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Raptors-Pacers Series Preview: Q&A with the enemy | Raptors Republic
Jared Wade: I love me some Kyle Lowry, but, yeah, PG is the best dude wearing shoes in this matchup. You’re right in that he really fell off, efficiency-wise, after his lethal start to the season. He was arguably the second-best player (and first-best non-alien) in the NBA in November and walked to the Player of the Month award. But then he hit a wall hard and was really never right again until the All-Star break. He played through it, but he noted to the press that he was struggling to keep his legs around Christmas time. He couldn’t make shots and was showing signs of fatigue, like fading a lot and settling for long-2s rather than attacking the rim. His shooting percentage fell into the high-30s for a two-month stretch (although he took so many 3s that eFG%, while not good, wasn’t horrendous).
He seems to be back right now. He’s still struggling with consistency, but that was his deal before the broken leg, and he’s had some electric performances — and some unreal quarters — since the All-Star break. The ankle is lingering for sure, but he skipped the team’s final game of the season, so I don’t think it will be a huge factor in the series. Everyone is banged up after 82 games.
If he plays like he did in November, the Pacers can win the series. Keep in mind that he was at like 28, 9, and 7 then, so I wouldn’t consider that likely. But if there is any chance Indiana wins, it will be because PG looks like a top-5 player and the rest of the team hits their 3s while he draws the defense.
Raptors-Pacers Series Preview: Outside perspectives | Raptors Republic
Michael Pina: There are two reasons why I’m not picking Toronto to sweep: 1) Despite struggling in all four of his meetings against the Raptors this season, Paul George will turn into the T-1000, average at least 45 minutes per game and play like a two-way superstar, 2) Kyle Lowry’s splits over his last eight games are gross (32.0/32.8/64.0); even though all signs point to his elbow being 100 percent healthy, he’s not shooting the ball like he was earlier in the year. If Lowry plays as well as he should, the Raptors have nothing to worry about. If Lowry struggles, the Raps should worry, but they’d still probably win.
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Evaluating the Raptors Defense: End of Season Edition | Raptors Republic
If the Pacers are going to try to beat the Raptors with the likes of Myles Turner and Lavoy Allen popping out for jumpers I say let them try it. With big men who don’t need to be tracked carefully outside of 15 feet the Raptors big men will be able to hang back and protect the rim as they have all season without worrying about extending the defense outward. This will make things a lot easier for the guards, who won’t have to worry about helping inside and can concentrate on tracking shooters.
The Pacers are also light on three point shooting and don’t have the kind of active cutters like Doug McDermott and Kyle Korver that have bothered the Raptors all year. They have but three shooters to worry about: Paul George, George Hill and CJ Miles, and with George and Hill handling a lot of the ball-handling duties the Pacers have precious few shooters to space the floor. It’s the same problem that plagued the Raptors before Norman Powell discovered his stroke and DeMarre Carroll was out to injury. This lack of shooting with no developed interior offensive talent to worry about is a big part of the reason the Pacers ended the season with the 22nd ranked offense.
The Raptors defense has recovered nicely since we last looked at how it was performing but the Raptors still have issues on the perimeter that may be an issue should they progress in the playoffs. Thankfully they’ve drawn a first round opponent that lacks the personnel to exploit those weaknesses consistently, so the defense should hold firm in the first round. That doesn’t guarantee victory, of course, and plenty of preview material is coming your way to tell you what to expect in the upcoming first round series but we can rest a little easier knowing that the team is back to playing the tough defense that we saw in the first two months of the season.
19 questions ahead of Raptors-Pacers | The Defeated
5. Indiana’s midrange problem
It’s a bit ironic that the Pacers are trying to play smallball, but that they also rank fourth in midrange shots attempted per game. The idea with going small is to put more shooters on the floor to spread the defense. The Pacers downsize and then take bad shots.
