A noon tip-off on a Sunday at the Air Canada Centre. What is this, Game 1 of the opening round of the playoffs? Heyo! It’s been a while since the Raptors had a regular season game start this early at home, and Kyle Lowry is surely thankful as he gets set to watch his Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl later on. It makes for a nice little sports day for all of us, really, with the Toronto Raptors hosting the Memphis Grizzlies early enough to get our recaps written and (hopefully) get to a Super Bowl party right as the pulled pork is ready.
The Grizzlies come in hurting, by the way. They’re 18-33 overall, bogged down by several notable injuries, are on the third game of a four-game trip (although they just had two days off), have lost four of their last five, and have fallen to 24th on offense and 20th on defense. Marc Gasol is always a challenge, of course, and Dillon Brooks should be fired up back in Canada, but there’s not a lot the Grizzlies do well at the team level other than forcing turnovers, a game the Raptors don’t really play. The Grizzlies also send opponents to the line more than anyone else in the league, which might keep Lowry here longer than he’d like.
The game tips off at 12 on TSN 4 and TSN 1050. You can check out the full game preview here.
Raptors updates
Just how deep are the Raptors? I’ve seen a few graphics lately showing depth by box plus-minus or BPM wins, ranking players relative to other teams’ depth charts, and so on. And those are cool, illustrating how deep the Raptors run even if you don’t understand the underlying math. There’s an even simpler way to show how incredibly deep the Raptors have been, though. The table below shows the team’s Net Rating (how much they outscore opponents per-100 possessions) with a player on the court and with a player on the bench.
See that chunky olive middle? That’s basically showing that the Raptors are performing close to the same with those key pieces on or off the floor. Only OG Anunoby and Fred VanVleet stand out as major positives and only C.J. Miles and Norman Powell stand out as negatives. With the way head coach Dwane Casey has staggered his starters and empowered the second unit to play as a fivesome, the Raptors are seeing little slippage almost no matter who, individually, is on the court. That’s a profound impact from the team’s depth.
Obviously, there are other byproducts. Kyle Lowry’s minutes are down, Serge Ibaka can take occasional nights off, and Miles can take his time nursing a sore knee back to health. Miles has missed three consecutive games here, and the team seems to be in no rush to push him back on the court. Nor should they – Powell is finally playing well again in his absence, and Miles is a veteran they need healthy for the playoffs. Miles is questionable here, but with the early start time, maybe the Raptors give him another game.
Check back before tip-off for confirmation.
UPDATE: Miles will return.
PG: Kyle Lowry, Delon Wright, Fred VanVleet
SG: DeMar DeRozan, Norman Powell
SF: OG Anunoby, C.J. Miles, Alfonzo McKinnie
PF: Serge Ibaka, Pascal Siakam
C: Jonas Valanciunas, Jakob Poeltl, Lucas Nogueira
OUT: None
TBD: None
905: Malcolm Miller, Bruno Caboclo, Lorenzo Brown
Grizzlies updates
The Grizzlies are in pretty terrible shape. It’s hard not to feel at least a little bad for them, given that their window probably isn’t super wide open and they’re going to miss the playoffs for the first time in eight years, without many clear ways of hitting the reset button (until the offseason, anyway). Mike Conley, Mario Chalmers, and Chandler Parsons are all on the shelf injured, and the team’s pulled Tyreke Evans from games ahead of the trade deadline, looking to find him a new home.
All of those injuries have a small silver lining in that Memphis is finding out what it has with a number of young players. Andrew Harrison is getting full-time run at point guard, Wayne Selden. Jr. and Dillon Brooks look like legitimately good finds, Jarell Martin is finally getting the chance to translate some of his G League success regularly, and on a given night, the Grizzlies seem to get a boost from a different youth in support of Marc Gasol. In fact, the youths without Gasol have been even more impressive – Gasol owns a minus-5.3 net rating and the Grizzlies have actually outscored opponents with a plus-2.4 net rating when he sits.
Of Memphis’ primary lineups, none have played much together. In fact, Memphis has only one fivesome that’s played even 100 minutes together this year and none that have played 200. The projected starters have only played 37 minutes (minus-26.8), and that’s their most-used lineup that has all five members available Sunday. It’s a brave new rotation every night out.
UPDATE: Despite being on the game notes as out, Mario Chalmers is playing.
PG: Andrew Harrison, Mario Chalmers
SG: Wayne Selden Jr., Ben McLemore
SF: Dillon Brooks, James Ennis
PF: Jarell Martin, JaMychal Green, Ivan Rabb
C: Marc Gasol, Deyonta Davis, Brandan Wright
OUT: Mike Conley, Chandler Parsons, Tyreke Evans
TBD: None
Memphis: Kobi Simmons, Myke Henry
Assorted
- Raptors 905 are back off the road for a home game Monday that should include all four of the usual assignees. Only Alfonzo McKinnie is with the Raptors as of this writing, and he’s expected to be assigned after this afternoon’s game.
- Toronto and Ottawa will host Canada’s FIBA World Cup 2019 qualifiers for the June-July segment of the schedule. Canada will host Dominican Republic on June 29 at Ricoh Coliseum and then host U.S. Virgin Islands on July 2 at TD Place. Canada’s next qualifiers go in February in the Bahamas.
- Late reminder: The University Line on the TTC is down for the weekend, so your trip in to the ACC could be more difficult.
The Giants of Africa documentary is being released Tuesday. Really can't recommend it strongly enough.
— Blake Murphy (@BlakeMurphyODC) February 4, 2018
The line
The Raptors are mammoth 11-point favorites with a 208 over-under.
