current offensive environment, and he’s generally good at leveraging a hot stretch to help create for others.

He also drew a foul on Nick Young which not only stands as the best Swaggy P highlight, but also snapped Young out of his hot shooting start.

[gfy]AllLivelyGannet[/gfy]

Lowry got away from the distributing some in the second half, in part because he’s struggling from inside the arc and deferred to others to initiate. He’d finish 0-of-4 on twos and 7-of-11 on threes, tying a career high for triples in the process. “I can’t make a two right now, so might as well shoot threes,” he said after the game.

It would be nice if his running mate DeMar DeRozan would take a lesson in recognizing what’s working and what isn’t. DeRozan’s final stat line was fine, but – and you’d never guess this without me telling you – the fourth-quarter offense stalled when DeRozan started to look for clear-outs every possession or two. It’s a delicate balance because yes, DeRozan can seal games with ridiculous moves like this that very few players can pull off…


But the outcome too often looks like this, with a glaring lack of floor balance, space, and attention from the defense to anyone not named DeRozan…

And the team is quite capable of moving the ball when everyone’s engaged…


Despite the cries of fans that Casey doesn’t have an offense or doesn’t run plays, that’s patently not true. The Raptors can move the ball and have a few pet plays designed to get their one-on-one players on the move in an advantageous situation before attacking. They just seem to go out the window late sometimes.

As always, I get it. Asking your best one-on-one scorer to go score is an easy sell and Casey and DeRozan have a great comfort level established. Playing opposite Kobe Bryant, one of the greatest one-on-one scorers of all time, it’s difficult not to remember all of the big shots he’s hit playing that way. That’s a serious psychological error, because even Bryant one-on-one at his peak was at times a sub-optimal strategy, and the Lakers have been an example for the last several years of the damage sticking to hero ball without the requisite artillery can do. DeRozan is a very talented scorer, but this team’s offense, particularly with the closing unit, is strong enough that they don’t need to rely on him so much. His crunch-time usage rate right now is obscene, his crunch-time efficiency even more so.

In any case, the Lakers aren’t particularly good, and the Raptors finally caught a break in that regard.

The rest of the team joined Lowry in playing functional basketball in the second half, and the bench in particular woke up. Patrick Patterson turned in one of his better performances of late despite a cold shooting night, James Johnson auditioned for the role of super-weird center after a shaky first half, Joseph was Joseph, and Terrence Ross is back! Oh…

A rough opening stretch aside, Ross played fine, and a return to form for him coming off of injury will be paramount if the Raptors want to go small with Valanciunas out. Those lineups will only work with at least two outside threats on the floor, and the Raptors don’t have a lot of those. In theory, Ross’ athleticism also makes him a good cross-matching candidate and for some positionless transition defense.

Again, more on how to deal with Valanciunas’ injury tomorrow, but it’s worth a quick look at how the Raptors did without a center against the Lakers:

LineupMinutes+/-
CJ-TR-DC-PP-JJ6+6
KL-DD-DC-PP-LS3-3
CJ-KL-TR-PP-JJ3+9
CJ-KL-DD-DC-LS2+5
CJ-DD-DC-PP-JJ2-5
TOTAL16+12

Entering play Friday, I had centerless Raptors lineups down as a net-even in 30 minutes of action. It’s not reasonable to extrapolate from a game against the Lakers, who were willing to matchup with a smaller Metta World Peace-Julius Randle frontcourt through the game’s final minutes, but those are encouraging minutes. The Patterson-Johnson pairing has potential, like it did at the forward spots a year ago, because it gives Casey the option of inverting the offense and avoiding having Johnson on the perimeter (tonight’s corner three notwithstanding). Biyombo, meanwhile, didn’t see the floor in the fourth.

How much Casey decides to stick with those groups moving forward is a question for another time, but credit him with not sticking to traditional thinking and forcing Biyombo out there. The Lakers probably would have matched with Roy Hibbert and negated some of the edge because this is Byron Scott, anyway.

With the more athletic lineups unlocked, the Raptors took back the rebounding edge and started firing from outside, going 7-of-17 on threes in the second half. The Raptors opted not to go deep into the bench for Anthony Bennett, Delon Wright, or Norman Powell, and that helped, too, as the tighter rotation took advantage of a long stretch of ineffective Lakers bench-ball.

A lot of smaller things went right. The Lakers are bad, they didn’t employ an optimal strategy given the Raptors’ circumstances, and some unfamiliar Raptors units found a quick chemistry. On balance, the Raptors probably didn’t deserve a win, but games aren’t played in a vacuum. Having played one of the toughest schedules in the league so far, reeling from three consecutive narrow losses that threatened to shake their confidence, the Raptors had the benefit of a “schedule win.”

They needed that. We needed that. Drake needed that.

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