Pacers 100, Raptors 90 | Box Score | Quick Reaction | Podcast
Casey quotes | Post-game notes | DeRozan shooting breakdown | George shooting breakdown | Lowry shooting breakdown
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Prior to Saturday’s Game 1 against the Indiana Pacers, Toronto Raptors head coach Dwane Casey expressed confidence that his team knew the script. They were 56-26 in the regular season and the Eastern Conference’s second seed. They know how to execute their top-five offense. They know how to execute their borderline top-10 defense. If they were to come out and play the way they have all season long, things wouldn’t be easy – few playoff series are – but they should be able to take care of business at home.
“I have a better feel as far as who we are, how we’re gonna play,” Casey said. “We’ve established a playing personality, defensively, offensively, that I expect we’re going to play.”
The Raptors responded by playing a familiar way, but not at all in the sense that Casey intended. In each of the last two seasons, the Raptors have outperformed expectations to earn home-court advantage in the playoffs. In each of those postseasons, they came out and lost Game 1 on their own court. And naturally, with confidence across the fanbase boiling back to a crescendo after months of reserved, prove-it-in-the-playoffs optimism, the Raptors came out and dropped Game 1 to the Pacers on their own court.
The Raptors highlighted taking care of the ball. They turned it over 19 times.
Skinny Kyle Lowry entered healthy this time around. He shot 3-of-13 with six of those turnovers. He also acknowledged this week that last year’s team was “trash” at this point in the season, but his tense could have just as easily been present.
They made Paul George the focal point of the game plan. He went off for a game-high 33 points, most of them in a ridiculous, Jimmy Butler-adjace second half.
DeMar DeRozan spent a season vanquishing every quality wing defender thrown in his way. He shot 5-of-19 opposite George, a seemingly custom-built DeRozan stopper.
Casey did a great deal to repair his reputation following back-to-back playoff losses, overhauling his defensive system and proving more flexible game-to-game. He then trotted out some of his strangest rotations of the season (more on this Monday), making curious decision after curious decision.
DeRozan spent the bulk of his time on George, sitting when George sat and eschewing an opportunity to attack C.J. Miles or Solomon Hill instead. DeMarre Carroll played 19 minutes off the bench but wasn’t tethered to George for those minutes. The Raptors played five minutes with both Lowry and DeRozan on the bench, a risky gamble even with the pair shooting poorly. Patrick Patterson, probably team’s third-best player on the night and an important weapon in most of the team’s best defensive lineups, sat unused for a large chunk of the second half. T.J. Ross had little business being on the floor late, if at all, the way he played.
The list goes on, and the Raptors also opted not to shift their strategy against George as he heated up. Casey attributed his strange rotations to looking for someone to contain George, but it was only in the closing minutes, facing a swelling deficit, that anyone but DeRozan drew back-to-back possessions on him. Whereas the Pacers loaded up on DeRozan’s off-ball action, making initiatory passes difficult, eating into clock, and generally making him uncomfortable with a great deal of pressure, the Raptors opted to mostly play George straight up. That’s a reasonable strategy with the right manpower and if everything else is contained, but it has to be flexible when it’s a player as gifted as George.
The Raptors got about three quarters of the strategy right, limiting the other Pacers to 38.6-percent shooting and taking care of their own glass. But they left shooters open for George to kick to despite not loading up on him, and once George got going, there was no adjustment. It may not have mattered, as George spent the second half reminding the world that at this time two years ago, he was a consensus top-10 player and an MVP-in-waiting. His comeback season is really quite remarkable, and most outside of Toronto probably appreciated his two-way mastery Saturday. Still, the Raptors could have done more, not just because George was having his way with DeRozan, but because it makes little sense to task your top scorer and an average defender to spend the entire game expending that much energy defensively when there are superior options.
The truth is, strictly from a gameplan and execution standpoint, it would have been tough for things to go much worse. The Pacers played what was probably an 80th- or 85th-percentile game for them, and the Raptors had one of their worst offensive performances of the year. From an objective standpoint, it would be tough to see another game playing out quite this much in Indiana’s favor – yes, the Raptors still got to the line plenty, but one of Toronto’s biggest advantages (Jonas Valanciunas) was neutralized by an occasionally loose whistle, too, and Indiana nailed most every other point of emphasis. If Indiana had made a checklist of their five keys to the game beforehand, they probably checked off four of them, while the Raptors checked off maybe one. The Raptors should play better next time out, and the Pacers probably won’t be as hot from deep or as adept at creating live-ball turnovers.
“As a whole I thought we were tight offensively, and that frustration carried over to the defensive end, and you can’t do that,” Casey said. “I don’t think the seven games or whatever had anything to do with it. I think it was the Indiana Pacers, and then the moment of the playoffs got us tight. I don’t think it had anything to do with the previous games…It wasn’t us. I hadn’t seen us play that tentative on the offensive end all year.”
In that sense, the Raptors are probably fine. It’s one game, and it sacrifices home court, but they’re probably still the favorite. Most predicted Raptors in six, or even five (guilty), and this loss might not be the order most expected, but the consensus seemed to be that the Raptors had some wiggle room, anyway.
But the Raptors might not only be battling the Pacers now. As much as it shouldn’t, there’s a chance the spectre of the last two years, or even the franchise’s entire moribund history, hangs over the proceedings now that they’re down 0-1. “The ghosts, they hover,” as the always-excellent Bruce Arthur put it.
Those ghosts shouldn’t matter. This isn’t last year’s team, or 2014’s team, and the Raptors can’t point to a litany of ways they’ll be better in Game 2 on Monday. They also have a locker room that was churned not only to improve the team’s two-way flexibility and versatility, but also to solidify the mental fortitude. Luis Scola may not have a place on the court in this series, but he’s been a steady #VeteranPresents all year long. Bismack Biyombo was the man saying the Raptors won’t be punked early in the year, and remains the man carrying out that message at every turn. Carroll and Cory Joseph, the latter of whom rose to the occasion more than any other as the lights grew brighter, spoke after Game 1 like a pair of guys who have been through playoff wars and won’t be rattled by a single loss.
DeRozan and Lowry said mostly the same, too.
“It’s different, man. Last whatever times, that’s different. Different team, different moments,” DeRozan said. “We’re not panicking. We understand we just played bad.”
Maybe it does matter, though. That’s the concern heading into Game 2, where the excited energy at the Air Canada Centre could quickly turn anxious if the Raptors get off to a poor start. As much as this team is different, its head coach and two stars are not. DeRozan should be fine, insomuch as he was never really expected to have a huge series with George draped all over him, anyway. Casey may or may not have his job on the line, and it stands to reason that if he’s juggling new rotations, anyway, maybe he’ll finally make the changes that have long been painfully obvious. Lowry doesn’t seem the type, on the surface, to want for confidence after a bad outing.
But players, like all humans, are complex and visceral, Casey’s proven about as flexible as baseball-card gum the last two postseasons, and fans, who don’t have the benefit of roster turnover and seeing the work done behind the scenes and the endpoints of “seasons” of fandom, are justified in feeling snakebitten.
“We’re good man, it’s one game,” Lowry said defiantly, sure to not let his delivery betray the message.. “It’s not last year, we’re very prepared, we’re confident. We just got to go out and do what we got to do.”
The Raptors are better than the Pacers. But they have to play like it for that to matter.
