Raptors will likely rise and fall with play of Kyle Lowry: Arthur | Toronto Star
And for the Raptors to achieve real offensive efficiency, Lowry has to be the catalyst. Remember when he had wrist surgery? Back then, DeRozan said, “when we get out of sync, Kyle, certain things he can do just reverse it.” But against Milwaukee, he didn’t. He didn’t have the speed to turn the corner, or the size to shoot over the defence.
Against Cleveland, those excuses should be null and void, but the 31-year-old all-star has to do it. Toronto’s fourth-rated offence before the all-star break relied not just on Lowry, but on Lowry shooting the ball. Lowry had his great moments against Cleveland last year — his 14-for-20, 35-point Game 4, for instance — but he wasn’t the A-minus player the Raptors needed, night after night. He put the idea of wrist problems to bed in his first game back, in theory, and apparently the wrist hasn’t been hurting him. His back, again, didn’t seem to be a problem against Milwaukee in Game 6.
So now that the six-foot-five Brogdon isn’t around to keep him from launching threes off the dribble, maybe Lowry can deliver something closer to his best self. But what is it? His lifetime playoff field-goal percentage is .388; he has only rarely been the bull-headed, commanding presence he has become in the regular season. Every spring we psychoanalyze Lowry; every spring it’s Kyle, banged up against Brooklyn, broken against Washington, shooting alone after a loss to Miami. Every spring we psychoanalyze him, and every spring, you presume, he tries to figure out himself.
Raptors need to learn from mistakes made in ugly Game 6 win | Toronto Sun
Game 6 was the perfect example of what ball movement means to this team. Against a lesser opponent or one not so dug-in defensively as the Bucks were, the Raptors individual talents have shown they can get by with very little in the way of ball movement. They have done so for a good part of the year..
But in a playoff atmosphere where defence is prioritized and really against the elite teams, one-on-one or iso basketball just doesn’t cut it.
It’s a little mystifying why a team that has been down this road so many times before and seen the positive results when they do move the ball, that it isn’t already ingrained but obviously it’s not.
From the midway point of the third quarter to about the final three-minute mark of the game, the Raptors were on their heels. The offence was a series of disjointed one-man efforts to get to the rim – almost all of them unsuccessful — while the defence was life and death to get a stop.
The 25-point lead took exactly 14 minutes and 11 seconds of playing time before it was gone.
Over that span, the Raptors scored exactly seven points, four from Kyle Lowry (two of those from the line and three from DeMar DeRozan, one of those at the charity stripe. Other than that, it was bupkis for 14:11.
Raptors-Cavaliers positional breakdown: Who has the edge? – Sportsnet.ca
Kyrie Irving is a problem. With the exception of an extremely short list of guard stoppers that begins and ends with Boston’s Avery Bradley, the Cavs all-star point guard can toy with and dominate against virtually any backcourt matchup in the NBA.
In four games versus the Raptors this season, Irving is averaging just shy of 25 points per game while shooting a white-hot 47.4 per cent from deep — the fifth-highest total against all NBA teams. Save for possibly Powell, the Raps don’t have anybody on the roster who can contain Irving, which should be a terrifying notion for Toronto fans who already saw the 24-year old average 24 points against their team during Cleveland’s third-round victory in last year’s playoffs.
The Raps respond with an all-star point guard of their own, but Kyle Lowry hasn’t exactly inspired a ton of confidence thus far in the playoffs. In the first round against Milwaukee, the impending free agent averaged just 14.3 points, 5.2 assists, and 3.7 rebounds per game, while shooting 42.6 per cent from the floor and a jarring 28.1 per cent from deep after shooting over 41 per cent from beyond the arc during the regular season.
A Raptors roster built to beat the Cavaliers | Toronto Star
Long before the trades were made, the consensus was that the road to the Eastern Conference championship would wend its way through Cleveland.
And having seen what the Cavaliers did to the Raptors last spring — and mindful of everyday needs that dovetailed with those Cleveland memories — Ujiri gave coach Dwane Casey a lot of what he needs for a better chance at beating the reigning NBA champion.
Ibaka is better prepared to cover Kevin Love, and that has to be of some consolation to fans who saw Love light up the Raptors late in the series last spring.
And while no one stops LeBron James, having Tucker around is far better defensively than having Terrence Ross guard James for even one possession. Tucker and DeMarre Carroll are likely to be the primary defenders on James and that’s one more veteran, tough player for Toronto to use.
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Raptors better prepared to defend LeBron – Video – TSN
In a rematch of last year’s Eastern Conference Finals, the Raptors have to prepare themselves once again to defend LeBron James. Leo Rautins believes that Toronto’s trade deadline acquisitions have them better prepared to do that, but if they’re going to beat the high-scoring Cavs, it will come down to offensive execution.
