Fan Duel Toronto Raptors

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DeRozan and Lowry know they need to be better, and other practice notes

"How?" is now the question.

The Toronto Raptors are back at home following a 1-1 split in Indiana, and they return with the series essentially whittled down to a best-of-three, for which they have home-court advantage.

That, left as is, would be reason for optimism, but confidence in the fan base (at least around these parts) appears to be tenuous. I don’t feel as such, personally, but I understand those who do – the Raptors failed to show up for Game 4, they’re down to a single loss left, and Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan have yet to figure things out offensively. Lowry played strong Games 2 and 3 despite the shooting slump, but DeRozan’s yet to have what you’d call a good game, and their combined struggles are reaching historic levels.


Both have been adamant that they’re just missing the shots they normally make, and that’s true to an extent, but the Pacers also deserve credit for the job they’ve done at the defensive end.

“One, I’m going to give Indiana credit: they’ve done a good job on DeMar and Kyle,” head coach Dwane Casey said at practice Sunday. “But we haven’t seen their best. They know that. And it may not be by scoring points. It may be by moving the basketball.”

Paul George has done a great job making life hard for DeRozan. To wit, all 15 of DeRozan’s attempts on Saturday were contested, per ESPN Stats & Info. That’s been the trend for the entire series, as only 31 percent of DeRozan’s attempts have been “open” or “wide open,” as classified by NBA.com. He’s actually shooting better on those shots than he was in the season, but he’s getting very few clean looks, and he’s shooting an obscene 22.4 percent on shots with a defender “tight” or “very tight.”
derozan chart

And then, of course, he’s only gotten to the line 15 times – “We’re not going to complain about nothing, we’re just going to go out there and play,” he said – and while he’s dished 13 dimes, he’s also committed 13 turnovers. Not great, Bob. Beginning to pass a bit more might be the key for DeRozan from here on out, and while the assists didn’t reflect it, he was a willing passer in Game 3, probably his best showing in the series from a non-shooting perspective.

DeRozan is adamant that the struggles aren’t wearing on him and understands that this is a part of the battle. It’s clear he knows he needs to better in terms of getting others going, and there’s no sense from talking to him that he’s losing confidence in eventually getting his game and his shot going.

“It’s just a thing of us figuring it out and using our teammates,” DeRozan said. “Not at all, I’m not frustrated. I’m not complaining. It’s 2-2. The two games we lost, we turned the ball over a lot. We wasn’t ourselves…We’re still in a great position to go out Tuesday night and get another win at home.”

Lowry, meanwhile, might have more of an argument that he’s just missing decent looks, although that explanation doesn’t exactly make things better with the series down to just three games for regression to set in. The cause behind those misfires isn’t the quality of shot, according to Lowry, but how he’s taking them, which is in part the doing of the Pacers.

“I gotta shoot the shots better,” Lowry said. “I  gotta take more shots that I work on. I gotta be more balanced. I gotta be more in rhythm…They’re playing defense on us, rushing us into things, making us speed up our shots. The shots that we normally take, if it takes us 0.9 seconds to usually shoot it, we’re shooting in, like, 0.4. So they’re speeding us up. It may not seem like a big difference, but that’s what they’ve done a good job of, is speeding us up.

“We, as players, have to, me and DeMar, do a better job of taking our time, and getting to the spots, and being patient.
lowry chart

Lowry is actually getting more open looks than he’s accustomed to, though it’s worth noting that I’m going off of NBA.com’s rough bins for defender distance, which probably aren’t the best way of measuring the level of contest (but it’s the best we have publicly available). He’s just in a slump, one that’s a bit prolonged if you extend the sample to the lat few weeks of the regular season.

owry dd

If the solution were clear, the Raptors would have found it through four games. The Pacers are doing a great job on the backcourt duo defensively, but this is a pair of All-Stars shooting at near-historically poor levels. Something almost certainly has to give.

Unless it doesn’t.

Other news and notes
“No. No changes needed.”

That’s Patrick Patterson when asked if the Raptors need to counter the Pacers changing their starting lineup at the power forward position. What else is he going to say? Casey echoed that, and again, what else are they going to say? But they’re wrong. Patterson needs to start, and I really can’t bring myself to explain why for the 100th time this season.

It’s a bit reductive, to be sure, but Casey more or less echoed my sentiments about the series so far.

“I know it’s simplistic and it’s probably too simple for me as a coach to explain, but the team that played the hardest in the two games that were won, they out-fought the other team,” Casey said.

“Everything,” Lowry said when asked what they saw on the game tape. He eventually highlighted turnovers in particular as an issue, because it helps get the Pacers’ transition game going. Casey said more or less the same after listing off a number of things the team did wrong.

That’s about it – it’s either a long list of things they did wrong, or a very short “everything.”

Patterson talked a lot about how the team talked about accountability today.

DeRozan, too, mentioned how nobody is taking internal constructive criticism personally, with everyone focused on the same goal. They all seem keenly aware of the need to be the team that comes out with more fight, because as simple as it seems, the team that’s come out with more energy in each of the four games kept that up throughout.

“I’ve said it all year. We have to play desperate,” Casey said. “We have to be the hungry team.”

There were no negative vibes at practice despite the loss, and it seems this team is in a pretty good place, psychologically. It helps that Lowry, DeRozan, Patterson, and others have been through this with Brooklyn a few years back. This team isn’t shaken at all. And I don’t think they should be. This is why you play all season for home-court advantage, and the Raptors are still in a good spot.