It speaks to personnel. As mentioned previously, Ellis and George love working at the elbows (there’s a real redundancy when they share the court), but it’s not just their wings. Frank Vogel runs a lot of his offense through his bigs and they love hoisting midrange shots too. Myles Turner is a pick-and-pop or spot-up threat who, again, shoots a bunch of midrange shots. Even Ian Mahimni likes to try his luck from the dreaded no-fly zone.
The key here is to not overreact if the Pacers get hot. They’ll make some shots from the midrange, but the Raptors definitely should prioritize taking away the hoop, and closing down 3-point shooters. No matter how hot they get, Indiana cannot conjure up enough efficient offense if they’re mostly firing away from the midrange area.
We see you Ottawa. #WeTheNorth #ottawagraffiti Artists: @marcsirus & Cassandra Dickie
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First-round playoff exit would be disaster for Raptors | Toronto Sun
So was DeMar DeRozan’s non-stop grind; Ujiri’s shuffling of Casey’s coaching staff and the revamping of several schemes; the trade of Greivis Vasquez, the thanks but see you later treatment of free agents Lou Williams and Amir Johnson and the additions of Cory Joseph, Bismack Biyombo and DeMarre Carroll to make this a squad with a defensive identity.
All of that didn’t happen to win a ton of regular-season contests and to hang another Atlantic Division banner.
With far more bad memories than good over the first 21 years of the Raptors franchise, zero seven-game playoff series wins, everything was done to make a move right here, right now.
The East is wide open, even if toppling LeBron James four times is something no Eastern-based team has done in years. Just getting to the second or third round would be a monumental achievement. It would be massive, considering the Maple Leafs finished 30th in the NHL and no Canadian teams made the playoffs. The chance to build like never before, both on — and off — of the court is right there for the taking.
The Raptors won’t revert to being a cellar-dweller should misfortune arise again in the first round — most of the core is signed for at least another year, the rookies played well and a top-10 draft pick is on the way — but this is an ideal time to banish all of the ghosts of the past.
Raptors’ future doesn’t hinge on first-round playoff success | Sportsnet.ca
A year ago Ujiri made waves when he chose not to give head coach Dwane Casey a definitive endorsement in the days after the Raptors were eliminated. On the eve of the playoffs a year later Ujiri sounds like he’s all but got a new contract waiting for Casey to sign, regardless of what happens against the Pacers.
“He’s been phenomenal,” Ujiri said on Wednesday. “Whether it’s been reading games, adjustments, just growth overall. To be honest everyone makes such big deal, if we don’t go past the first round what’s going to happen? Coach Casey deserves to be the coach, one hundred per cent and I stand by that. He deserves to be our coach in the future because he’s put in the work to bring winning to our program.”
Again it’s Ujiri thinking big picture. He had a conversation with Casey weeks ago assuring him that he wasn’t coaching for his job down the stretch and that a new contract didn’t hinge on him winning a playoff round. The result is a coach feeling confident he can rest players when needed without being judged for every win or loss.
It’s the word ‘program’ that might be the most significant when assessing where the Raptors are and where they’re going.
It’s more often associated with college basketball where the coach and the overall environment are constants and players arrive ready to buy in to what is already in place.
In professional sports it a level of consistency that’s almost never achieved because there are more forces pulling organizations apart rather that bring them together.
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Raptors Lowry and DeRozan refuse to lose | Toronto Sun
“With both of us going it’s a bad thing for the (other team) but one of us is going to be on,” DeRozan said pointing at the regular season as proof. “One of us is going to do something. If he is scoring, I try and do everything else. If I’m scoring he definitely will do everything else. We play off each other well.”
DeRozan won’t even consider a repeat of the struggles both he and Lowry had last spring.
“No, not at all,” he said. “I mean good luck, they can try, but that’s what we worked hard all summer for.”
Lowry is in agreement.
“They’re going to try to take us out but the way we are set up, I think we are more confident in what we are doing as a team,” he said.
Lowry says the big difference this year is that the Raptors are a better defensive team and won’t always be relying on their half-court offence like they were for what seemed like all of those four games against Washington.
