Gameday: Raptors @ Heat, Jan. 17

Before we go any further, there’s no Kyle Lowry in this one.

The reunion many were hoping for will only be with the hyper-competitive Jimmy Butler and the low-body-fat-laden #Heatmafia. Perhaps we’ll see the ‘GROAT’ on January 29th, but definitely not today.

Maybe most importantly the Raptors will engage in another game of: “can they contain the big man” and the opposing participant is none other than Omer Yurtseven. Yurtseven is averaging 13 points and 13 boards over his last 11 games (10 of them starts), a streak of games where the Heat are 8-3. His offensive rebounding numbers look very similar to Justin Champagnie’s in that there’s a lot of them. The Raptors are going to have to find the middle ground between keeping Yurtseven off the glass, away from the bucket, and tracking Butler and Tyler Herro as they look to initiate offense and pour in buckets.

For their part, the Raptors will be looking to steamroll the Heat’s top-10 defense with their (very nearly) top-10 offense. An interesting wrinkle for this game is the fact that the Heat have a similar wrinkle to the Raptors in that they pull off the sides and plug the middle to keep teams out of the paint. They’re the best at it in the NBA, and the lone team holding opponents to under 40 paint points a night. Given the Raptors struggles as of late to tease outside shooting out of their ancillary options, the Heat seem primed to unleash their defensive scheme to it’s full extent.

We could very well see a lot of Pascal Siakam initiating to prioritize spacing with Fred VanVleet and OG Anunoby off-ball. Or, the Raptors could trust in their role players, hold fast to VanVleet as the primary initiator, and expect regression to the mean on those jumpers. I guess we’ll see.

The other opposing aspects of these teams is the fact that the Raptors are one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the NBA, and the Heat are really good at closing out defensive possessions. That, plus the Raptors being a heavy usage transition team, and the Heat struggling a little bit to defend both after steals and after rebounds. Push the pace, see what breaks.