The Toronto Raptors find themselves in familiar territory, down 1-0 in a playoff series after having coughed up home-court advantage to the Miami Heat on Tuesday. It’s an unfortunate start but hardly a death knell – the Raptors moved from -155 favorites to +150 underdogs, a swing in implied probability from about 60 percent to 40 percent. That’s a major hit, but like in the opening-round series against the Indiana Pacers, there remains plenty of time to bounce back. In this case, there were some reasons for optimism coming out of Game 1, and while the margin for error is now exceptionally thin, the quick turnarounds between games all series long give the Raptors a chance to respond quickly.
The game tips off at 8 p.m. from the Air Canada Centre. ESPN has the game in the U.S., with Dave Pasch, Jon Barry, and Heather Cox on the call, while Sportsnet has the Canadian broadcast and TSN 1050 has radio rights. Ken Mauer, Derrick Collins, and John Goble are the officials.
The big story heading into this one is obviously the shooting slump of Raptors’ All-Star Kyle Lowry, and while the news cycle has maybe put more attention on it this week at the expense of some other issues, adjustments, or tweaks that are ripe for the picking, it’s easy to understand why: As Lowry goes, so go the Raptors, and if he doesn’t turn it around soon, the Raptors might be cooked. But hey, he might!
What happened in Game 1
Heat 102, Raptors 96 | Box Score | Quick Reaction | Podcast
Key to the game: The Raptors’ offense was a bit of a mess. They coughed up the ball 15 times, shot 5-of-21 from outside, and only managed four offensive rebounds. Lowry shot 3-of-13, DeRozan needed 27 possessions to score 22 points, and outside of Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross, the offense seemed out of sorts and out of rhythm. Toronto can win with poor shooting, but they need to protect the ball and create garbage points out of chaos on the glass in order to do so. The Heat deserve credit for their defense some – they were the league’s No. 7 defense, after all – but the Raptors are unlikely to go 4-of-17 on open and wide open threes again. Offensive rebounds and points at the rim will, however, continue to be at a premium due to the presence of Hassan Whiteside.
Recap: Things got weird in a hurry, the Raptors seemed cooked late, and then strangeness and chaos allowed the Raptors to force overtime (on a Kyle Lowry halfcourt heave), and nearly force a second. In the end, Dwyane Wade’s poise closing out the game won out over the Raptors’ entropy machine.
Turning point: With the Raptors pushing late in the fourth thanks in large part to their defense, a breakdown on that end opened up Goran Dragic for a clean corner three. On the final possession of overtime, Wade stole the ball on a DeMar DeRozan crossover, taking it in for a game-sealing dunk and-one. In other words, the Heat executed just a little better in the high-leverage spots.
Reason for optimism: I thought the Raptors proved they can defend against this Heat team. Not only is keeping the Heat to roughly 98 points per-100 possessions a good look, but the Heat also overperformed their expected points on several key possessions. Veterans like Wade, Joe Johnson, and Luol Deng can’t be held to league standards for such things, and regression isn’t guaranteed in a short series. Still, the Heat going 7-of-12 (and 3-of-5 on threes) with four seconds or fewer on the shot clock seems extreme, and the Raptors also forced three shot-clock violations, nearly as many as Miami had over seven games against Charlotte (four). The Heat also went 3-of-4 on contested threes and 8-of-11 overall. That “11” is an important number, as is the number of attempts (or violations) the Heat were forced into – Toronto’s defense did a pretty good job making the Heat grind for tough, late buckets, they just happened to score on an inordinate amount of them.
Reason for pessimism: There was no answer for Goran Dragic’s lane penetration, both in semi-transition and in the halfcourt. They have to do a better job, although if it’s the only thing the Heat really get going, that’s tenable. Kyle Lowry is shooting worse than maybe any player in the playoffs ever, stayed long after Game 1 to get up shots, and is left searching for answers. There aren’t easy answers for that one, but his teammates remain unrelentingly convinced he’ll figure it out, and Lowry can still have a big impact without his shot dropping.
Revising prediction: I chose the Raptors in 7. That prediction more or less assumed each team would probably win a road game. Things look tougher now, but I’m holding steady at Raptors in 7.
What’s happened since
Kyle Lowry has taken a million shots, trying to get back to having fun, feeling like a kid, and remembering it’s just basketball. There’s been a bit of burying Lowry but also a good deal of belief he’ll bounce back, which is nice to see. I did a deep dive into the numbers yesterday (linked above), and while Lowry’s taking a slightly tougher shot mix in the playoffs, he’s also missing an obscene amount of open looks. The struggles line up with his elbow getting drained depending on the cut-off point you use, but the elbow also seemed to only hurt his off-dribble attempts until the playoffs, when he started missing wide open catch-and-shoot opportunities. There’s nothing mechanically wrong with his jump shot, and he’s adamant the elbow isn’t an issue, so…keep the faith. There’s a KLOE game coming soon.
