Fan Duel Toronto Raptors

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Game 1 Mailbag: Let’s try to talk through this

A search for answers.

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Two days off to prepare for Game 2 also means two days off to publish another #RRMailbag. We’ll try to do mini-mailbags when time allows during the postseason, but I’m skeptical there will be time/room for one of the 7,000-word mammoths. You can find all of the previous editions of the mailbag here, if, for whatever reason, you wanted to read old mailbags.

Before we go ahead: A reminder that we have a Patreon page at patreon.com/RaptorsRepublic. If you appreciate the content we produce, want to support RR, and have the means to do so, any contribution is greatly appreciated and will help us continue to do what we do (and try to do even more). You can also follow me on Twitter for, uhh, tweets, and on Facebook for all of my writing/podcasting/radio stuff. Validate me. You can also ask me questions at any time using #RRMailbag, and I’ll be sure to include them in the next mailbag, no matter how long between.

Alright, let’s get this money.

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This is the big question hanging over everything right now, and it’s getting more and more difficult to answer. Here’s the negative:

  • Lowry is now shooting 26.6 percent and averaging single-digit points in six Game 1s as a Raptor.
  • It doesn’t get much better in Game 2s.
  • He owns the worst postseason FG% among all active players with at least 500 attempts.
  • He owns a bottom-20 postseason eFG% all-time, active or otherwise, at that same threshold.
  • While in 2015-16 he was very, very good despite the poor shooting, he was all-around bad on Saturday, like he was in 2014-15.

Some saving graces to keep you sane:

  • There is a ton of noise in these playoff samples, like:
    • Lowry was hurt or returning from injury in 2014-15 (back), 2015-16 (elbow), and 2016-17 (wrist).
    • Even with how long this has gone on, his playoff track record is still only about a half-season’s worth of data.
  • The Bucks’ defense is one that, in theory, smart players should be able to better exploit as time goes on.

That’s a mixed bag, and the injury caveats probably don’t make Raptor fans feel better since a) he’s still only five games removed from his return, and b) he’s been hurt by the end of three consecutive seasons, random or not.

My gut, having watched him for so long, is that Lowry will round out of this, concerning thought his comments were. He shot fine-to-okay in four games back and played well in three of those, he’s had two days off for continued work building chemistry with the new pieces, and he’s too good to be this bad for much longer. I’m not even that concerned about the shooting, but the defense and playmaking have to turn around, like, now, because the Raptors’ role players can only help when Lowry and DeMar DeRozan are putting them in good positions to.

Keep the faith. Kyle Lowry Over Adversity. Or something.

DeMar DeRozan’s first half was just about perfect on the offensive end. I know he didn’t finish with much in the way of assists, but the Bucks’ defense is probably one where you’re going to want to look at assists at the team level or check out secondary assists, because the passes their traps force are really tough to make clean catch-and-shoot passes out of. DeRozan moved the ball well, saw crevices to snake through, found angles to get baseline, and did some pretty nasty post-up work, too. He also lived at the free-throw line, which is kind of the dirty non-secret about Milwaukee’s defensive approach. There were a few instances where he missed an opportunity to pass to a release valve, those two missed dunks stand out, and he’ll have to do a better job on Khris Middleton because it sounds like Dwane Casey isn’t ready to go away from that matchup yet, but don’t let DeRozan’s field-goal line fool you – he was the team’s best player not named Serge Ibaka in Game 1.

Could they? Absolutely. I took Raptors in 6, and I wrote that I was giving Milwaukee one “Giannis game” and one “WTF Raptors” game. They’ve gotten the latter out of the way, and if you figure Antetokounmpo goes off in Game 3 or 4, the Raptors could still return home with a 2-2 split and home-court advantage for the final three games. But blowing Game 1 reduces your margin for error a great deal, and the Raptors really can’t afford another “lolPlayoffRaptors” outing, especially in Game 2. The Bucks aren’t as good, but they’re unrelenting and are exactly the type of roster you can’t sleep against. The Raptors have to hope the two days off helped figure things out, because they cost themselves a lot of breathing room Saturday.

That depends what you think the next step is. If you mean an NBA Championship, well, that doesn’t have as much to do with anything in-house for the Raptors as it does with the Golden State Warriors and the general power imbalance in the NBA. If you mean a more competitive series with the Cleveland Cavaliers, or even a trip to the NBA Finals, then yes, it’s a viable tandem. One game ago, Raptors fans were talking themselves into Cleveland’s weaknesses, and now suddenly this core isn’t good enough to do anything of meaning? Naw, miss me with the heavy shifts in evaluation after one game, one year after a conference finals run.

