What a finish.

Watching last night’s matchup between the Toronto Raptors and Cleveland Cavaliers a couple of things became apparent:

1. The Raptors are still a flawed basketball team.
2. Sometimes Kyle Lowry is so good that those flaws don’t matter.

The first three quarters of the game went more or less as expected – the Raptors were being outplayed overall but a few big shots from their star kept them in the game. The Cavaliers slowly but surely built up and then maintained a double digit lead because team quality tends to trump the efforts of any individual star, but every now and then an individual star will say “#$%@ that” and change the course of the game more or less by himself. Last night was one of those nights for Lowry.

I’ve been trying to decide what part of Lowry’s game was the best but it’s impossible to isolate because he was so good at everything. His game winner is one of the greatest moments in the Raptors short history. His performance on both ends was amazing – he scored at will on the Cavs perimeter defensive stoppers and kept the Cavaliers guards from getting going on offense while adding 4 steals. The Cavaliers defense just didn’t matter in any way, they contested 15 of Lowry’s 20 field goal attempts but he made 11 of those contested attempts so they may as well have not been there. Lowry also continues to showcase improved pick and roll passing – he was never really bad at it but those one handed lead bounce passes are a relatively new addition to his game and they’re deadly. He can throw them so accurately that even Bismack Biyombo catches them.

I thought that the showdown with Steph Curry would end up Lowry’s best game of the season and I’m really glad that I was wrong about that.

That #$%& I Like:

• I’ve already talked enough about Lowry so I’ll leave it at that, except I’ll just put this here:
  

  Lowry > Curry. Fight me.

  — Grumpy McGrumperson (@duckshoe) February 5, 2016

• Sometimes I catch myself thinking that Patrick Patterson’s defense looks great because we only see him after watching Luis Scola play but tonight was one of those reminders that he’s actually that good. His effort level is consistently high and you can tell that he pays attention to scouting reports but most importantly he has a really high defensive IQ and great instincts – when things break down Patterson is one of the few Raptors who can be trusted to make the correct read and get things back on track. On offense he still seems a little passive for my taste but he is one of the few Raptors who doesn’t bog down the offense by holding the ball so at least there’s that.
• Bismack Biyombo catching passes and finishing. Not only does the game get easier for the Raptors when they can rely on him to actually grip the ball but he’s the Raptor who is the most visibly affected by a good performance. He goes into a game feeling good about himself and with every dunk or block his confidence grows. He walked out of last night’s game feeling like Kanye West.
• Jonas Valanciunas continuing to hold it down inside. He hasn’t shot below 50% once in the entire month of February and is averaging 21 points and 12 rebounds per 36 minutes. His screening is also coming along nicely, he needs to get a little more consistent but when he connects he’s getting the Raptors guards the kind of separation that Amir Johnson used to get for them.
• Cory Joseph’s defense continues to be incredibly valuable. He’s fundamentally sound and his effort level is both high and consistent. He’s still got some holes in his offensive game but if he can defend like this forever he’ll be worth the money he’s being paid.
• Terrence Ross continues to contribute on a semi-regular basis. He had another solid overall game tonight and hasn’t really had a prolonged absence since mid-December. He’s still not as good as he should be at this point but he’s performing at an acceptable level more often than not, which is a big step forward for him.

That $%$@ I Don’t Like:

• Jonas Valanciunas not getting the ball despite holding it down inside. He’s gotten fewer than ten shots in 6 of the Raptors 10 games this month despite shooting 63% and being their most efficient scorer by a comfortable margin. The team needs to realize that he can only be a net positive player if he’s actually given an opportunity to have an impact on the game. If there are matchups where you doubt him defensively – for example, against Kevin Love – allow him the opportunity to exploit that matchup on the other end and put the other teams coach in the position of having to choose if keeping Love on the floor is worth the offense-defense trade off. If the Raptors are going to get to that next level they need to dictate terms to opposing teams, not just react to whatever the opponent is doing. One of the things that makes the Warriors and Spurs so great is their insistence on dictating terms: if you go small against the Spurs they’ll attack you inside all night long and if you go big to try to attack the Warriors on the offensive glass they’ll target your big men with their speed until you change your mind. It’s like a game of chicken and they consistently win it. The Raptors willingly give up their advantage inside without really trying to exploit it. It doesn’t matter if you think JV is a future star or a scrub or somewhere in between, the Raptors have him and his skillset is pretty easy to define so they have to use it if they want to be effective with him on the floor.
• Luis Scola in general. It’s been sad to watch him slowly devolve into Andrea Bargnani. It may be time to Old Yeller his basketball career.
• James Johnson’s decision making. I really want him to play more but if he’s delivering forearm shivers while setting screens and taking long twos as a pick and roll ball-handler it’s pretty tough to argue that he deserves to be out there. There’s a lot to like about his game and his enthusiasm but he remains his own worst enemy.
• DeMar DeRozan was apparently feeling under the weather so I’ll spare him from criticism except to say that this season he tends to freelance on defense about as often as James Johnson does and it’s becoming a problem. It’s strange to see because he was a very consistent defender the last two seasons in large part because he was one of the few Raptors who just executed the defensive scheme faithfully but we’ve definitely seen some significant regression from him on that end.

The fear of the Raptors regressing the way they did last year is almost palpable among the fans and those who cover the team which wasn’t helped by those games against Chicago and Minnesota. This game suggests that those bad performances weren’t the beginning of a total breakdown, just the usual Raptors inconsistency – that’s not ideal but it’s easier to deal with than what we saw after the all-star break last year. Thanks to their superstar point guard Raptors fans who were worried can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that as of now things are more or less on track for the Raptors to continue on their record-breaking trajectory.