The dick-finger-quote MAINSTREAM MEDIA is already looking ahead to Heat-Cavaliers (LeBron-Wade) in the next round, but Wade’s not biting on that talk. The Raptors are embracing the disrespect, as they do.
Chris Bosh has officially been ruled out for the playoffs, so any speculation he could return can be put to rest.
Game 2 updates
Other than the Bosh news, there’s not much happening on the injury front. Whiteside strained his right knee and aggravated his thigh in the first quarter of Game 1, and while he received treatment Wednesday, he’s good to go for game 2. As is Wade, who is dealing with the usual soreness of a long season but downplayed any talk about it. So, other than Bosh, full squads! And Bosh is around, which is cool, but he can cut this ish out right now.
Raptors projected rotation
PG: Lowry, Joseph
SG: Powell
SF: DeRozan Ross
PF: Carroll, Patterson
C: Valanciunas, Biyombo
The Raptors’ fourth starting lineup of the playoffs was fairly successful on the defensive end, playing to a 29-29 draw with the Heat in 16 minutes. Starting three wings allows the Raptors to switch a lot of non-center action if they want, cross-match on the fly to give the Heat veterans multiple different looks (similar to what the Heat want to do to DeRozan), and pick up anyone in transition. Stopping Wade, Johnson, and Deng is a tall task, but those three combined for 50 points on 60 possessions used, a pretty reasonable rate.
“I thought we did, I thought we handled it with the cross-matchups, I thought it helped us with our pace of the game,” Dwane Casey said at practice Wednesday. “The tempo of the game was good, I thought, to speed it up a little bit. They wanted more of a deliberate halfcourt, where they can load up and that type of thing, so we want to make sure we get some more movement. I didn’t think we moved well once we did get in the halfcourt. We’ve got to get our bodies moving and the ball moving a little bit more to the weakside.”
Casey’s point about the pace is interesting. When the Raptors have succeeded small in the past, it’s usually been with Bismack Biyombo at center instead of Valanciunas, and pushing the pace is a little tougher with the Lithuanian in the middle. That group still played fast by Toronto’s standards, and if they can continue to force turnovers (the Heat had 20 on the night), they might be able to swing the game in their favor early on. As for the ball movement, well, yeah. That’s a pretty consistent gripe with this offense, and it’s absolutely necessary with the Heat sealing off the paint as well as they do. At the same time, the Raptors missed some pretty clean looks.
One more note on Lowry: Single-game plus-minus is incredibly fickle and can’t be taken for gospel or anything, but the Heat went on runs both times Lowry hit the bench in Game 1. They also outscored Toronto by six in the five minutes Lowry and DeRozan sat together, which is something Casey should probably avoid in Game 2, even if one or both is struggling – there’s simply not enough offense on the floor to survive without either, and the Heat keep their rotation tight enough that there’s not a comparable bench-heavy lineup to attack.
Heat projected rotation
PG: Dragic, Richardson
SG: Wade, Green
SF: Johnson, Winslow
PF: Deng
C: Whiteside, Haslem, Stoudemire
The big question facing the Heat is who to play as their backup center. Amar’e Stoudemire could get torched by Valanciunas and Udonis Haslem is a zero offensively. They can’t play Whiteside 48 minutes, and their backup options are a win for Toronto at one end or the other. I’d be interested (read: terrified) to see what the Heat would look like with Josh McRoberts in as the backup five, or in a super-small lineup with Deng at the five – Valanciunas or Biyombo would feast on the glass, but a five-out attack might force Casey to slide Patterson to the five. (Are you shocked that I want super-small five-out lineups both ways? I know, right?)
The other curiosity about the Heat’s rotation was Gerald Green as the first wing off the bench. He only wound up playing seven minutes, and I wonder if maybe Erik Spoelstra treats Green similar to how Raptors fans want Terrence Ross treated – get him in there, see if he “has it” that night, and move on if not. Justise Winslow and Josh Richardson had solid nights, so I’d expect Spoelstra keeps the rotation a tight seven-plus-a-center.
None of Miami’s five-man groups were particularly killer, and it’s tough to draw much of a conclusion from a nine-point Raptors run in less than a minute of Wade-Winslow-Johnson-Deng-Whiteside.
The line
Game 1: Raptors -4.5 (Heat 102, Raptors 96)
Game 2: Raptors -4.5
The line holds steady. The oddsmakers have been pretty consistent with their faith in the Raptors, with Game 6 against Indiana standing out as the only time they were underdogs. They’ll be one-to-two-point underdogs in Miami, based on these lines, but there remains confidence in the Raptors evening things up. I think it’s a smart call – both teams can play better than in Game 1, but I think the Raptors showed that their floor is significant, and their ceiling if Lowry gets going might be higher, too.
Raptors 96, Heat 90
