Two days off between playoff games can be a bit of a gift and a curse. If you’re the Toronto Raptors, the gap between Games 5 and 6 against the Milwaukee Bucks cuts both ways – while it’s giving the Bucks an extra day to prepare and adjust after dropping two in a row, it’s also affording Kyle Lowry an extra day to rest and treat an ailing back. For fans, this second day off has now also provided you with the best response ever if you’re asked if you hit the gym, if you’re going to have a second plate, and so on.
“My body’s fantastic right now. Thank you for asking.”
That was Lowry at practice on Wednesday when asked about consistently dealing with injuries in the postseason. It doesn’t tell us anything, but damn if that isn’t the perfect response to just about any health or nutrition question. How are the playoffs treating me? My body’s fantastic right now, thank you for asking.
In seriousness, Lowry declined to provide an update on his back, saying only that he slept his normal three-to-four hours. He then spoke quite earnestly and passionately about what playing in the playoffs means to him, and why bumps and bruises are unlikely to keep him out.
“It’s the playoffs. It’s an opportunity I did not have for my first four years in the NBA, first three years in the NBA. Every time I get a chance to play in the playoffs, I’m gonna play, no matter what’s going on with me, how I’m playing, anything,” he said. “It’s just being out there and being in the playoffs. You dream of being in the playoffs as a kid. You grow up watching, 92, 96, just watching those years and the playoffs. In the NBA, there’s nothing like it. Maybe the Super Bowl is probably crazy for other fans. But for me, the playoffs in general is the biggest thing you can get to, and then building up to a championship.”
So we don’t know how Lowry’s feeling, but we can be pretty certain he’s going to play Thursday. (On a semi-related side-note, Fred VanVleet is remaining with Raptors 905 while the Raptors hit the road, which suggests Lowry and Cory Joseph are both doing better [Joseph has been under the weather]. More on this in the notes below.)
Treating Game 6 like a Game 7 they’re treating like a Game 6, or something
Remember yesterday’s talk about treating Thursday like a Game 7, and how I kind of laughed at it and pointed out that they went 0-3 in non-Game 7s they treated like Game 7s a year ago? Well, Lowry feels the same way.
“It’s Game 6. So, we’re gonna play, just play a basketball game. We understand that it’s a chance to close out a series and we know (muffled, sorry). At the end of the day, right now, if we take it possession by possession, it’s very cliché I understand that, but that’s really how you gotta take it. Last year we said we had to treat it like a Game 7 and we lost. So we have to treat it like a Game 6 but take it like another, separate game. Every game in this series has been completely difference. Game 6 is gonna be a completely different game.”
There was still plenty of talk of heading into the game with some urgency, though, as there should be. Not only would winning in six provide some extra time off for a physical break and an extended gameplanning window, it would also prevent the Raptors from having to return home against a young Bucks team that might not really care about the bright lights of a close-out Game 7 on the road. It’s tough to predict how a team like that will respond in those moments, and so the Raptors want to make sure it doesn’t get to that.
“You’ve just got to go out and outwork them,” Dwane Casey said. “You’ve got to go out and be present and accounted for, ready to compete. That’s the only way you’re going to stop them from cheering: To outwork them, to outperform them.”
As for fearing their history of shaky outings in this situation?
“Last Game 6 was different, it was last Game 6,” Jonas Valanciunas said. “Now we have a different one coming in front of us. You know, you can’t look at the past.”
Anyway, you’ve heard all these exact same things for several playoffs now. Let’s get to the game.
Anticipating adjustments
A good portion of the last two days has probably been spent not only fine-tuning their own gameplan for Game 6 but anticipating what the Bucks might do as well. With the Raptors winning two in a row, the pressure is on Milwaukee to punch back. The Raptors can’t be complacent in assuming what worked the last two games will continue to work (even if it might), and so the job of the coaching staff has been to at least consider some different potential scenarios they’ll see Thursday.
“We think about that after every game. Win, lose or draw we try and anticipate what they’re going to do,” Casey said. “That’s part of the chess match at this time. We think about the what ifs but you can’t spend a lot of time on the what ifs. You’ve got to work on basically what is hurting you too but we have to be ready for the what ifs.”
A lot of things may be on the table for the Bucks’ rotation. They only used seven different lineup combinations in Game 4 and expanded that to 11 (plus a garbage-time group) in searching for a spark in Game 5, and they have some options available to them I will probably write about tomorrow. Asked more specifically about the Bucks potentially starting Greg Monroe, Casey admitted it’s something the team has considered and thus should be prepared for.
“I’m sure that’s a possibility,” he said. “The thing about it is we don’t know. You can’t spend a lot of time on one thing.”
The bigger scare is the Bucks using Antetokounmpo at center, but nobody seems willing to talk about that possibility on-record. The Raptors, though, are trying not to get too bogged down in the guessing game.
“We gotta go do our job,” Lowry said. “We make adjustments on the fly. One thing about basketball, it’s a game of reaction. You gotta try to make someone react, and you gotta react to their reaction. At the end of the day, we gotta prepare our team for what we can control. We don’t know what they’re gonna do, or what they’re gonna do differently. We gotta go out there and control what we can control, and that’s playing hard, playing defense and making sure that we take good shots and get back on defense.”
Notes
- Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, and Bruno Caboclo will be staying with Raptors 905 over the next two days. All three contributed Tuesday as the 905 pushed their D-League Finals series to 1-1, setting up a winner-take-all Game 3 that unfortunately conflicts with Raptors-Bucks on Thursday. Siakam and Caboclo were no-brainers since an NBA team can only dress 13 players, anyway, but there was some discussion about whether the organization would be best off with VanVleet helping bring a championship to Mississauga or working as a 13th man in Game 6. VanVleet and Casey almost surely had some input in the decision, and it may suggest that Lowry’s back is in better shape than it was Monday.
- Raptors Republic readers can get discounted 905 playoff tickets by using the promo code REPUBLIC905. Game 3 goes Thursday at 7 p.m. at Hershey Centre.
- Raptors-Bucks Game 6 goes at 7 on Thursday, by the way. It had been floated that the game would be at 8, but the Rockets taking care of the Thunder in five games, the Raptors get to be the first leg of the national TV double-header. The 6 p.m. local-time weeknight start sucks for Bucks fans.
- There won’t be a shootaround notes tomorrow, as the Raptors will not shoot around.
- I’ve been posting some pics and quotes and other things to my Instagram story. Follow along there.
- DeMarre Carroll is a finalist for the NBA’s Community Assist Award, a great look for a player making his mark in a relatively new city very quickly.
.@DeMarreCarroll1 is a finalist for the #NBACommunityAssist Award this season. Vote for him by RTing this! #DeMarreCarroll #RTZ #WeTheNorth pic.twitter.com/z9Otz30R3u
— MLSE PR (@MLSEPR) April 26, 2017
