The Toronto Raptors lost a very winnable game in very woeful way on Monday night. In choking away a nine-point lead and getting summarily walked off the floor in overtime, the Raptors handed control of the series back to small-sample variance. They have home-court advantage, sure, but in a series that’s been tight in every game, leaving things up to a best-two-of-three scenario, where a bad bounce or a missed free throw can now alter the course of the franchise’s future, they have made things more difficult on themselves than necessary.
The primary culprits in Game 4 were who you’d expect in such a pivotal game. The team goes as its stars do, and the head coach, five years and three postseasons into his tenure, is going to be under the microscope in every big situation. All three had off nights.
Dwane Casey turned in a very solid regular season – I had him fourth on my fictional Coach of the Year ballot, a testament to how he overhauled the defense without losing much offense and led the team to its best regular season ever, by far, despite major injuries to key players – and he mostly adjusted well, if a little slowly at times, in the first round of the playoffs. He is not an elite coach, but he’s not awful, either, and I’ve long-maintained that the hand-wringing over his job status ignores the macro (culture, buy-in, work ethic, long-term success) in favor of the micro (end of quarter plays, star-dominant end-game scenarios).
It’s also imperative to note that Casey lost his starting center and biggest weapon in the series in Jonas Valanciunas, and his star point guard fouled out early. His other star has an injured thumb and is mired in a ludicrous slump of shooting and decision-making. Casey is playing with an imperfect deck, forced into making calls and gambles that aren’t within the team’s normal decision set. You can not evaluate Casey’s performance without recognizing these factors, nor can you do so without at least trying to look at what went into the process behind the poor results.
Having said all of that, Casey mismanaged Game 4.
Here’s a look at a few of the decisions he made. We’ll try to understand what went into them, the pros and cons at play, and whether or not the calls were justified.
Nogueira as backup center
With Valanciunas sidelined, Casey inserted Bismack Biyombo into the starting lineup, as expected. Entering the game, I expected “small lineups” to essentially the backup center, and I was unsure who Casey would trust as his true No. 2, if he used one – Lucas Nogueira, Luis Scola, or Jason Thompson. He went with Nogueira, which I would have suggested was the best first choice if they felt they had to stay big – Scola was wildly ineffective in the role in Game 3 and Thompson is a half measure of sorts, playing decent defense but with little offensive benefit as a floor-spacer or dive-man. In Nogueira, the Raptors would have some semblance of rim protection, rebounding, and an over-the-top lob threat in the pick-and-roll. Essentially, he was the only option I thought might make Miami a little uncomfortable.
Nogueira’s first stint was mostly fine, if a mixed bag. He made a couple of really nice shot contests, sealed off the baseline well on a Goran Dragic drive, and brought help in the post effectively. He also did a really nice job changing the direction of his pick on one play, and proved a solid screener overall. He was also completely lost in his help assignment on several occasions, providing little back-line help and whiffing poorly on his rotation on a Justise Winslow cut. There was good and bad, he looked a bit fatigued by the end, and the Raptors wound up outscored by four during his 7:27 stint across quarters.
That’s not bad, all things considered. His second stint was decidedly more bad, a 5:58 stretch in which the team was outscored by three. It was basically the same mixed bag as his first stint, but leaning much more toward the negative than the positive, including Nogueira just running away from a Dragic 3-point attempt like a 2K glitch. It probably didn’t help that Nogueira’s stint came alongside Terrence Ross and Norman Powell in a strange and flawed makeshift lineup.
Casey was right to try Nogueira out if he felt the need to stay big. He probably should have given him a much quicker hook, looking to go small or even try Thompson or Scola (gulp), by the end of the third. I love me some Bebe, but he should probably be shelved for Game 5 while Casey tries other options.
