Raptors 103, Wizards 122, Raptors lead series 2-1 | Box Score | Quick Reaction | Post-game news & notes | Reaction Podcast
That a playoff series is all about adjustments can cut a couple of ways. Very few teams ever enter expecting to come out with a sweep, as the teams are too good, the psychological factors at play too obvious, and simple variance all conspiring to make four straight victories fairly unlikely. Still, when a loss almost inevitably comes, there needs to be value in it. There are no moral victories in the postseason, but the more a loss can be dissected for useful lessons and areas to adjust and improve, the more it helps the greater cause of winning four of seven. Losing narrowly or losing due to one extreme tactical element isn’t the end of the world, then, even if those losses are gutwrenching. They provide tangible means of prevention the next time out, and they theoretically make your team better.
The Toronto Raptors have been through this in the last few years. Their series against the Milwaukee Bucks stands out most strikingly, with the Raptors eventually “solving” the Bucks’ blitz-heavy approach after a few glaring failures. Head coach Dwane Casey has rightfully earned a reputation as a good between-game adjustment-maker, the Raptors figuring out more often than not the issues that held them back, so long as they weren’t issues stemming from the general existence of LeBron James. For the bulk of the last four postseasons, a Raptors loss could reasonably expected to have adjustments and improvements follow.
The value of the series chess match is stripped away some when a team plays poorly enough to erase the marginal and cloud the usefulness of a lower-leverage sample. Getting run off the floor, in other words, is bad for multiple reasons. Primarily, it suggests poor overall play, which is more concerning than a failure to execute on specific points, or it points to an intangible root cause for the loss, which is far more difficult to diagnose and resolve. After a playoff loss, you want to be able to point to a lineup or a play or a scheme that caused trouble, because that can be ironed out in film work and practice and with experience. It’s a lot tougher to enter a film session or practice with a lengthy list of things a team did wrong or, in the case of the Raptors on Friday, an explanation that largely amounts to just getting hit early, losing your composure, and never stabilizing from there.
“Your hat has to go off to Washington. They came out and punched us and we allowed them to,” Casey said. “Nineteen turnovers, they shoot 55 percent, that’s the ball game. Some of it was self-inflicted, making passes that weren’t there, soft passes. Again, a lot of it was their intensity.”
The worst part about the Raptors turning in a lackluster effort in a 122-103 loss to the Washington Wizards is that they talked for days about knowing this was coming. The Raptors took a 2-0 series lead, and a somewhat fragile Wizards outfit that plays extremely well at home in the playoffs would be desperate. And it showed, with Washington weathering an early storm, wrestling – almost literally – control of the game away, and then not only cruising to the finish line but parading about it on their way.
“The biggest thing was we were down 2-0. If that’s not a wake-up call in itself, we don’t deserve to be here,” Bradley Beal said. “Everybody was locked in from shootaround, the last couple of days, actually. Even after we lost Game 2 everybody was pretty much locked in. We came out tonight with an edge about ourselves.”
The Raptors got out to a solid enough start, taking an eight-point lead early on thanks to some dialed-in defense and some great play from rookie OG Anunoby, who was probably the team’s best player on the night. Washington’s resolve showed early with Anunoby and Markieff Morris (and later Serge Ibaka) getting into it, with Anunoby and Morris receiving matching technical fouls. Ibaka dished a pair of early assists to help set a ball-movement tone, Jonas Valanciunas shook off a tough first few possessions to outplay Marcin Gortat and drive on him for an excellent dunk, and the Wizards were on their heels midway through the quarter.
Trouble set in from there. The Raptors coughed up a pair of sloppy turnovers out of a Wizards timeout, helping to get John Wall moving in transition, which would prove to be a problem all night. The Wizards have more fun running, and Wall seems to read the game at a higher level the faster it’s being played. It also makes for scrambled defense and cross-matching, which gives Beal opportunity to feast amid the confusion. It didn’t quite get to that point until the sides turned to their respective star-and-bench units, with Beal’s heavily outplaying a DeMar DeRozan-led group and the Wizards going on a 12-0 run toward the end of the quarter fueled largely by turnovers and some excellent play from Kelly Oubre. DeRozan was able to answer a big Beal three by finding Jakob Poeltl on a spinning dump-off, and even that only kept the Raptors within one, their early lead squandered entirely.
“They went on a 13-2 run in like a two minute span and that helped them get going,” Kyle Lowry said. “Oubre and (Ian) Mahinmi gave them some energy and Beal got some open transition threes. They played well tonight. We knew they were going to come back and be aggressive and protect their home. We kind of lost our focus a little bit.”