The Raptors are what they were a game ago: A very good team with a window of opportunity in front of them, but a team that has long had this weird psychological flaw where they have to get punched in the mouth before responding. It’s not new, and it’s not good, but it’s worked for them. They’ve led the NBA in double-digit comebacks in back-to-back years, foguth back from 1-0 deficits in two series last year, and will probably bounce back Tuesday. It’s an incredibly stressful way to approach things, but it seems to be their style for now.

As for the suggestion in this question that Dwane Casey and Lowry aren’t good, well, if you’re thinking that firing the coach and letting Lowry walk would put this team in a better position to take the next step, you better mean a full tear-down and re-build, because they’re much better off like this in the short-term than via some sort of addition by subtraction. Don’t forget just how damn good Lowry was last year in the playoffs even with the bad shooting. He was a top-15 player in the league when healthy this year. And Casey is fine.

https://twitter.com/ryangreenspoon/status/853954093764808704

This is a great question, but to be honest, it’s asking me to assume the psychology of a lot of people, so I can’t accurately answer. For whatever reason, yes, the Raptors absolutely seem to do better after facing some adversity. They didn’t get good until Masai Ujiri tried to tear it down. They didn’t reach their best regular-season level until they were swept. They played far better when down in series or in elimination games than they did in every other game last year. And for a second year in a row, they led the league in double-digit comebacks, winning almost as many games like that (21) as without a huge deficit (29).

It’s hard to know exactly what this tells us. On the one hand, it could suggest the Raptors are better than they’ve even shown, because they only lock in for stretches of games and seasons. In that sense, the answer to your question might be yes, that having your team forged through the fires of adversity is good, because as the playoffs wear on, you’re going to face more and more of it. The counter, though, would be that going through the fire that many times is also going to eventually burn you, and that relying on some sort of intestinal fortitude as a core tenet of your success is incredibly risky.

It comes down to whether you look at all the comebacks and fighting through adversity as “Damn, look at how good they are when it matters” or “Damn, how the hell are they bad enough to keep getting in these positions?” I tend to lean the former, that the trials they go through spit them out the other end in a better place (that Lowry, DeRozan, Carroll, Tucker, Siakam, Powell, and maybe others all have life and development stories that follow a similar path only makes this stronger). It definitely renders the margin for error incredibly slim, though.

I would like to take a moment to congratulate “Should Tucker start over Carroll” as the new captain of the mailbag team. Previous captains include:

  • Why is John Salmons?
  • Why doesn’t James Johnson play more?
  • Should the Raptors trade for Kenneth Faried?
  • Should the Raptors trade for Nerlens Noel?
  • Should the Raptors trade for Kenneth Faried?
  • Who killed Jason Blossom?

In other words, this is a question I’ve answered a bunch of times now. The reasons for continuing to start DeMarre Carroll are there, mind you. Inertia, for one, as much as people hate hearing that (when all else is close to equal, stick with what’s familiar). Carroll is also more of a 3-point threat than P.J. Tucker, even if the numbers don’t bear that out over the last few months – watch how teams scramble to a Carroll opportunity on the wing versus how they’ll do the same for Tucker there or in the corner. The team also believes they’re comparably effective defenders, although their case in that regard didn’t hold up opposite Giannis Antetokounmpo on Saturday.

The reasons people want to start Tucker are there, too. Namely, he’s played better since coming over. But the team likes having them both available over 48 minutes, Tucker’s playing more anyway, and while the team hasn’t said this, I’d be that part of the reason they like Tucker off the bench is because him and Ibaka are their best defensive communicators, and doing so keeps a defensive quarterback of sorts on the floor at all times (Carroll is a good team defender and talks between plays, but Tucker is boisterous).

I think if Game 2 goes as Game 1 did, they’ll consider a change somewhere, and that’s the most logical one if they’re committed to Jonas Valanciunas starting.

This is a time-tested question for a team that’s relied on depth like the Raptors have. Everything suggests you should tighten your rotation in the postseason, because you want your best players out there the most, opponents are playing their best players more, and there are no back-to-backs or compressed schedules to worry about. You just don’t want to be playing players of a lesser caliber with so much on the line and the intensity and quality of competition ratcheted up.

It sounded this weekend like Casey might be looking to expand the rotation by one, and I’d guess Norman Powell gets the call if that happens. The Bucks are so big that playing two point guards together is something they can only get away with when they don’t have Antetokounmpo and Middleton on the floor together. Milwaukee feasted on switches to get Middleton post-ups against those groups. Playing Powell more gives the team a bit more length and a more drive-oriented attacker for the weak side (the Bucks really overload the strong side, and attacking wild close-outs is something Powell does well). The onus is on Powell to take advantage of the opportunity, something he hasn’t done much lately and didn’t in a brief audition in Game 1. If he stumbles, Delon Wright presents an option as a sort of middle-ground between Joseph and Powell/bigger lineups, providing some additional ball-handling and defensive length.

