Starters
Luis Scola – F
Love abused him, but apparently he has a high basketball IQ so it’s ok to play him so much.
Demarre Carroll – F
I had the words “lazy” & “getting abused” & “wtf” scattered throughout my notes on him. LeBron got his, and Carroll was barely registering as a nuisance against him, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Glad we have him for two more years at $32m combined.
Bismack Biyombo – C-
Started well, but couldn’t recover after getting (rightfully) called for the flagrant elbow off Love’s chin. Here’s the problem with Biyombo: he’s only able to affect the game defensively, and when Tristan Thompson is neutralizing you, you basically don’t bring anything else. Bothered me when he picked Irving off the ground after knocking him down there. That $15m price tag being thrown around for him comes with 55% possibility of buyers remorse.
Kyle Lowry – A+
14 seconds into the game, got an And1, and didn’t let up for the rest of the game. Was determined to force a game 7, but a combination of Cavs excellence, and Raptors mediocrity came together to thwart a fantastic showing in an elimination game. Had absolutely no help outside DeRozan, and there is only so much one can do when he’s going 2 on 5 for large chunks of the night.
DeMar DeRozan – A-
Underrated game from a boxscore perspecive; had at least three drive-and-kicks to an open teammate for a jumper that didn’t go down before I stopped counting. Defense on Smith was mediocre, but the whole team mostly struggled with transition defense and rotations and all that. An A- is probably a bit high, but when only two guys are bringing it in an elimination game, you get credit for trying to make things happen in my books.
Bench
James Johnson – C
Our boy did a solid job of manning up LeBron, and really limited him from the latter stages of the 3rd till the starting stages of the 4th to four points and an assist…I mean relatively. He did his best and it was better than Carroll’s. Did little of anything else though.
Patrick Patterson – D+
Gotta hit those open threes, fam….I can’t get over that; this is what I had for him during the 2nd quarter in my notes:
2nd
– hits his free throws
– fakes three, misses layup but gets the foul call 1/2
– misses layup on the break
– missed a fucking open three
– missind a fucking three again!! wtf
– fuck me….
– finally dunks on the fast break
– you can do better than that.
Terrence Ross – F
The lowest grade we can assign someone is an F, for those of you who wan’t a poop emoji as scores, drop Zarar a line at raptorsrepublic@gmail.com and he’ll make it so.
Jonas Valanciunas – B-
Handful in the paint on both ends in limited run. Glad to see he’s not hurting and will be ready for next year. If he was available the entire series, maybe things would have been different, but one thing is for sure: we’re all excited to see what he does next season.
Dwane Casey – C+
I’m too tired to say anything, but he didn’t do enough to motivate the team early and to counter the Cavs attack. He did have the right guys out there for most of the game, and interestingly didn’t go with Scola to start the 2nd half, but the players he did have out there didn’t too much, so you can’t really blame him for that.
A Quick Note
Amazing outcome. This team exceeded all expectations and played greater than the sum of its parts. The future is incredibly bright and the fans have a lot to look forward too. The team, organization, city, fans…all of us can hold our heads up high and know that there were only four teams playing at the end of May, and the Raptors were one of them.
Also a quick note to everyone at RR: thank you so much supporting us, and making this an absolutely amazing community of Raptor fans. We honestly couldn’t have done this without you, and don’t you worry, we will have killer coverage over the summer and into training camp.