“At the end of the day they are going to try and do it (take Lowry and DeRozan out), so we got to get stops,” Lowry said. “Last year in the playoffs we didn’t get stops. We get stops now we get out in transition and you can’t take (both of us) out in transition. So our defence will create our offence and make it a little easier for us”
Series Preview: Can Raptors’ talented guards be stopped? | NBA.com
The Raptors will win if …
This series begins and ends with Lowry and DeRozan. Not only have they emerged as the East’s best backcourt while combining for 47.7 points and 10.4 assists, but they’ve become All-Stars by learning from one another — DeRozan has grown more fiery, Lowry less volatile — which has encouraged teammates to feed off their leadership. The Raptors hold a clear advantage here, as the Pacers have neither a traditional point guard nor a go-to shooting guard. If Lowry and DeRozan are attacking from the start, they should be able to turn Toronto’s playoff anxiety into positive energy.
A crucial variable is small forward DeMarre Carroll, who played three games at the end of the season — culminating in a 21-minute performance (eight points, six rebounds) against the 76ers Tuesday — after being sidelined for three months by right knee surgery. The Raptors signed Carroll to a four-year, $60 million contract last summer to toughen their defense, and he may be returning just in time to help limit George.
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Raptors-Pacers Series Preview: Can Lowry, DeRozan carry Toronto in the playoffs? | Sportsnet.ca
Stars playing like stars
A lot went wrong for the Raptors this time last year. But one of the biggest hurdles to turning the Wizards series around was that Washington had seemed to find effective ways to limit both Lowry and DeRozan. Contribute it to fatigue if you’d like—it certainly was a factor—and take solace in the fact that this year’s supporting cast has stepped up more consistently than last year’s. But it’s a simple concept: If both Lowry and DeRozan don’t perform up to their All-Star abilities, then the Raptors can kiss the series goodbye.
The bright side? In each matchup this season, both Lowry and DeRozan have been able to simultaneously carve up the Pacers, whose Hill/Monta Ellis backcourt aren’t exactly known for their shut-down D. Lowry in particular averaged 23.7 points against Indiana this season, second-most of any team in the East this season behind (interestingly enough) Cleveland.
Instead of focusing on how to better defend without fouling, it might be more prudent for the Pacers to consider (stay with me) abandoning close defense all together. To his credit, DeRozan is shooting a career-best 33.8 percent on three-pointers, but he’s attempted fewer shots from distance this season than Rajon Rondo (as well as every other guard who played at least 2500 total minutes). Being devastatingly good off the dribble has clearly reduced his incentive to let the ball fly from behind the arc. More tellingly though, is that his field-goal percentage declines with increased space between himself and his defender.
@peru143 putting his Playoffs touch on #WeTheNorth
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Game Preview: Pacers at Raptors (Game 1) | Indiana Pacers
DeRozan and Lowry both excel at getting to the line early and often. DeRozan attemped the third-most free throws in the NBA during the regular season while Lowry took the exact number of foul shots as LeBron James to tie for 11th in the league.
If you’re looking for two potential X-factors in this series, Solomon Hill and DeMarre Carroll would seem to be prime candidates.
Hill has been a revelation for the Pacers over the last month, playing his way into a larger role as the team’s new “small-ball” power forward off the bench. Hill is an excellent defender capable of guarding all five positions, but his offense has made major strides in recent weeks. The third-year forward out of Arizona scored in double figures in four of his past five games. Perhaps even more importantly, after struggling with his outside shot for most of the year, Hill shot 48.1 percent from 3-point range in April, including a 7-for-11 performance in Wednesday’s regular season final in Milwaukee.
Carroll was the Raptors’ marquee free agent acquisition over the summer, but his year has been hampered by injury. Carroll missed 41 games after undergoing right knee surgery in January, but has returned to the court in the last week. A versatile veteran who started for last year’s Hawks team that reached the Eastern Conference Finals, Carroll’s presence could be a significant boost to a Toronto core that has not yet advanced past the first round of the playoffs.
Pacers could use a hand (or not) against Toronto | Indy Star
“You can’t get your hand caught in the cookie jar,” George Hill said.
