Thursday’s loss against the Denver Nuggets was a tough one to digest. The Raptors are a much better team but certainly didn’t play that way, and head coach Dwane Casey was right to call out the team’s focus level to start games. They dug themselves a big hole and despite threatening multiple times, they were never quite able to pull themselves all the way out of it.
A few possessions stood out as good, bad, or somewhere in between.
Some Good
Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to an offense making good plays. I thought the Nuggets moved the ball really well Thursday – 30 assists on 38 field goals would probably agree – and there were a few occasions on which the Raptors’ defense was simply beat by great offensive execution.
To wit, here’s a play from the third quarter:
Beautiful ball-movement by the @nuggets pic.twitter.com/ExUCCHpmWU
— Raptors Republic (@raptorsrepublic) December 4, 2015
The Raptors make all of their rotations crisply, first sealing the drive off on the baseline without committing too far from shooters.
They over-commit to the strong side a bit once the ball goes corner, but DeMarre Carroll slides to the closest shooter and the only open man is a second pass away.
Patterson gets there by the time that second pass arrives, and while Joffrey Lauvergne is open underneath, Lucas Nogueira is in the process of rotating back to his man under the rim.
Given all the nice passing by the Nuggets here, you accept a contested Lauvergne hook with the shot clock expiring as a possession outcome. Unfortunately, he hit the tough shot.
In a similar vein, sometimes you move the ball well, attack closeouts aggressively, and get a clean look late in the clock clock, but things just don’t work out for you.
[gfy]TenseFarflungAmericanrobin[/gfy]
Here’s one more I liked, another example of plays the Raptors can use to get their preferred late-game scorers the ball in advantageous situations instead of in clear-out isolations. Here, Luis Scola comes around a baseline screen to receive a pass at the elbow. That immediately turns in to a hand-off to DeMar DeRozan.
[gfy]YellowContentFiddlercrab[/gfy]
Look at the space and options DeRozan has when he receives the ball. Scola has screened DeRozan’s man, while Scola’s man hasn’t made the necessary switch. The big at the nail is too shallow to cover (the play started with a Lowry-Carroll pick-and-roll to ensure as much), and if Jameer Nelson helps, Cory Joseph is open in the corner.
Three defenders ultimately collapse on DeRozan’s drive but they’re late, and DeRozan gets the layup and-1.
Some Bad
Another instance of the Nuggets executing well on offense left the Raptors looking far more guilty for the eventual bucket.
The play starts with Will Barton cutting toward the rim, an initial movement that could serve many purposes. He could have been trying to draw shade from Kyle Lowry in the corner, could have turned back and screened Lowry, could have set a cross-screen for a big, or continued on his path around the baseline and back up the weak side. It’s on Terrence Ross to figure out which and stay with him.
Barton slows up on his cut as the ball swings, then sets a screen for Nikola Jokic on the weak-side block.
But Ross gets stuck navigating the pick and Barton has some room to break free of his man. Biyombo follows his check, lest Jokic have a major mismatch with Ross on the block and an easy post-entry pass available.
With his man trailing behind, Barton heads to the top of the arc and Mike Miller comes to the nail to set a screen on Ross. Carroll doesn’t see the screen coming and has stayed with Miller, and Joseph is floating between helping on Barton and staying on his man in the weak corner.
Ross isn’t even close to recovering in time.
That’s a really nice play design by the Nuggets, but it’s also one the Raptors didn’t guard particularly well.
Some Bebe
I thought Nogueira turned in another solid performance. It wasn’t quite as good as Wednesday but it was far better than Sunday, and he’s continuing to make a case for 12-16 minutes on a nightly basis. We got really deep with Nogueira analysis yesterday, so let me just point out a few plays.
On this Danilo Gallinari three, the broadcast called Nogueira out for not being more up on the shooter. I don’t think that’s necessarily fair – he hedges aggressively on the initial screen (not the team’s general strategy but likely a tweak for Gallinari as the ball-handler), recovers to the nail where he’s supposed to be, and then at least gets a hand up when Gallinari gets the ball back. Nogueira isn’t well-served guarding stretchy bigs (Mirza Teletovic says hello) and he could have contested more aggressively despite the distance of the three, but this wasn’t all that bad.
[gfy]AmazingAfraidAmethystsunbird[/gfy]
Here’s a tough one for Nogueira, as Nelson pulls up for a really short two that Nogueira doesn’t bother to put a hand up against. A key point of emphasis for Nogueira in the D-League was not attacking long twos from guards, the desired outcome of a possession for the Raptors defense, but there’s a distance at which the shot is too easy to allow it to go uncontested.
[gfy]TatteredQuestionableIrishdraughthorse[/gfy]
Conversely, here’s a really nice example of exactly how Nogueira should handle the pick-and-roll on a ball-handler drive, with some great use of verticality.
[gfy]ShamefulGorgeousFinwhale[/gfy]
This is a play as a dive man that Bismack Biyombo doesn’t make and Jonas Valanciunas may even struggle with. The timing of his dive, his recognition of his depth in the post, and his hands corralling the pass and going up quickly are all impressive.
[gfy]WickedJoyfulFlyingfox[/gfy]
Again, a mostly encouraging performance that confirms the belief of most that Nogueira is ready for a consistent role in the rotation.
