In a potential preview of their first-round matchup, the Toronto Raptors play host tonight to the raceway pace-car themed basketball franchise from Indiana. You might otherwise expect a team in the Raptors position to rest most of their starters down the stretch of these final few games, especially with Lowry and DeRozan both playing 34 minutes in last night’s away game in Atlanta. But we haven’t seen an inclination from this coaching staff to rest either of their stars much at all, and both Lowry and DeRozan are known to have a bad taste in their mouths after a loss, so we’ll see. Indiana, for their part, is still jockeying for positioning and this game matters to them. The Pacers have won three straight games as well, including their most recent against the (Lebronless) Cavs. With one team needing the win, and the other needing to secure rest, it’ll be interesting to see how much of their hands these two teams who could soon meet in the playoffs reveal to each other tonight.
Indiana has been a very different team to matchup against this season. Gone is the two towers, ultra slow-paced and super big defensive juggernaut of the past. Swapping David West and Roy Hibbert for Monta Ellis will shake up how your team looks on the court considerably. But the Pacers have still managed to scrape together the league’s third stingiest defense by efficiency standards, with a defensive rating of 102.9. In case you haven’t noticed, Paul George has been a surprisingly quiet brand of incredible this year. Lost in the noise of the Warriors, Spurs, Lebron, Durant free agency, Westbrook triple-double onslaught and the Lakers laugh-show is the fact that Paul George is putting up numbers that would normally have him on the fringes of the MVP conversation. He has a 23-7-4 stat line with 2 steals a game while shooting 37% from 3, playing 3 positions—including power forward, which was a completely new one for him, and shutting down the opposing team’s best player on defense most nights. Stay woke on PG 13, because his game is rated R.
Moving on from that bad joke, leaving it dead on the side of the road in past where it will stay, let’s look at how the Raps have matched up against the Pacers. The story this year in their 3 previous games has been largely at centre. Valanciunas dominated in the season opener against the Pacers, and Biyombo put up gaudy stats in the next two games that Valanciunas missed. The starting centre for the Raptors is averaging 17.6 rebounds a game against the Pacers so far this season. In both of the Raptors wins, the story has been dominance at the 5, the Raptors owning the offensive glass and DeRozan getting double-digit free throws. The lone Indiana win came back in December in a game where the short-handed Raptors looked notably off their game and CJ Miles went 5 for 5 from 3. The Raptors played the Scola-Lowry-DeRozan-Biyombo-Ross starting lineup of meeeh for long minutes in that game, and that 5 player combo has since been retired for good reason. It would be nice to see another big outing from Valanciunas in this matchup, who has been featured more and more lately in preparation for possible playoff matchups such as this one. Valanciunas had a particularly good game last night in the Atlanta loss, finding a shooter open in the corner while he has in the middle of a post drive across the lane, and continues to kick out of double teams. It doesn’t sound like the biggest deal, but his ability to see the floor better and find open shooters when defenses collapse on him really does make him a valuable offensive weapon in a league that has gone as small as it has. Whether or not Lowry and DeRozan play, I would expect to see a lot of work for Valanciunas.
The final piece that will be interesting to watch tonight is how DeMarre continues to fit back in. He played sparingly in Atlanta last night, and he played with a surprising variety of lineups, as if Casey was just trying to get a look for where he might fit in. It would make sense to use him in a similar scenario tonight. DeMarre didn’t look fantastic in Atlanta, but he showed on one block that he isn’t going to be ovelry hampered athletically in his return, which is a big sign. Hopefully we get more of an insight into how close to 100% he is tonight in coming back from an injury with so many confusing comeback timelines.
