The playoffs are a time for misinformation, or a lack of information altogether. We know that between games, especially with multi-day breaks, head coaches are going to look at every available option to try to gain even fractions of points of additional edge. Schemes, lineups, rotations, everything is on the table at all times, because it would be negligent to leave a single stone unturned. Everyone knows this, and nobody denies it.
There are two different ways for coaches to approach the chess match that can only be private until the ball is rolled in for Game 3 on Friday. For Washington Wizards coach Scott Brooks, that’s meant throwing out a number of potential ideas as adjustments. Nothing he’s said is inaccurate – he very likely is considering a lot of different options – but the flippancy with which he throws suggestions out can come across as intentional misinformation. Then again, he laid it on pretty thick ahead of Game 2 that Ty Lawson would be an adjustment (in reading the tea leaves, I said as much in my pre-game notes), and so maybe he’s being earnest. It’s not as if the Toronto Raptors aren’t aware of Brooks’ options, anyway.
For this particular game, Brooks has suggested he could look to go small. Jonas Valanciunas played Marcin Gortat off of the floor in Game 1, Ian Mahinmi does not appear to be someone the Wizards trust for big minutes, and a Markieff Morris-Mike Scott frontcourt is the type of smaller, spacier look with enough playmaking that’s given the Raptors some trouble in the past.
“When they come out with the small lineup, it’s just a different kind of challenge,” Jakob Poeltl said at practice Thursday. “It opens up the paint for them, because they can stretch the floor. It’s tough for me as a big guy to find the balance between how much am I staying out with the shooters and how much am I helping at the rim. John Wall driving downhill is a problem. That’s really what it’s about for us, to figure out defensively, and provide help wherever we can. Maybe we make the paint a bit tighter at the top with the nail help.”
Brooks referred to Scott, who has been red hot shooting the ball in the series and seemingly every time he’s ever played Toronto, as a potential starting center after Game 2. It would be a bold move, and it’s one the Raptors shouldn’t fear – Valanciunas feasted when there wasn’t a center opposite him, and the Raptors’ small-ball lineups with Serge Ibaka at center have been similarly effective in the series (and all season). If the Wizards zig, Toronto should just do them.
“Our mindset as a team: Use that advantage,” Valanciunas said. “They’re small then we pound the glass, punch inside, screen-and-roll, which is working for us. Just use as advantage. They try to use it as their advantage, we’re doing the same thing.”
The other side of the adjustment coin is to give no information at all, and that’s the tact Dwane Casey took in fielding questions about Washington’s potential tweaks, among other things. Casey skews on the more coy side in general (especially with starting lineups and injury updates), and while there’s less of a real competitive advantage to that in the information age, there’s also no value in giving things away.
“We’ll see,” Casey said. “We are not going to announce how we are going to play in certain situations…I see that we got to do a better job of getting to Morris and getting to Scott and challenging their shot and taking up space.”
How Toronto will respond if Washington goes small, then, will remain a question – the starting five are the only unit the Raptors have used heavily in the series (37 minutes, no other group with more than five), and their dominance would seem to make them a safe bet to continue against any five the Wizards roll out. Most of the adjustments would likely come on the tactical plain and with how Casey staggers his transitional lineups. He just won’t show as much until he has to.
Notes
- Fred VanVleet is still considered day-to-day. There was no update provided on what he’s been able to do in practice, and he’s not technically listed on the injury report yet. It’s possible that changes in the morning, or that the Raptors leave him active and don’t use him, or just that he’s fully good to go. More on this in the final section below.
- You still have a few weeks to apply for the Raptors’ Wayne Embry Fellowship.
- You can vote for DeRozan’s dunk on Anthony Tolliver in the NBA’s Dunk of the Year voting by going to NBA.com or using #DunkOfTheYear DeMar DeRozan.
- For the first time since LeBron James was in Miami, he is not currently favored to reach the NBA Finals. The favorite would be your Toronto Raptors, who are 5:4 to win the conference and have bumped to third (17:2) in NBA Championship odds. While there’s a lot that goes into oddsmaking than just the probabilistic outcome, I can’t imagine Vegas is shading a line here and risking taking damage in the form of heavy Cleveland payouts just to make a statement about the Raptors or enticing additional action. The Raptors are the legitimate favorite.
- Asked Wednesday about the shift in role from perennial underdog, Dwane Casey offered the following: “Very comfortable. That’s kind of the growth process of our program. A few years ago, we had to have that mentality, that chip on our shoulder mentality, or else. So we’re growing, I think our guys are developing a mental toughness that you have to have to be the favorite. And there’s gonna be situations, I don’t know who’s gonna have us favoured. I think our guys are very comfortable in that role, I’m comfortable in that role as far as having the mental toughness to be the favorite. Again, it’s not so much how I feel, it’s how our players feel, and I think they’ve grown into that mentality. I think it coincides with the growth and establishing ourselves as a top seed of the conference.”
- The Raptors are still slight betting underdogs for Game 3 as of right now.
Self-Promotion/Links
- Over at The Athletic, I went inside Fred VanVleet’s frustrating week working his way back from injury.
- A little outside of the Raptors box, I wrote about Otto Porter for Dime Magazine at Uproxx, talking to him about the lessons he learned guarding DeMar DeRozan in 2014-15 and how he’ll need to apply them now that the Wizards are down 0-2 in the rematch.
- This isn’t self-promotion, but you should definitely read Arden Zwelling’s Big Read on Pascal Siakam.
- Zach Lowe also shows some love to Dwane Casey and Delon Wright in his piece today.
- I’ll be posting some updates/quotes/T-shirt news/etc regularly on my Instagram story throughout the playoffs.
- I’ll be hosting a Reddit AMA at 6 p.m. over at R/torontoraptors.