This season, the No. 2 seed Raptors set a franchise record with 1,702 free throws attempted. The damage mostly belongs to driving guards DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, who averaged 11.7 and 9.5 drives to the basket per game, respectively.
DeRozan, who excels in isolation and creates offense from midrange and closer to the rim, especially has been a menace. This season, DeRozan’s franchise-record 653 free-throw attempts ranked third in the NBA behind James Harden and DeMarcus Cousins.
Knowing this, Pacers coach Frank Vogel started the gamesmanship early.
“We’ve got to be disciplined with our hands and with our body position,” Vogel said, “and understand that they’re going to throw their bodies into us, snap their heads back and swing their arms through legal defenders and hope the whistle blows.”
Pacers Need To Keep Hands To Themselves | Indiana Pacers
“We know how it’s going to be called,” he said. “If we reach in and there’s contact on the arms, it’s a foul. We’ve got to get our hands out of there. The league does a great job of understanding how offensive players play and what’s a foul and what’s not a foul.”
The responsibility of limiting the charity for Lowry and DeRozan will fall primarily on Monta Ellis and George Hill, although Paul George and others will take turns defending them. Toronto got to the foul line more often than the Pacers in each of the first three regular season games, even the one the Pacers won. It outscored the Pacers by 23 points on free throws in those games, an obvious factor in its victories.
DeRozan averaged 8.4 free throw attempts during the season and Lowry averaged 6.4. Both shot better than 80 percent. Paul George led the Pacers with 6.5 attempts per game, but none of his teammates averaged more than 3.2.
“They’re phenomenal at going for contact,” George Hill said. “We’ve got to show our hands and rely on team defense.”
Lowry will turn over the ball if well-defended – he totaled 18 turnovers in the first three games – but that creates a conundrum. A defender generally needs to use his hands to create turnovers, but that tends to lead to fouls. The trick is to have them up in the air when Lowry and DeRozan drive to the basket and lean into their defenders, yet still stay in front of them.
NBA Playoffs Preview: Raptors vs. Pacers | numberFire
How the Pacers Can Win
The Pacers’ best path to winning is by taking the first game of the series in Toronto. The Raptors finished fourth in the league in attendance this year and are well known for their nationwide #WeTheNorth branding and raucous “Jurassic Park” outside the Air Canada Center, but boy do they have trouble getting over the jitters and winning that first home game. They’ve dropped it in both of the last two years and have yet to win an opening-round Game 1 in seven postseason appearances, regardless of whether they’ve played at home or away.
We have yet to see this iteration of the Raptors fully regain confidence after being knocked down a peg or two, so the Pacers gaining a series lead at any point and taking homecourt advantage away could give them the mental edge.
Otherwise, the 2 versus 7 matchup isn’t meant to be that close, so it might take a monster star performance from Paul George to bridge the gap between these two teams.
Raptors vs. Pacers, 2016 NBA playoffs: Can Toronto finally escape the first round? | SBNation.com
The Pacers’ crunch-time woes were briefly mentioned above, but here’s another stat to illustrate just how bad things have been. Indiana has attempted 25 shots this season with 10 seconds or fewer remaining in one-possession games. They’ve misfired on 24.
The question is how these struggles should be viewed. Is this just our friend Small Sample Size making an extended appearance, or is there something fundamentally wrong with how the Pacers go about their business in close games?
A parsing of the numbers fails to reveal any glaring statistical drop off in crunch time, but that doesn’t mean all these bad attempts and open shots surrendered are happy accidents. Time after time this season, the Pacers have made mental mistakes at moments when they could least afford them.
The Raptors, meanwhile, have two studs who thrive down the stretch. Toronto also boasts one of the league’s top crunch-time point differentials and offensive ratings, per NBA.com. If these trends continue for both teams, then this series will be a quick one. If the Pacers can figure out a way to clean things up, they’ll have a shot.
