The Raptors didn’t win their 1st round series against the Indiana Pacers as much as they survived it. Considered heavy favourites before game 1 tipped off they alternated between playing brilliant basketball and self-destructing but even though the upstart Pacers never stopped throwing haymakers the Raptors were the ones standing when it was all said and done. That isn’t meant to be a slight on the Raptors at all, the kind of resilience they showed in that series is admirable. Sure, it may be better to not have to take as many punches as they did in that series but you don’t get any kind of bonus for winning pretty and at the end of the day the victory is the only thing that matters; the Raptors got theirs and they live to fight another day. They say that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than to be good but as I get older I find my appreciation for durability constantly increasing and I’m starting to think that it may be more valuable than both. This series proved showed us that there may be teams who are more talented or better coached or even more fortunate but there are not likely to be any more durable than these Toronto Raptors.
The Raptors struggles in the 1st round are not necessarily indicative of failure in subsequent playoff rounds. In the last decade we’ve seen two future NBA champions – the 2008 Celtics and the 2014 Spurs – require seven games to win a 1st round series in which they were heavily favoured and the 2006 Phoenix Suns get two games away from the Finals after a grueling seven game 1st round series against the Lakers. I’m not suggesting that the Raptors are a champion or even a conference finalist in the making, merely pointing out that 1st round struggles with what should be an overmatched opponent do not necessarily have any bearing on 2nd round performance. The Raptors struggles with the Pacers can be chalked up to a lot of things that may not matter in the 2nd round – the weight of high expectations combined with the sting of flameouts from prior postseasons may not be as easy to shrug off as we like to think. That monkey on their backs just got bigger and bigger with every defeat over the years, feeding off the Raptors frustrations and their desire to bring their devoted fans something to cheer about. Now, with that proverbial monkey(hopefully) off their backs the Raptors turn their attention to their second round matchup with the Miami Heat.
By now we all know that regular season matchups aren’t really predictive for the playoffs and that is doubly true in this case. The Heat have been forced to adopt a couple of different identities this year after losing former Raptor Chris Bosh for the season forced them to reinvent themselves. Three of the Raptors regular season outings against this Heat team were before Chris Bosh was shut down and before Joe Johnson was picked up to provide a late season boost so they don’t give us a lot of meaningful information – the Heat team they’ll face in the playoffs is a completely different animal. There are a few things we can identify as being key elements, though.
The Good:
Jonas Valanciunas is not bothered by Hassan Whiteside – Whiteside isn’t the kind of player that bothers Valanciunas on either end of the floor. He’s not a stretchy big man who will kill the Raptors if left unattended, pulling the Raptors big man away from the paint; in fact, of all the players on the floor he may be the one you want to shoot the ball. He’s also not the kind of defender that bothers a power player like Valanciunas, his strengths are more about his timing and his quickness getting up. It doesn’t really matter how quickly you reach the apex of your jump when you’ve just been knocked backward by a shoulder to the sternum. This season Valanciunas scored 15 points per game on 57% shooting against Whiteside and he may be able to occupy Whiteside enough to keep him from dominating the paint on the defensive end.
Miami’s small lineups have become less of a problem – Before witnessing the effectiveness of the Raptors small ball lineups and Casey’s willingness to play them against Indiana I would have been worried about Miami’s tendency to go small with Joe Johnson and Luol Deng at forward. Now we’ve seen Casey counter similar lineups by playing DeMarre Carroll or even Demar DeRozan at power forward and bench Luis Scola, the Raptor who had the most trouble with these lineups. Sometimes a coach stumbles upon a season-saving adjustment with his back against the wall and Casey discovering the effectiveness of ultra-small ball may be an example of that. A forward rotation of Patterson, Carroll, Ross and DeRozan should negate whatever advantages Miami’s small ball typically gives them and the Heat don’t have many other options. They don’t have a power forward they can play to try to trick Casey into playing Scola a lot of minutes unless they go big with Whiteside and Amare Stoudemire together, which would likely be a disaster for Miami and the best thing to ever happen to the Raptors.
