The Raptors came away with a win in a pivotal Game 5 against the Heat and to the surprise of no one, the last five minutes were crucial in determining the winner as another nail-biter took place. Let’s look at film to see what each team tried to do on both ends and what actually ended up being successful.
Raptors Offense
The Raptors’ first offensive possession with less than five minutes left to go was a pet play they like to run called “Weave Pick and Roll”. The play is simple and relatively popular in the NBA as it is initiated by a series of dribble handoffs (DHO) that can force the defense into confusing situations, which can produce open lanes to the rim as well as possibly forcing a switch.
Here, the Raptors were successful in forcing an advantageous switch by pressuring Joe Johnson to defend Cory Joseph. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much momentum taking Joseph downhill and no advantage was gained. The offense stagnates, Lowry gets a DHO of his own which forces another switch and yet there is still no real offense created.
With the clock winding down, Patterson makes a great cut to the rim and performs a “Duck In” and gets pretty good position with Josh Richardson, a smaller defender, deep in the post. Patterson throws up a jump hook and it doesn’t fall, but seeing as the Raptors were close to chucking a 30-footer off the dribble, it’s not a terrible look. As a direct result of proper lineup management, Bismack Biyombo was able to draw a loose ball foul when fighting for the offensive rebound.
This prompts the following Sidelines Out of Bounds (SLOB) sequence.
The Raptors quickly get into their offense by having a freshly subbed-in DeRozan come off a pindown to get the ball. Miami, utilizing the strength of their like-sized unit, easily switches that action and Joe Johnson proceeds to do a good job of denying DeRozan an easy catch, forcing him to meet the ball handler for a DHO.
With the clock running down, Biyombo sets a high ball screen where the Heat inevitably switch once again, allowing the defensively-inclined Winslow to guard the ball. DeRozan proceeds to swing the ball to Cory Joseph in the corner who bursts baseline against a poorly positioned Tyler Johnson. As a result of the Heat going small, Tyler Johnson’s act of funneling Joseph baseline and towards the rim-defender has Joseph drive against swingman Joe Johnson, who is unable to meaningfully disrupt Joseph’s drive.
The Raptors’ first two offensive possessions are successful trips because they leverage their height and to an extent, the Heat’s lack of height, as an advantage.
Next, the Raptors go to one of their crunch-time favourites in “Ram Stagger” (a detailed breakdown of that play can be seen here for the curious bunch).
What’s interesting about this is that Kyle Lowry chooses to quickly kick the ball out to the popped Patterson when he usually takes this play call as a signal to drive hard to the rim. By doing so, Patterson is able to swing the ball to Joseph who has identified a mismatch of Tyler Johnson defending DeRozan. This was caused by a simple weakside miscommunication between Winslow, DeRozan’s typical defender, and Johnson. DeRozan swiftly backs the smaller guard to the rim and is able to draw the foul.
In a way that could not be foreseen, the Raptors continued to utilize their size as the fulcrum of their offense.
Later on, the Raptors would go back to “Ram Stagger”, this time with Joesph taking a more traditional route. The Heat wisely defend this by having Wade, the first screener’s defender, hedge and slow down Joseph as he is running downhill. He does this because the second screener’s defender, Joe Johnson, is obviously slower than Joseph and might allow Joseph to turn the corner if not for Wade’s defensive action.
This forces the Raptors’ offense to come to a halt, as Joseph pounds the ball waiting for something to appear. Joseph gets just what he was looking for, as Lowry and DeRozan nearly crash into one another attempting to catch the ball and miraculously, DeRozan turns that into a trip to the free throw line. Just like coach drew it up.
The theme of the next couple offensive sequences is misdirection and off-ball confusion. The Raptors do this by initially using their most frequent scorers as off-ball threats.
This play, “Stagger Twirl”, comes in an after timeout (ATO) scenario with the Raptors up by 5 with less than 3 minutes left in regulation. The “Twirl” in the name refers to the action DeRozan and Lowry engage in, which has the former faking as if he were to come off the staggered screen, but then exiting that side of the floor while Lowry twirls around him and comes of Biyombo’s screen himself. The play worked reasonably well up until that point, but was derailed by Joseph being a half-second too late to pass Lowry the ball. As a result, Richardson was able to recover well enough that he didn’t leave a backpedalling Johnson isolated against Lowry driving downhill. That half-second margin allows both defenders to corral Lowry and wall off the paint, forcing Lowry to step back and create space for a low percentage shot.