Toronto never quite found its footing again. They knew adjustments were coming from the Wizards on defense, and they must have guessed wrong on the specifics. A more switch-heavy approach that was lighter on hard traps should play into the hands of Lowry and DeRozan, especially given what they’d shown the last two games. Instead, Lowry looked tentative all night, even with his threes falling, and it resulted in him setting a poor tone and forcing a number of uncharacteristically bad passes that were usually picked off. The Raptors can point to the Wizards’ increased aggression borne from that switchy approach, and the Wizards would probably concede (quietly) that the Raptors did them a lot of favors, too. The Wizards ran freely in transition, Toronto’s bench once again offered little in support, and Casey had to go to his starters much earlier than normal in the second. It did little, with a 10-2 counter-punch mostly erased close to half by Wall sticking a number of mid-range jumpers.
“We didn’t take care of the ball at all, and that was the game,” DeRozan said. “They fed off that. They got out in transition, and they’re at their best, and it killed us. We gotta understand they’re going to come out aggressive and play passing lanes and be more physical. That’s what they did and we wasn’t prepared for it and next thing you know we’ve got 10 turnovers.”
Wall and Beal combined for 40 points and 10 assists in the half, and Toronto’s 13 turnovers led to 22 Wizards points. That let an initially underwhelming crowd get into the game, too, and an eight-point deficit for the Raptors at halftime almost seemed merciful given how poorly they’d played.
“Well it helps being home with our crowd. That gives anybody a big boost and we all need it,” Scott Brooks said. “Sometimes as a player, you’re not making shots, no matter how confident they are [and] sometimes you do get down. You don’t want to not play well. Sometimes, your home court can give you a big hug, and I thought that was a big part of our win tonight.”
How hot Wall managed to get in the half really disrupted how Toronto tried to defend him, and they got away from inviting those mid-range looks that are generally very inefficient for Wall. The Raptors are better equipped to drop back against fast point guards, even if the semi-open elbow jumpers can be frustrating. Trying a more straightforward approach gave Wall far too much freedom to get into the middle of the floor and pick off his bigs with passes, and he’d finish the game with a gargantuan 58.3-percent assist rate to go along with the 56 points he and Beal combined to put up. Whatever Toronto does in Game 4 with the ball in Wall’s hands, it will have to be dramatically different, whether it’s sending extra help to the paint off of shooters or living with his mid-range game, because this grew untenable in a hurry.
“When they play at that level, they’re really good,” Lowry said. “They’re both All-Star talents. Brad got off and play well, John got his self going. Gortat got some easy ones, Mike Scott got easy ones. But John and Brad are the heads of the snake, and we’ve got to cut them off.”
Frustration mounted for the visiting side, and it led to another heated moment after Beal was given a technical foul for trying to rip a dead ball from Valanciunas. It ended with Wall and Ibaka getting matching technicals – maybe Ibaka’s biggest contribution to the game following two really strong ones – and what followed was pretty unbecoming of a Raptors team that isn’t supposed to unravel anymore. Washington’s lead swelled to 16, there was a brief push from the DeRozan-and-bench group, and then Ty Lawson hit a buzzer-beating three to give Washington a commanding 19-point edge entering the fourth.
“You know, it’s kinda, kinda let down on that one,” Valanciunas said. “They were celebrating, they were hyped up, they were playing hard, they were doing it all and we kinda, I don’t know, lost our momentum. Now we’ve just gotta learn from this. Now we know what to expect on Sunday, how they’re going to play at home. Just gotta not repeat the same mistake.”
Casey was low on options without Fred VanVleet and with most of the bench playing poorly in the first half, and his efforts to find a spike proved fruitless here. Lucas Nogueira got a look, they tried Pascal Siakam at center with four smalls around him, and they played Lorenzo Brown the entirety of the fourth. Toronto chipped at the deficit briefly but Washington opted not to play any lineups without a star, Lowry picked up a bad fifth foul, and after an 11-3 run got them within 13, they promptly folded for good.
The benches emptied around the three-minute mark, and Toronto hadn’t done enough to at least dissuade some of the confidence that was palpably growing on the Washington side all game. That, as much as anything else, is the concerning part – the Wizards had some real swagger to them by the end of the game, and that’s potentially dangerous if this group starts believing in themselves. More so, though, it’s that the Raptors have no means of getting granular for solutions here. They did most everything wrong, playing porous defense, handing Washington endless transition opportunities, and completely getting away from their identity as a composed team that just doesn’t get blown out. In fact, this was their first loss that wasn’t within five points in the final five minutes since the 2017 calendar year. And the reasons were wholly predictable.
“We knew they were going to come out in a desperate mode,” Casey said. “I thought we met it in the first quarter but after that, we didn’t. This is going to be a mentally tough battle. Nothing in this league is easy on the way to get to the next phase of the playoffs. We know that, they punched us, now we have to go back and regroup and make some adjustments and understand the level of toughness we have to play with to be successful in the playoffs.”
The Raptors were almost surely going to drop a game in this series. Few picked a sweep, and there was not convincing evidence from the first two games that this would be easy. There is plenty of time left, plenty of room to respond, and plenty to still be confident about. A lot of what was wrong here was within their power to fix. They could have at least made it difficult for Washington, and the inability to even parry the Wizards’ punch will serve to make Game 4 that much tougher on Sunday.
