It’s turning out to be a really fun year to be a Raptors fan.
After winning a championship in June of 2019, the Raptors entered the 2019-20 season with more questions than answers. It turns out they’re still really good, currently sitting at 22-11 in fourth in the East, and they have earned a lot of respect around the league.
This has been the most frustrating part of Raptors Twitter this season. Stop acting like this is a transition season because Kawhi left. The Raps are 22-11 after losing 113 man games to injury. They are very good and have a chance to come out the East https://t.co/NRMDZgWP9Y
— Oren Weisfeld (@OrenWeisfeld) December 30, 2019
Since losing Pascal Siakam, Marc Gasol, and Norman Powell to injuries on December 18th, the Raptors are 3-3, led by their point guard Kyle Lowry who, at 33 years of age, is playing some of the best basketball of his life.
This upcoming week is going to be a huge test for the short-handed Raptors who will play both the Heat and Nets on the road. If they can come out of it with momentum, however, it should get easier as January goes along.
Here is a breakdown of the Raptors upcoming schedule:
- Tuesday, December 31st at 7:00pm: Cleveland Cavaliers (10-22) @ Toronto Raptors
- Thursday, January 2nd at 7:30pm: Toronto Raptors @ Miami Heat (24-8)
- Saturday, January 4th at 6:00pm: Toronto Raptors @ Brooklyn Nets (16-15)
- Combined winning percentage of 52.6
1. The big picture
When three of your best and most important players go down with injury at the same time, all you can hope for is that it comes during a point in the schedule that is relatively easy. For the Raptors, who lost Pascal Siakam, Marc Gasol, and Norman Powell on December 18th for undisclosed amounts of time, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
The short-handed version of the team has already had to play the Dallas Mavericks, Indiana Pacers, Boston Celtics (twice), and Oklahoma City Thunder, and will have to go up against the Miami Heat and Brooklyn Nets this week, both on the road.
As of this morning, the Raptors are still in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race, 1.5 games back of Boston and 2.5 games back of Miami. They are heading into a very important and difficult week, and part of the reason it’s so important is because it’s so difficult. The games against Miami and Brooklyn on the road with this thin roster are going to be a real challenge, but winning even one out of two (assuming they beat the Cavaliers because they’re the Cavaliers) would be a blessing.
The Raptors want to be cautious about bringing their injured players back instead of rushing them, and they can do that as long as they stay in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race like they are now.
It’s important that the Raptors gain some confidence and momentum this week as they head into January because the Raptors schedule in January is somewhat of a joke. Sure, they will still be short-handed so no win is going to come easily, but the Raptors organization has proven to beat sub .500 teams regularly, even with injuries, and they will see a lot of those teams in January. Aside from one home game against the Philadelphia 76ers on January 22, the Raptors upcoming schedule after this week looks like this: Trail Blazers, @Hornets, Spurs, @Thunder, Wizards, @Timberwolves, @Hawks, @Knicks, @Spurs, Hawks, @Caveliers, @Pistons, and Bulls. That isn’t exactly a scary stretch, and it takes us to February 2nd.
The Raptors need to get through this week and they will be blessed with one of the easiest stretches in their schedule. Continue playing above .500 basketball until February, when we can assume the Raptors will be healthy again, and the Raptors will be right where they want to be: in a battle for home-court advantage in the playoffs.
2. Kyle Lowry’s intangibles
It feels like Kyle Lowry is finally getting his due.
It’s about time, really, considering the point guard has led the Raptors to their best stretch in franchise history over the past seven years, helping turn around the organization from a joke to one of the best in all sports. In fact, from 2014-2019, the Raptors rank fourth in the league with 321 wins and a winning percentage of 65.2. But it took until Lowry becoming the undisputed leader of a young team for a lot of basketball fans to realize just how important he is to the Raptors organization, both in terms of tangible box scores and intangible leadership qualities.
It’s not as if all the winning has come about purely because of Lowry, but in order to be an elite organization, you need a stabilizing player that sets the culture. Lowry is that guy in Toronto, and he has never embraced that role more than he is right now.
You hear a lot of talk about Damian Lillard and Steph Curry being the best leaders in the NBA — guys who put the team above themselves and help create a winning culture — but Lowry is often missing from that conversation. Hopefully that changes after this season, as Lowry is playing the best basketball of his career at a time when the Raptors desperately need him to. Leonard is gone, and so is Siakam for the near-future, which means Lowry is both the Raptors No. 1 option and the team’s undisputed leader, and it is rare that a guy thrives doing both.
As Katie Heindle wrote for Uproxx,
“Lowry has learned what it means to adjust in real time, to leverage his experience for longterm team development and other times, like now, to know when it’s just time to triage. In many ways, he has never been better prepared for such an unfortunate string of injuries to befall his team, nor could the Raptors hope for a better emergency responder.”
Outside of role players, Lowry is the only key figure to step up during this stretch of injuries to Siakam, Gasol, and Powell. He might be playing the best basketball of his career and is showing extreme confidence shooting the ball and finding his big men for easy buckets. The game just seems to move slower for Lowry, and his teammates are benefiting.
Kyle Lowry has stepped up since Pascal Siakam's injury.