The other misdirection came on the following trip down the floor, with the Raptors lead whittled down to 3. This play, “Twist Double”, resembles features of the Raptors’ Flex Series. As DeRozan sets a cross-screen while Lowry makes a flex cut across the baseline, Lowry quickly flips his hips and sets a screen for DeRozan. He proceeds along the baseline and gets a screen from Bismack Biyombo. The Heat switch the latter part of this action, nullifying any separation DeRozan had previously gained.
The interesting aspect of this sequence is how Miami correctly defended it this time, but only as a result of trial-and-error.
That possession was the first offensive sequence during Game 2’s overtime. The Raptors ran the exact same play, but instead of having the last screener’s defender switch onto DeRozan, the Heat make the mistake of having Lowry’s defender, Dragic, lazily switch onto the streaking DeRozan. The confusion forced Dragic to make a last-ditch effort to shoot the gap, which allowed DeRozan to have space along the baseline to easily float an uncontested shot.
Going back to Game 5, DeRozan is then forced into trying to find another opportunity to score. He engages in a high pick and roll with Biyombo, which Miami easily switches and DeRozan throws up a highly contested mid-range jumper.
The two situations aren’t entirely comparable. Miami and Toronto both have different personnel on the floor, which allows Miami to more easily switch the back-half of the play. Still worth noting that they are actively getting better with reps.
The theme for the final two Raptors offensive possessions is brought to you by the letters “K – L – O – E”
The first play is “Horns Double”, which creates no tangible advantage. Lowry gets the ball some 30-feet away from the basket with the clock winding down, but engages in his first act of “Over-Everything”-ness and drills the step-back triple.
The second play, while dysfunctional in appearance, is actually quite smart. The Raptors have Lowry run a side-pick and roll, which they know will force the Heat to hedge and switch. This means the screen defender, in this case Joe Johnson, is going to be unable to deny Lowry the middle of the floor when the second screen, this time set by Patrick Patterson, occurs. Lowry gets great separation, but no attention is paid by Richardson towards Biyombo and Lowry’s free lane to the rim is shut off. Lowry takes it all in stride and gets another tough jumper to fall, but only after a great sequence to get him in rhythm going towards the rim.
In summation, the Raptors had a pretty varied offensive attack that leveraged several factors, such as their size and superior amounts of things that Kyle Lowry is over.
Miami’s Offense
For all the (sometimes deserved) crap Toronto gets for having a dull and predictable crunch time offense, Miami was the one that ran the same action to death in Game 5.
Five of Miami’s final seven offensive possessions were “Drag Screens”, an impromptu and transition version of a pick and roll. Wade was the ball handler in all five situations, and for the most part, the Raptors contained him extremely well.
The shots he took came after great recovery by Joseph (with intelligent help from Bismack) or from the free throw line, which was later ruled to be an incorrect call by the league’s L2M report.
Wade was corralled so well that in three other instances, he had to throw escape passes. Two of which were to Joe Johnson, who was promptly closed out on by Patrick Patterson. At that point, those were one-on-one sequences and Johnson got to the rim and scored on both. I thought Patterson did a nice job on Johnson for the majority of Game 5, but as the broadcast noted, Patterson looked gassed during the fourth quarter.
The other escape pass eventually lead to a late pick and roll where Winslow took a contested mid range jumper and converted. This series continues to make perfect sense.
One of the two non-drag screen scenarios was a variation of a play called “AI Step”. Basically, Dragic is used as a decoy while making an Iverson cut (much like Lowry, DeRozan and former Raptor, Lou Williams, routinely do). Lowry met Dragic after ducking under both screens from the elbow. From that point, Wade engages in a high ball-screen action with Winslow. Joseph does a tremendous job of fighting over both the screen and re-screen, disallowing any separation.
This is one of the downsides of going small from an offensive perspective, as smaller wing players are forced into screen-setting situations with smaller frames that have less experience in setting effective screens.
All in all, the Raptors did a good job of defending Miami’s monotonous late-game offense, even without the dependable presence of DeMarre Carroll to guard Dwyane Wade.
Closing Thoughts
Miami and Toronto continue to engage in some pretty gross basketball, relative to the fast paced offense that is accentuated by spacing that most NBA teams adhere to. However, there are still interesting mini-battles happening tactically every night. Casey acknowledged Game 4’s failure and kept Biyombo on the floor. His presence defensively was unmistakable and even added an offensive boost. Spoelstra had Miami prepared for some of Toronto’s pet plays, but his lack of variance offensively may have been the downfall for Miami. Some lucky shots went both ways and the Raptors let Kyle Lowry push them to victory, but overall, it makes sense that the Raptors won in a series where very little actually makes sense.