Indiana Pacers Playoff Preview: Can They Upset The Toronto Raptors? | Sir Charles in Charge
The worst case scenario for the Indiana Pacers is that they get swept by the Raptors. However, that probably/shouldn’t be the case. Paul George should be enough to account for at the very least one victory. He’s that good.
Apart from that, it would be somewhat disappointing to see the Pacers bow out easy. The more likely scenario is that the Pacers are able to sneak away with at least two games in this series.
As for the best case scenario, the Pacers would come away winning the series. Normally, I would not be able to envision the Pacers winning this series. Although, considering the Raptors recent playoff history, don’t be surprised if Toronto has a bit more trouble getting over the first round hump than predicted.
Three Question Playoff Preview: Raptors Vs. Pacers | RealGM Analysis
2. What will the (possible) return of DeMarre Carroll to the starting lineup do to matchups, the Raptors’ rotation and playcalling?
One silver lining in Carroll’s extended absence this season has been the emergence of rookie Norman Powell. A bundle of athleticism and defensive intensity, Powell has the look of player well on his way to being a key rotation member of a contending team. Because of that, Carroll’s return to health (and bigger role) will cause several interesting trickle down effects.
If Casey opts to keep Carroll as a reserve and roll with Powell, it essentially acts as a defense-offense swap. Powell is a more natural fit to chase around Ellis, one of Indy’s primary playmakers, and DeMar DeRozan can slide up a spot and mark George — just like he did Raps OT win back in mid-March. The downside to this scenario is that DeRozan loses an edge on any postups with George guarding him on the other end. Toronto’s offense can certainly survive with putting DeRozan in more off-ball screens and pick-and-rolls, but it still takes away an option to attack the Indiana defense.
If Casey slides Carroll back into a starting role and pushes Powell to the bench, it frees up DeRozan to perhaps target Ellis for postups — if (and it’s probably a big if) the Pacers decide to simply keep George on Carroll and avoid any cross-match confusion. On the other end, however, it would mean DeRozan would be tasked with tracking the smaller, but quicker Ellis as he runs rampant off pick-and-rolls and hand-offs at the other end.
BDL’s 2015-16 NBA Playoff Previews: Toronto Raptors vs. Indiana Pacers | Ball Don’t Lie
How Indiana Can Win
This seems like a silly trope at this point, but if the Pacers put the fear into them with Toronto’s third-straight first round Game 1 home loss, we could have a series. Not necessarily a Pacer win, but at the very least a competitive series that finds Toronto having to re-develop the sort of confidence they’ve spent over six months building up.
Early start ticks off Raptors’ coach Casey | Toronto Sun
“Not my first choice … We’d prefer not to be just because from a competitive advantage, you have a little bit more time to prepare playing a later game,” Casey said Thursday.
“You’re more in your rhythm or whatever it is. But again, it is what it is. We gotta accept it, go with it, prepare to get ready for the 12:30, get our minds and body ready for that time of start. And we will. And we have. Two years in a row (and now a third), we’ve had that slot. For whatever reason, they want us in that slot and we gotta deal with it.”
Casey was not done.
“Evidently, someone doesn’t respect us. We have all these 12:30 games and they look at us as the team north of the border that plays the early games when the people out west are still asleep. We’ll use that as a little motivation too,” he said.
“I don’t know the reasoning why we’ve been put in that position. We’re the No. 2 team in the Eastern Conference. We feel like we should have a premier time slot. The numbers may be different, I don’t know, for that time slot. It may be good ratings. But we feel like we have an exciting team and we’ve earned the right, by winning 56 games to be a prime-time game. But again, we’re ready to play (even) if they want to play at 6 o’clock in the morning.”
Raptors coach Dwane Casey will use early start time to motivate players | The Globe and Mail
Casey said the early tipoff time, from a preparation position, is not his “first choice,” but the players can use as a chip on their collective shoulders.
“We have to earn respect,” he said. “We’ve done that all year and we have to continue to do it all year, we have to earn the respect of the league to prove we are who we are and our record is what it is.”