The five reasons why the Raptors can beat LeBron’s Cavaliers – Sportsnet.ca
The Cavs are thin and old. There’s a reason James played 44 minutes a game against the Pacers – the Cavaliers needed him to. According to Basketball-Reference.com he was the only member of the Cavs ‘Big Three’ to have a positive net rating against Indiana.
The Cavs roster has been a revolving door for most of the season and most of the additions- Kyle Korver, Deron Williams, as examples- haven’t helped them defensively and may have made them worse. Meanwhile adding Ibaka and P.J. Tucker at the deadline made a major impact on the Raptors. They were the NBA’s fourth-best defensive team after the trade deadline and have the second-best defensive rating in the playoffs after their fight against the Bucks, with Ibaka and Carroll featuring prominently in several successful lineup configurations.
No one will stop James– that’s been proven– but in Tucker, the Raptors have a strong one-on-one defender who will get into James without fear. And with Lowry being out for 21 games after the all-star break Raptors head coach Dwane Casey was able to find lots of minutes for Norman Powell and Delon Wright in the backcourt down the stretch. That extra work paid off against the Bucks as Powell became the series breakout star and Wright changed the complexion of several games even in limited minutes.
The Cavs don’t have the same potential for X-factors.
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Cavaliers, Raptors figure to be matched more closely in Eastern semifinals | Cleveland.com
THE SKINNY: Irving averaged 25.3 points in the first round against Indianapolis, but shot just .219 from 3-point rage and averaged nearly as many turnovers (2.5) as assists (3.0). Lowry also wasn’t superb against the Milwaukee Bucks, averaging 14.3 points, 5.2 assists, and shooting .426 from the field.
THE EDGE: If the Raptors are to pull the upset in this series, Lowry must win this matchup. This one was close last year, but Irving was better.
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Rautins: Pressure is on the Cavaliers to beat Raptors – Video – TSN
The Raptors will have three days to prepare for a playoff rematch against the Cavaliers and Rod Black and Leo Rautins explain how the pressure is off Toronto, how the Raps will need to play perfect basketball and how Dwane Casey will utilize his lineup against LeBron James and the Cavs.
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NBA Playoffs 2017: 5 things we learned from Toronto beating Milwaukee – Behind the Bucks Pass
Good on Dwane Casey for recognizing the lineup which propelled his team to 50 wins and the 3-seed wasn’t going to seize this particular playoff series. Basketball is all about matchups and adjustments are necessary to winning. Utilizing a one-size-fits-all approach leaves you vulnerable to the right type of opponent. The Bucks proved to be that opponent and Casey reacted accordingly.
Sticking with what got them there would have been the easy thing to do, and as a coach, you don’t want to disrupt the delicate management of egos and confidence in the locker room. However, there does come an inflection point between showing loyalty to your guys and doing what’s right for the team.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and after Game 3’s drubbing, Casey knew he had to go small and add more speed on the court. He swapped Norman Powell for Jonas Valanciunas and the rest is history. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, but Jason Kidd couldn’t find the right combination to regain the advantage in the series.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTbh4xiBubx/
Kelly: No more moral victories; Raptors’ defining moment is now – The Globe and Mail
“No, no,” Casey said, in rebuttal to some imaginary demur. “He will actually fight you.”
For a horrible second, you imagine that Dwane Casey is talking about you in particular. Well, okay, fine. Your long-term disability insurance is decent. And a few weeks in hospital would be a sort of vacation. Just as long as Tucker doesn’t spend too much time on the face. Orbital bones don’t always heal right.
During his six years in Toronto, the will to combat has been Casey’s overarching and as-yet-unachieved theme. He gives passing praise to reliable shooters, passers, ball-handlers, hardwood thinkers and the like. But it’s the unglamorous plodder and enthusiastic belligerent he most appreciates. If Casey ran a Fortune 500 company, the janitor would be employee-of-the-month every time.
He’s never had that sort of lineup in Toronto. The defining players of the Casey Era are DeMar DeRozan (tentative), Kyle Lowry (brittle) and Jonas Valanciunas (stubbornly shy of both hard contact and progress). To differing degrees, all of them have fight, but none of them are fighters. There’s a difference.
They proved it again on Thursday night, handing back every bit of a 25-point third-quarter lead that turned the final seconds into a panicked scramble. They were saved in the end by poor decision making from Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who opted for an uncontested dunk in a situation where only a three-point basket had value. At the very end, the Raptors didn’t beat the Bucks. The Bucks did that for them.
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