No Biyombo down the stretch, small/big decision
I thought before the game the Raptors may try to go small, as I’ve written. Patterson at center is a look they’ve had some success with in this series, and it’s a means of goosing the offense while maintaining the ability to switch aggressively on defense. With the Raptors scoring 0.74 points per-possession in the first half, the mid-second would have been a nice time to try it out. It could have also stood to help out DeRozan, who was struggling with a dearth of space to operate in, by putting kick-out options around him (and eventually maybe forcing Miami to change their approach).
Alas, the Raptors opted to stay big, in large part because Biyombo was excellent on the defensive end all night. The thinking may have gone that while Biyombo hinders spacing, he was making up for it on the glass and with his rim protection, helping snuff out Heat one-on-one attacks and cuts to the rim. Because the Heat stuck to a weird center rotation of their own – Amar’e Stoudemire was so, so bad, and Spoelstra rotated three bigs for the bulk of the game – Biyombo didn’t have to match on to a small much.
It worked – Biyombo was a team-high plus-11, and the Raptors were a plus-21 in the 26 minutes Biyombo shared the floor with Patterson, the lone true big-big combo on either side. It was working, and once that was established, it’s what I would have stuck with down the stretch. The Heat went small and began carving to the rim, and there was no semblance of help behind the initial point of attack with Biyombo out. Switching is nice, but if a team is attacking mostly one-on-one and has the size advantage at every position when both sides go small, some help on the back line could be huge.
Casey didn’t agree, saying afterward that once Lowry was out, he was worried about scoring. That’s definitely a concern, and groups without Lowry and DeRozan both on the bench have struggled offensively. I wonder, too, if he may have been concerned about Biyombo checking Winslow, even if the rookie isn’t an outside shooting threat at all. I disagree there, but it probably factored in.
My biggest gripes with the decision to go smaller late: Not trying it earlier to get a feel for it, see how it may work, or figure the best wings to have on the floor, and doing so as a reactionary measure without even seeing how a game dictated by your own terms may play out. What if Biyombo was a presence defensively and made hay on the offensive glass, and the Heat needed to go back to a big to help on the glass? That would have been a win for Toronto whatever Biyombo did from there, but the Raptors never found out – Biyombo played less than two minutes after the Heat decided to go small for the final 4:47 of regulation (save for one possession) and all of overtime.
I think this was Casey’s biggest misstep. It was slightly more justifiable once the Raptors were down and needed to score, and Lowry was out, but it made little sense to sub out the team’s best defensive player up seven in the closing minutes. It probably cost them the game, especially when you look at Miami’s pull-away overtime sequence (which included a Dragic attempt at the rim, a Winslow offensive rebound, and a resulting Deng drive that he was fouled on).
Benching DeRozan, then re-inserting him
I don’t envy the position that Casey was put in late.
DeRozan played an abhorrently bad offensive game, making poor reads and bad decisions and misfiring when he did get decent mid-range looks with separation. They did some things to try to help DeRozan out earlier, varying their screen placements and angles to try to free him from Luol Deng, but Deng was just comfortable going way under and conceding errant mid-range looks. Smart guy, that Deng. When that didn’t work, the approach seemed to be to abandon the offense entirely to try to get DeRozan going, which, woof. He couldn’t even beat Stoudemire on a switch.
And so Casey sat DeRozan for his normal rest period at 3:09 of the third and never seemed intent on bringing him back in. Like in Game 2 against Indiana, the Raptors were going to close without him. I’d been asked a lot what it would take for that to happen, and my answer was pretty simple: Casey has shown he’ll do it, but the unit on the floor has to be playing well. No matter how poorly DeRozan’s playing, Casey isn’t going to sit him while another group flounders, too. The Raptors held steady with DeRozan out, and Casey kept him on the bench, which he deserves credit for. It’s a really tough thing for a coach to do.
