Fan Duel Toronto Raptors

Pre-game news & notes: League’s best offenses, best lineups collide

The league's top two teams by adjusted net rating do battle.

A month and a half ago, the Golden State Warriors visited the Toronto Raptors for Drake Night IV, narrowly defeating the home side, who had played in Cleveland the night prior. This time around, it’s the Warriors doing the hosting following a game against the Cavaliers, although they’ve had a couple of days off to recuperate from Kyrie Irving’s game-winner.

In the time since the last meeting, the Raptors have continued to establish themselves as one of the teams in the league’s second tier behind the Warriors and Cavaliers. They’ve also continued to flirt with the Warriors as the top-ranked team in the NBA, by Basketball Reference’s Adjusted Net Rating. Even as the Cavs (and Spurs, Rockets, and Clippers) draw closer to Toronto’s No. 2 perch, the Raptors have maintained an edge on the Warriors as the league’s best offense despite going about things in a very different way.

Not only is it a battle of the best offenses in the league and two of the best teams by net rating, but it’s a battle of two of the best lineup iterations in the league, too: The Death Lineup II vs. The Jurassic Five. Among all lineups in the NBA who have played at least 100 minutes together this year, the Raptors own the top two by net rating, while the Warriors own the next three. (The Raptors also have the league’s best lineup with a smaller threshold, as the Lowry-Powell-DeRozan-Patterson-Nogueira group owns a 65.6 net rating in 33 minutes together, tops among the league’s 250 most-used lineups.)

In other words, this should be a great game. The Raptors will surely want to prove they can beat one of the league’s elite after going 0-5 so far against the Cavs, Warriors, and Clippers (though they beat the Rockets in Houston, which looks like a bigger deal by the day), and the Warriors will be hungry to bounce back after a tough loss on Christmas Day. Nobody is sleeping on the Raptors any longer, and while they’ve shown they can beat bad teams when at their worst, showing they can beat the league’s best would be yet another big statement from perhaps the best instalment of this team ever.

The game tips off at 10:30 p.m. on Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 590. You can check out the full game preview here.

Raptors updates
With a back-to-back situation on their hands, DeMarre Carroll is likely to sit either Wednesday or Thursday. The matchups would suggest him sitting against Phoenix makes far more sense than Golden State, but there’s a lot that goes into that decision, so check back before tip-off for confirmation. The restriction could even be lifted altogether, as head coach Dwane Casey has suggested a few times lately that the back-to-back limitation could come off at some point in the new year. Carroll’s status may also be impacted by the status of Terrence Ross, who’s dealing with a sore left wrist after injuring it on a 360 dunk on Monday. It sounds likely he’ll be able to play, but check back for confirmation.

UPDATE: Carroll will play, meaning if the recent pattern continues, he could sit tomorrow. There’s  still no confirmation on Ross, but we’re working under the assumption he’s good to go until we hear otherwise.

With a full squad, the Warriors would present some nice tests for the Raptors. It would provide more information as to whether Carroll can check Kevin Durant, for example, or if Patrick Patterson needs to draw that assignment primarily. It would shed some light on whether super-small lineups with Patterson or Pascal Siakam could be an antidote to the Warriors with Draymond Green at the five. Can Lucas Nogueira provide the spark he provided a season ago against Golden State? Can Kyle Lowry make Steph Curry cry the way Kyrie Irving almost did?

None of these answers are all that important given Toronto’s tough road to the finals, but they’re illuminating about the Raptors in general, and drawing conclusions from this stiff a test is definitely better than doing so against lesser teams. This matchup is a headache, but it’s a fun one.

PG: Kyle Lowry, Cory Joseph, Fred VanVleet
SG: DeMar DeRozan, Norman Powell
SF: DeMarre Carroll, Terrence Ross
PF: Patrick Patterson, Pascal Siakam, Bruno Caboclo
C: Jonas Valanciunas, Lucas Nogueira, Jakob Poeltl
Assigned: None
TBD: Terrence Ross
OUT: Delon Wright, Jared Sullinger

Warriors updates
The Warriors are fully healthy and well-rested following two days off, and they even recalled their sparsely used 15th-man from the D-League for this one. That means Steve Kerr will have his full assortment of toys and tools and chess pieces, and it’s going to make for a tough night for Casey and company. Casey’s shown himself to be more up for these kind of chess matches as the years have gone on, and it will be interesting to see how he lines up his defense against so many weapons.

For Kerr, he can go with a pretty straight-forward approach and adjust as the game dictates. The Warriors are good in so many different ways, and Kerr’s experimented a lot, trying new combinations or seeing what works and what doesn’t. That the Raptors seem, on paper, like a team the Warriors would want to test themselves against, says a lot about where they are. Getting slept on or taken lightly is a luxury the Raptors no longer enjoy.

And yes, it looks like there are a lot of centers (I’ve placed all the bench players where B-Ref has them playing the most minutes), but the Warriors play the matchups at that spot and downsize a ton. Even Green plays there for stretches, and David West has primarily played a small-ish five rather than the four alongside another traditional big. However they play, they’re dangerous – each of their eight most-used lineups have positive net ratings, as do 12 of their top 13. Again, this matchup, a headache.

PG: Steph Curry, Shaun Livingston
SG: Klay Thompson, Ian Clark, Patrick McCaw
SF: Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala
PF: Draymond Green, James Michael McAdoo
C: Zaza Pachulia, David West, Kevon Looney, JaVale McGee, Anderson Varejao, Damian Jones
Assigned: None
TBD: None
OUT: None

Assorted

  • With 14 more points, DeMar DeRozan will tie Chris Bosh for the franchise’s all-time lead in points. With one more after that, he’ll have sole possession. He recently passed Mo-Pete atop the games played list and will pass Bosh in minutes sometime this week, too. His assault on the Raptors recordbooks is amazing to behold.
  • In weird ex-Raptors news, Jamario Moon is up to some shit.

The line
The Raptors are 9.5-point underdogs after being six-point underdogs in the earlier home meeting. Normally home court swings things 3 or 3.5 points versus a neutral game (so going Toronto to Golden State would swing the line 6-7 points in total), and it’s clear that a combination of Toronto’s recent play and the lack of a back-to-back scenario has given Toronto an extra couple of points. They’re also mostly blowout proof as the only team in the league yet to lose three games by double-digits – they’ve lost exactly zero – so this should be a fun, close game if nothing else. The over-under is up at 226.5, a pretty obscene number but one that seems pretty realistic given the offenses at play and Golden State’s pace.

I…do not have a prediction for this one. I think the Raptors cover – there’s little chance they don’t answer the call here – and I’d probably take a slight under, but I don’t want to put an actual score on it. (I reserve the right to decline to make a prediction, especially in games where the heart and the head don’t quite align.)