I’d hesitate to go deeper than nine in a rotation right now. The Raptors’ best eight or nine players are better than Milwaukee’s, and the deeper they go looking for answers, the more they’re trading off a talent advantage in order to find some sort of intangible energy advantage. If everything else is failing? Hell yeah, go full Game 5 Against the Pacers. But I don’t think it should be the gameplan out of the gate.

The issue with going that big is that the Bucks aren’t just long, they’re also very fast. Patterson and Ibaka are by no means slow for their positions, but that’s a pretty plodding frontline when the biggest defensive issue you faced in Game 1 was transition defense. I definitely want to see more of the Patterson-Ibaka combo, though, and it’s criminal that the Tucker-Patterson-Ibaka trio barely played in Game 1 (and didn’t play at all with a Lowry-DeRozan backcourt). Against Antetokounmpo and Middleton, Lowry-DeRozan-Tucker-Patterson-Ibaka should be Toronto’s best two-way lineup.

https://twitter.com/gobluecanada/status/853952884727316480

Lowry being better will help a fair amount. If he had hit even two of his six 3-point attempts, the game would have looked a lot different heading into the fourth. Lowry came up empty on all 10 drives he made – 0-of-3 shooting and zero assists – while those are normally productive plays, from a scoring or passing standpoint. Even if you assume Milwaukee’s length will remain an issue (Thon Maker was a problem) and Lowry’s shot won’t be all the way back, he should be good for producing a few more points in Game 2. DeRozan might be even better, too, if he can maintain his level of offensive play from the first half. And the team is unlikely to shoot 5-of-23 on threes and 1-of-15 on shots outside of 10 feet that were “tight” or “very tight” contests. There’s some regression that will hopefully come, even if you can’t bank on it coming in a short series.

That’s probably not enough, though. The Raptors more or less punted the offensive glass, and while that’s smart to limit transition buckets, they need Valanciunas and Ibaka (when at center) stealing some easy points. That’s a huge weakness of Milwaukee’s system that the Raptors more or less ignored. They can also do better once the ball is passed out of traps – Valanciunas actually made a couple of OK floor reads into DHOs but had that one bad turnover on a corner kick, Carroll did some decent work initiating with Valanciunas on the side, and Tucker attacked and kicked to keep the defense scrambled, but very little of that actually produced points. There were some opportunities that went missed once Milwaukee forced the ball from the All-Stars.

How to better attack the defense requires a bigger video breakdown, and cooper has one coming tomorrow, so I’ll leave the more Xs&Os specifics for him.

Yes. I think all of the talk about their failings in Game 1s probably has everyone thinking a bit too introspectively, and giving their brains a different, unrelated challenge could be a nice way to clear their heads while keeping their brains sharp. Also, the idea of P.J. Tucker just yelling at the cube to change itself, and the cube listening, is entertaining.

I think they’re positioning Heavy Machinery as faces, so that might be a little down the line. I do think there’s something to Gargano and Ciampa being used to help bring along these younger hoss teams, though, which is why I figure we’re in for another AOP-DIY feud. With The Revival gone, there’s not really anyone else to challenge for the tag titles, anyway, and DIY are the type of hands who can really help AOP keep improving. From there, a Machinery-DIY run to get Machinery ready to be the AOP challengers could be fun. NXT could use a few more teams, too, especially if TM-61 aren’t going to click super-well once healthy.

/extremely Wade Keller voice: “Oh no, my kayfabe!”

I think the answer is probably four or five. Smarks gonna smark, but when you factor in the room for contrarians being contrarians, for grumpy people to dislike kayfabe being broken (these are the same people who think Patrick Patterson had a cold shooting night because he watched Logan instead of game-tape the afternoon prior, or that DeMarre Carroll has lost a step on defense because of how he dresses), and for people like John Chidley-Hill, you’ll come across one pretty quickly.

This brings me to a fun theory I’ve come up with. You’ve heard of Godwin’s Law, the idea that as an online discussion goes on, the probability of a Hitler comparison approaches 100 percent? I believe the IWC is reaching the point of Phineas Godwinns’ Law, the idea that as an online wrestling discussion goes on, the probability of someone blaming all of WWE’s problems on the death of kayfabe approaches 100 percent.

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