And then Lowry fouled out. Now, Casey’s faced with Joseph – a terrific game manager but not someone who’s run an end-of-game offense by himself – as the team’s lone initiator and shot-creator for the final 1:58 of play (and then overtime). It’s a really tough spot, but I think he should have stayed with Biyombo here. They had the lead, Joseph was playing well, DeRozan was playing terribly, and everyone knew if DeRozan was on the floor, the offense was going to (mostly) run through him, because if not, why’s he out there? Pulling Biyombo gave the Heat safe passage to the rim, and they worked over the Raptors on the offensive glass.
And DeRozan gave them exactly what he’d given them all game on the offensive end.
This was a really tough scenario to navigate. I disagree with how Casey handled it – it amounted to the “DeRozan over Biyombo” decision – but I understand where he was probably coming from. Ride or die, right?
Dead.
Playing it cautious with Lowry’s foul trouble
Lowry averages 2.7 fouls per-36 minutes, and many of those are aggression fouls he could theoretically ease up on. When he picked up his fourth with 10:05 to play in the third quarter, I agree he should have had his normal end-of-third rest pulled ahead, but I didn’t think he needed to sit for 10 minutes. The Raptors managed just fine – a rarity – despite the offense turning to dust, and Lowry ultimately fouled out, but I still think this was a bit conservative. You should be able to trust Lowry not to foul, and Lowry should be able to reward that trust. At the same time, Cory Joseph is your backup and he’s been the team’s steadiest player in the playoffs, so you have that luxury when Lowry sits.
This is more a case of risk preference than right/wrong, and it played out in a way that justified Casey’s conservatism. As always, shows what I know.
DeRozan shooting the technical
The guy has a thumb injury and is shooting 50 percent from the line in the series. Small sample or not, Casey even mentioned after the game that his thumb is a concern, so why the hell was he the guy to shoot the tech? This was giving away roughly a quarter of a point, in expected terms.
Dumb.
Late-game play-calling
Always the biggest rallying cry in the comments, I’d imagine there was a great deal of annoyance with how the offense looked in the fourth quarter and overtime. It’s worth noting that the Raptors were a little more creative at the end of earlier quarters than usual, including a fun Cory Joseph action at the end of the first I might break down later. The end-of-regulation heave from Joseph was also not the primary option on the play, which I’ll also try to break down later, but it doesn’t excuse a pretty low-quality shot in a huge spot (and boy, did Lowry seem miffed about it on the sidelines).
Naturally, immediately upon checking back in late, DeRozan tried to go one-on-one, lost the handle, then heaved up a brick from 20 feet out. I guess if he’s out there, you kind of have to use him, or else why is he out there, but damn. He’d later commit a turnover and get blocked at the rim by Joe Freaking Johnson in overtime. I can’t handle this much longer.
One thing I liked from the Heat in this endgame scenario: Going no timeout at the end of regulation. After that DeRozan miss, the Raptors grabbed the offensive rebound and called a 20-second timeout. The Heat planned a play off of a miss so they didn’t need to use a timeout unless they didn’t like the look they got (or the Raptors scored). The Raptors missed, because the play-call was a benign Joseph single-screen baseline attack, and he was forced to fade wildly. The no-timeout play-call resulted in Biyombo stuck on the bench with no chance to make an offense-defense sub, and in a Wade bucket, because of course it did.
Post-script
None of these were easy decisions, really. Who’s the backup center, when none of the options have played in weeks? When do you go small in a way you’ve rarely gone? What to do about a star fouling out when the other star is playing awfully? They’re choppy waters, and there are no perfect options. I disagreed with a lot of Casey’s moves here, but it’s really easy to do that from where I’m sitting, with zero repercussions from the choices. I thought Casey had a bad game, failing to make chicken salad out of the chicken shit he was handed, but that’s about the extent of it.
I’m very interested to see what he has in store for Game 5. He did pretty well with game-to-game adjustments last series and has shown more flexible and adaptable all season long compared to previous years. Don’t write off a bad game as a bad series or a bad coach – there’s a lot of (ugly) basketball left.