The Raptors are playing Game 1 early, and that’s okay | Raptors HQ
There’s never been more reason to be excited, yet you can’t help but notice that insecurity abounds. Last night, the playoff schedule was released, giving Toronto the playoff opener at 12:30 EST on Saturday for the third straight year. This is the party-starter, sure. It’s also earlier than all but a handful of NBA games played, and can theoretically mess with a team’s preparedness and have low viewership for TV audiences.
That said, this is an unfavourable time slot in one game – possibly the most meaningless game of the playoff schedule. A first round Game 1 is rarely remembered in the annals of history. We get the warm fuzzies from seeing the fans outside, be reminded of the intensity of playoff basketball, and then we settle in for the long haul. (And, compared to other professional sports, it is stupidly long.)
Raptors fans, though — god bless them — are upset.
Raptors in the playoffs: An oral history | Toronto Star
There may not have been a surplus of Toronto Raptors playoff moments in the 19 years that the franchise has existed but we challenge long-time fans to dispute the fact that the moments forever etched in the mind are easily recalled, for better or for worse.
The first game and series against the New York Knicks, the first home game, the Alvin Williams shot, the Vince Carter miss, the Chris Childs mathematics error, the sea of (New Jersey) red . . .
Five playoff years, and only six series, don’t evoke visions of the Boston Celtics or Los Angeles Lakers but they are ours: games and players, players and times that are so indelibly etched on the consciousness of fans that they will never go away.
The Raptors are back in the post-season for the first time since 2008 with a team fans can be proud of, a team that defied odds and expectations and, in some ways, the desires of many who thought last October that the best course of action would be to give up on this season to try to make something special happen two or four years hence.
They didn’t, and this became the most successful, and unexpected, season in franchise history. The players and coaches rewarded long-suffering fans with a year that remains the best ever.
This, however, is a time to look back for a few minutes, to relive those playoff appearances, to hear from the men so intimately involved in them.
Raptors playoff history riddled with heartbreak | Toronto Star
It’s a history that’s laced with high hopes and heartbreak and Raptors fans are hoping against hope that this year is finally different. This year’s story — a franchise-record set for wins, a seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs that’s higher than they’ve ever had before — is familiar. The Raptors have set records for wins in each of the past three years now and have had home-court advantage in the first round but haven’t been able to advance.
Is this year’s defence-first, one-year-older-and-wiser team different? We’ll find out this weekend. Here’s a look at the Raptors’ playoff history.
Jack Armstrong’s first-round playoff predictions | TSN
Jack’s pick: Raptors in six.
This will be a tough, hard-fought series. The Raptors have to prove in a slow, ugly series that they can grind out court offensive possessions and get high percentage shots from players beyond Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. They will also need timely stops from their improved but still-a-work-in-progress defence. They’ll find a way this time
“I don’t think so,” Casey said yesterday, when asked if this was make or break. “We’re still a growing program, a growing culture. But we’re not a finished product.”
He’s not kidding, but in terms of perception, he might as well be. For all this placidity, this is a huge spring for the club — but mostly from the perspective of the Raptors’ fan base, and the Toronto crowds that inevitably latch on to a winner. Drop the ball now, against the seventh-seeded Indiana Pacers, and this version of the Raptors are three-quarters Buffalo Bills, a fine football team remembered most notably for losing four Super Bowls on the trot, and thus a punchline. Falter at this first hurdle once more, and all of those fans, diehard or newbie, take on another layer of bitter and set up one long year (and maybe more) of variations on Paul Pierce’s ‘they don’t have it’ putdown of last spring.
And actually there is indeed, one thing they don’t have. The Raptors have yet to win a playoff-season opener. That’s kind of astounding, isn’t it? And yet, there it is, oh-for-7, against a parade of first-round opposition that started back in 2000 with the Knicks and has bounced intermittently through Pistons, Nets, Magic and Pierce’s Wizards. Seven Game 1’s to start off their playoff journeys. Seven L’s.
Did I miss something? Send me any Raptors-related article/video (or just to say hi): rapsfan@raptorsrepublic.com
