With Kyle Lowry out the Toronto Raptors have been playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, alternating between playing like the 2011 Toronto Raptors and the 2016 Toronto Raptors depending on how the mood strikes them. They’ve gone back and forth between quality wins(blowout vs. Dallas, double digit win vs. Boston, quality road wins at Washington and New Orleans) and ugly losses(basically every other game played during this stretch) since the all-star break with no way of knowing which team will show up. This makes it really difficult to guess what to expect tonight, but it seems like it will be really good or really bad; that middle ground does not seem to exist for them these days.
There are a lot of things going the Raptors way for this matchup, though. The game is in Detroit so it’s not really a road game for them; at worst those seem to end up being neutral site games and can even seem like “home away from home” games depending on how many rowdy Raptors fans make the trip. It’s definitely energizing to have the crowd on your side when you’re playing at home but when it happens on the road it must feel even better.
The team is also coming off a very disappointing performance and they have a tendency to bounce back. They’ve proven to be a resilient bunch over the last few years and in the regular season it’s rare for them to string together consecutive bad games. This is true not just of the team as a whole but of their individual players, and fortunately for the Raptors DeMar DeRozan(33 ppg on 56% shooting) and Jonas Valanciunas(24.5 ppg on 59% shooting) have performed well against the Pistons and if the recent episode of Open Gym is any indication Valanciunas should be extra motivated by the rumours that the Raptors were planning on trading him for Pistons centre Andre Drummond. With or without Kyle Lowry we’ve seen DeRozan bully teams who don’t have a good matchup for him and Valanciunas get up for marquee matchups so look for big games from both of them.
That’s not to say it will be easy. If the Pistons have been paying attention to how teams have played the Raptors recently they’ll throw somebody bigger on DeRozan to take away his post game and blitz him on every pick and roll to limit his space to drive, leaving him with his midrange jumper as his primary weapon. If Valanciunas gets going in the post the Raptors don’t have much to fear from the perimeter so the Pistons will be able to double team from different angles. The Raptors success on the offensive end is going to depend on how well they move the ball when the defense keys on their scorers and how well they shoot. It’s tough to imagine them doing worse than last night’s 5-20 three point shooting and 15 assist/14 turnover performance against a team as bad as the Pistons but this Raptors team has shown that anything is possible, especially when Lowry is out.
The Pistons have few players who pose matchup problems for the Raptors. Tobias Harris is one of those tweener forwards who has been too big for the Raptors wings and too quick for their big men in the past, but the acquisition of PJ Tucker should mitigate that. Marcus Morris is in a similar mold, but when the Pistons run the both of them together the Raptors still have enough size on the wing to prevent that from being a problem. Reggie Jackson promises to give back on defense more than he gives the Pistons on offense and while Kentavius Caldwell-Pope has come a long way and continues to improve he’s no match for DeMar DeRozan and Norman Powell should be able to slow him down. The battle in the post is probably the most intriguing matchup; Andre Drummond is a physical beast but Jonas Valanciunas seems to make it a point to bring his A game against him and the rumours that sprung up at the trade deadline this year should provide him with extra motivation. Even without Lowry in the lineup the favour the Raptors.
I was going to post a statistical comparison of the two teams but without Lowry only consistent thing about the Raptors has been their inconsistency. The way the team has performed over the last 68 games doesn’t seem like it will be at all predictive of how they will perform today. This game will be decided by which Raptors team decides to show up and there’s no way of knowing which it will be.
Three Keys:
1 – An active Jonas Valanciunas. Andre Drummond’s athleticism allows the Pistons to both crash the offensive glass while still being able to transition. Valanciunas is the only Raptor who can hope to keep him off the glass and the Raptors will need him to run the floor to occupy the Pistons big man. The organization has said in no uncertain terms that they believe Valanciunas is better than Drummond and they need him to prove it tonight.
2 – An aggressive DeMar DeRozan. I’m not talking about the aggressive version of DeRozan from years past who would hijack the offense and force shots that weren’t there but the version from earlier this year who wanted to make plays. Carrying the offense is exhausting and defenses are able to load up on him more than they ever have in the past, but there have been times over the last few games where DeRozan has been uncharacteristically passive. With Lowry out the Raptors will only go as far as DeRozan will carry them.
3 – Move the ball, make your shots. This should probably just be a permanent key to the game because it’s never certain if the Raptors will do either but it’s clearly paramount to their success. They’re 18-7 when they get 20+ assists with only 1 double digit loss(to the Golden State Warriors) They’re 21-10 when they make 10+ three pointers with the only double digit loss being that same against the Warriors.
Prediction:
The Raptors bounce back with a relatively easy victory. They should be fired up after last nights loss and the players only meeting that followed it. The issues they’ve been dealing with for the last two months go beyond effort but if that effort is accompanied by a renewed focus on execution they should be able to handle this Pistons team.