A clear talent advantage – Once again the Raptors may have three of the top four players in the series, depending on how high you are on Whiteside and Dragic. They certainly have more depth, players like Terrence Ross and Norman Powell who have to scrap for their minutes on the Raptors would likely be guaranteed a prominent rotation spot on the Heat and Bismack Biyombo is much better than any of Miami’s backup big men. If this series ends up being another 7 game marathon the Raptors should have fresher legs available toward the end.
The Bad:
Plenty of defensive options against DeMar DeRozan – Miami has a wide variety of defensive options available to throw at DeMar DeRozan. Luol Deng is an accomplished perimeter defender with the length and discipline to bother his outside game while Justise Winslow has great instincts and super athleticism. Aging star Dwyane Wade is not likely to be given the assignment on the regular but in a pinch he has the veteran savvy and enough gas in the tank to bother the Raptors chief volume scorer for short stretches. DeRozan scored 29.3 ppg against the Heat during the regular season but the Pacers series showed us how much that means in a 7 game series. If all of the Miami defenders are dialed in we could be looking at another frustrating series for DeRozan and more flip flopping from Raptors fans after every quarter he plays.
Miami’s Drive and Kick Offense – the post-all star break Miami Heat were 6th in the NBA in offensive efficiency, employing an offense that employs a lot of pick & roll and drive & kick to either find lanes to the basket or open outside shots. This is worrisome for a team that helps aggressively in the paint and often lacks discipline on their rotations like the Raptors. Thankfully this offense was more drive than kick, with the Heat averaging only 16.6 three point attempts per game after the all-star break but they’ve upped that to 20.4 per game in the playoffs to date and are making 40.6% of those three pointers.
Erik Spoelstra vs. Dwane Casey – most seem to agree that Frank Vogel outcoached Casey for most of the first round series and Spoelstra can be said to have outcoached Vogel in the past. Spoelstra is strong in key areas where Casey seems weak: flexibility & adjustments and offensive cohesion. He’s obviously seen a lot more success than Casey has in the past in large part because he happened to coach Lebron James but this season has shown that he can be very successful even with lesser talent. The Raptors have a talent advantage but we’ve all seen what a good coach can do against a more a talented Raptors team in the playoffs and Spoelstra is bound to have some tricks up his sleeve. If he does it’s going to be on Casey to adapt, something that isn’t exactly his strong suit as a coach.
On paper this series is a much more even match than the 1st round so the Raptors can’t rely on Miami’s reserves to give away a game or two the way the Pacers bench did. A lot of what happens in this series will depend on which Raptors team shows up: the confident team that blew teams out in January or the tentative team that struggled to consistently play their game against the Pacers. What we saw in the 1st round may have been a perfect storm: Lowry’s elbow limiting his shooting, tremendous individual defense suffocating DeRozan and the weight of expectations dragging the Raptors down. The Raptors getting a little taste of success won’t cure Lowry’s elbow but it should unburden the team and loosen up DeRozan so he stops being the hesitant, turnover-prone jump shooter we saw in round one and goes back to being the loose, confident dribble-drive machine we saw in the regular season. If that’s the team that shows up the Raptors should be able to take this series inside of 6 games. If it doesn’t, then the Raptors will need to prove that they can claw their way to victory, something they’ve shown already many times this season. Either way the Raptors should have everything they need to take this series.
Now that the Raptors have proudly declared that they’ve shaken off that monkey it’s time for them to prove that it was one of the sources of their struggles with a strong 2nd round showing. As happy as we are to see them survive a 1st round series we need to remember that this team won 56 games and were a game away from the top seed in the conference for a reason and ensure that we don’t let the euphoria obscure the big picture: this Raptors team is good enough to be an Eastern Conference Finals team for the first time in franchise history.
