Fan Duel Toronto Raptors

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Pre-game news and notes: Hill apologizes, hard things are hard, Patterson starts again

Dry your eyes, Solomon Hill. You won't be playing "not basketball" much longer.

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“Finally. Damn, did two days ever feel like an eternity?”

That’s what I wrote in this space for Game 5. The wait for Game 6 has felt even longer, probably because the Raptors have a chance to close out a seven-game series for the first time in franchise history tonight. The team’s own history may suggest troubled waters are ahead, and Vegas might see things going seven, but the historical odds, in series terms, are in Toronto’s favor. Not that anything will be easy, because, in the words of Barack Obama as relayed via plaque to Dwane Casey, “hard things are hard.”

The game tips off from Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indiana, soon to be known as Jurassic Park South, or I guess, Jurassic World, at 7:30. It’ll air on ESPNews and NBA TV in the U.S. and TSN 1/3/4/5 in Canada, with TSN 1050 getting the Canadian radio call.

Required reading
Here’s what you need ahead of Game 6, assuming you haven’t been keeping up.

*My game preview, which includes a Q&A with Tim Donahue of 8P9S.
*Solomon Hill was crying about how the Raptors play, and then the Pacers tried to swaggerjack the Raptors with #WeTheGold shirts, which Patrick Patterson is having none of. DeMar DeRozan, meanwhile, doesn’t care.
*The Raptors are treating Game 6 like a Game 7, but how they may attack it remains unclear.
*The Raptors made some tweaks to get DeRozan going in Game 5, and maybe they can do the same for a slumping Kyle Lowry in Game 6. With Lowry, it’s important to remember that even when he’s shooting poorly, he’s not playing poorly.

And along with the Dave Feschuk Toronto Star piece linked above, the homie Eric Koreen had a great piece over at Sportsnet on Casey going outside of his comfort zone in this series.

Raptors updates
The Raptors pulled the trigger on an overdue switch at the starting power forward position in Game 5. It was the right call, if a little risky for the juncture at which it came, and the results weren’t as hoped – the starting five was a -2 together in 16 minutes, and Patrick Patterson had perhaps his least effective game of the playoffs. That’s…not great, and Casey has at times sounded like he’ll change course again and at times sounded like he’ll stick with Patterson, so I guess we’ll see at tip-off.

I still believe Patterson is the right call, as it gives the Raptors their best “traditional,” two-way five-man unit, and it opens up small bench units like the ones that were successful in Game 5. It’s tough to use a 10-man rotation when the stakes are so high, and starting Luis Scola more or less commits to a 10-man rotation, unless one of Norman Powell or T.J. Ross bow out.

For as good as they are, the Raptors have oddly struggled to find starting units that work, with their most regularly used groups getting outperformed. The table below shows each regular season starting lineup’s stats across all minutes together, as I couldn’t (or wouldn’t, rather) isolate for only the games they started. Ditto for the playoff groups at the bottom.

starters

You’re not gonna believe this, but Casey isn’t telling until he has to.

Assuming Casey doesn’t tweak and Lucas Noguiera and Bruno Caboclo draw inactive again, here’s what the rotation will look like:

PG: Kyle Lowry, Cory Joseph, (Delon Wright)
SG: DeMar DeRozan, Norman Powell
SF: DeMarre Carroll, Terrence Ross, (James Johnson)
PF: Patrick Patterson, (Luis Scola), (Jason Thompson)
C: Jonas Valanciunas, Bismack Biyombo

UPDATE: Patterson is still starting.

Pacers updates
The Pacers don’t really need to make an adjustment to the personnel in their rotation, they need to stop benching their best players, one-through-three, together. It’s true that that formations of that trio are dominating bench-heavy Raptors groups late in the first and third, but the numbers for their star-less units are disgusting. Ben Gibson wrote about just this over at 8P9S.

pacers lineups
Vogel seems to recognize that fact:


Assuming Rakeem Christmas and Shayne Whittington are your inactives again, the rotation will look something like this:

PG: George Hill, Ty Lawson, (Joseph Young)
SG: Monta Ellis, Rodney Stuckey
SF: Paul George, C.J. Miles, (Glenn Robinson)
PF: Myles Turner, Solomon Hill
C: Ian Mahinmi, (Lavoy Allen), (Jordan Hill)

The Pacers are rolling with the same starting lineup, by the way.

Expect a heavy usage for George. Because, uhh, obviously.

Pre-game notes/quotes
*We found out the scheduling scenarios based on tonight’s results: If TOR & CHA win, Game 1 goes Sunday at a time TBD; if TOR & MIA win, MIA-CHA play Sunday, TOR gets winner for Game 1 on Tuesday at 8; if TOR loses, Game 7 goes Sunday at a time TBD.

*Solomon Hill apologized to the Raptors fanbase for his comments after Game 5. That’s a pretty good look for Almost The Most Hated Man in Toronto.

*You think Kyle Lowry wants this one, or what?

*We the Norm.


Assorted
*Our man Faizal Khamisa did a deep-dive on every sports reference on Views.

*Yeah, so, y’all might think “We the gold,” but “you” ain’t even running your own arena. It looks like Raptors fans are out en masse again for this one.

Good luck with this when the place is infested with Raptors fans.


The line
Game 1: Raptors -6.5 (Pacers 100, Raptors 90)
Game 2: Raptors -7 (Raptors 98, Pacers 87)
Game 3: Raptors -1 (Raptors 101, Pacers 85)
Game 4: Raptors -1.5 (Pacers 100, Raptors 83)
Game 5: Raptors -7 (Raptors 102, Pacers 99)
Game 6: Pacers -1.5

This is the first time in the series that oddsmakers have changed from essentially saying “the Raptors are better by four on neutral court.” This is interesting, to say the least. It could be contextual, with a nod to the difficulty at closing out on the road, but historically it’s about an even bet. It could suggest there’s something we don’t really know going on – a lineup change? Lowry’s elbow? DeRozan’s disappointed in Views? – or it could be the evaluation changing given how the last two games have played out. In any case, it’s the first time Indiana’s been favored all series, which should serve to push your optimism from unrelenting to cautious, though the market has pushed the line from Raptors +2.5 to Raptors +1.5. The over-under has dropped from 196 to 194.

And you know what? I’m going Raptors. I went back and forth all day because my brain is mostly telling me that it’s tough to close out on the road, that the Raptors have played one good quarter in the last two games, and that the oddsmakers changed their tune. But it comes down to this for me: I think after what happened in Game 5, the Raptors can break the Pacers. A hot start, a key run, a cold night for George. I think the Raptors are in a position to break them. (Conversely, I’d be writing something similar for Game 7 if the Raptors choke away Game 6.)

Raptors 98, Pacers 92

I went on Indy radio earlier to talk about the game, too.

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