26.4 PPG
5.2 RPG
8.6 APG
48.9 FG%
42.9 3P% on 9.8 attempts pic.twitter.com/W2L9UDscTc— StatMuse (@statmuse) December 29, 2019
Lowry has helped foster an organizational culture that revolves around winning, and his leadership goes far beyond what he does on the court. These upcoming weeks will be another test for the 33-year-old point guard; another test he will likely pass.
3. OG and Freddie V
I’ve written in the past about how important OG Anunoby and Fred VanVleet are to the success of the 2019-20 Raptors, and that’s even truer now.
With such a depleted roster, Anunoby and VanVleet have a real opportunity to take advantage of. However, in the six games Siakam, Gasol, and Powell have been out, both players have been somewhat unreliable and seem to be forcing their game instead of letting the offense come to them.
Defensively, both Anunoby and VanVleet have been great for the most part. VanVleet leads the Raptors in steals and Anunoby guards the best perimeter player most nights, so there isn’t much to critique on that end.
However, the offensive side of the floor is where the two players have struggled of late, often making bad decisions that lead to turnovers or just putting up low-percentage shows early in the shot clock. It makes sense given that this is the first time in their careers that each has had so much offensive responsibility, and there are naturally growing pains associated with that, but if the Raptors are going to stay afloat amid these injuries, they need Anunoby and VanVleet to provide some scoring so that it doesn’t all fall on Lowry.
In the last six games, VanVleet is averaging 19.0 points and 6.5 assists, so there’s no doubt that he can put up numbers. He just isn’t doing it efficiently. VanVleet is shooting just 36.4 percent from the field, and a lot of that is due to poor decision making leading to bad shots. VanVleet often puts his head down and goes to the rim knowing he can beat his man, but he fails to foresee all the help at the rim and proceeds to put up a wild floater or contested layup. He is also averaging 3.2 turnovers per game in this stretch, which isn’t good enough considering he is supposed to be the Raptors second-most reliable option with the ball in his hands.
Anunoby, on the other hand, just isn’t shooting it well and he has often been called for offensive fouls for lowering his shoulder into defenders on the move. Anunoby is averaging just 9.5 points, shooting 16.7 percent from three (hitting 11 of his last 60), and averaging 2.0 turnovers.
This week will be a big test as two of the Raptors three games come on the road against good opponents. Recently, it’s been a bit of a Lowry-plus-bench show, but that can’t continue if the Raptors want to defeat good teams. Their starters will need to step up. Patrick McCaw did so against the Celtics and Thunder, and is playing well with the ball in his hands. It’s time for VanVleet and Anunoby to do the same, because the Raptors will need them to stop turning the ball over and start hitting some timely shots if they want to win on the road.
4. Aggressive defense
Nick Nurse has dialed back the defensive schemes of late, opting not to double team opposing stars as much and instead play a simple man-to-man defense for most of the past six games (with the exception of the fourth quarter against Dallas).
It makes some sense, given that the Raptors still have solid defensive personnel despite all the injuries. Then again, the Raptors always seem to turn up the energy when Nurse draws up aggressive defensive schemes, whether it’s with double-teams, zone, traps, or presses. I, for one, would like to see Nurse and the Raptors dial up the aggression more often and sooner in games. Rather than waiting until the fourth quarter when they are down (like they did against the Celtics on Christmas for a few minutes), I’d like to see Nurse be even more unorthodox and try those aggressive schemes at times when his team is struggling to get back-to-back stops. That can be exhausting, especially for starters like Lowry and VanVleet who play upwards of 35 minutes per game, but the bench players seem to always have energy and could be relied upon more.
This week, the Raptors will be up against Jimmy Butler and the red-hot Miami Heat and Spencer Dinwiddie (averaging 30.6 points over his last five games) and the Brooklyn Nets. The Raptors aren’t going to out-talent either of those teams with this roster, so they better get creative.
Not only do I expect to see regular double-teams being thrown at Butler and Dinwiddie, but I’m also curious if we’ll see some more zone, traps, and full-court presses this upcoming week. It’s not going to work all the time, but if things are already going downhill, why not try it before it’s too late?
5. Oshae Brissett, Chris Boucher, and Terence Davis
My colleague Louis Zatzman just wrote about all the ways Missisauga-native Oshae Brissett is contributing to this Raptors team, and with the size and energy he brings to the table, it’s no surprise to see that he has won Nurse’s trust and a spot in the rotation.
Montreal-native Chris Boucher has also really impressed this season. Although he is still a raw player, Boucher is so long and athletic that he makes guards think twice before trying to finish at the rim if he’s present. He also has a legitimate — albeit unorthodox — three point shot, shooting 33.3 percent on 1.6 attempts this season, most of them above-the-arc. Even at full strength, I expect Boucher to remain in the rotation up until and including the playoffs. He provides a unique combination of rim protection, shooting, and a lob threat like no other Raptor.
Terence Davis, too, should be in the rotation come playoffs. He is averaging 8/2/5 on 50.0 percent shooting and 41.7 percent from behind the arc in 21.7 minutes the last six games with just 0.8 turnovers. He hit two huge three’s in the fourth quarter against the Thunder on Sunday and is never afraid to let it fly. He is also surprisingly good running the pick-and-roll, finding Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Boucher on the roll for easy buckets. Even though Patrick McCaw has been really good the past couple games and has earned a spot in the starting lineup as a more multidimensional defender and playmaker, Davis’ minutes should continue to trend upward if he continues playing with this confidence.
Happy new year everyone!
