‘You gotta make buckets’
Same old questions plague Raptors as they prepare to take on Antetokounmpo, and the Bucks
TORONTO — DeMar DeRozan was asked what his Toronto Raptors had gotten out of their playoff experiences so far, on the eve of their fourth crack at it.
“Damn near everything,” he said.
He’s not far off. There was the humiliating sweep at the hands of the Washington Wizards two years ago and the two seven-game series last year that were each packed with highs and lows. There were times against Indiana and Miami at which the Raptors looked about to succumb meekly, and times at which they ran their opponents off the floor. Lessons were learned.
Lastly, there was the Eastern Conference finals against Cleveland, which was mostly a learning experience on how to get thumped gracefully.
Throughout it all, the Raptors answered many questions about themselves. Just when it appeared that a team led by Kyle Lowry and DeRozan might not be good enough to produce in the post-season, when the pressure is higher and the opponents tougher, they managed to finally win the first seven-game series in franchise history. And then they did it again.
This season brought even more answers. They started strong, staggered around like a drunk on a cruise ship in the middle of the season and then sobered up late, thanks in large part to the addition of defence-first types in Serge Ibaka and P.J. Tucker. They even learned to win without Lowry, which was a feat for a team that often looked lost on the court without him.
And yet, despite how much more is known about the Raptors today than at this point a year ago, the key question heading into their first-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks comes down to the same old boring thing: Will they hit their shots?
Or, as coach Dwane Casey put it: “At the end of the day, you gotta make buckets. It doesn’t matter who it is, I said it this year when we were second or whatever in the league, it’s a make-or-miss league.”
That this is something that Casey says all the time — it is basketball’s version of hockey’s “take away their time and space” — does not make it untrue. Last year, against a Pacers team that had Paul George and not a whole lot else, the Raptors missed at shocking levels. Lowry and DeRozan each shot 32% from the field — that’s with the benefit of rounding up — and Lowry hit just seven three-pointers over seven games. He hit 16% of his threepoint attempts against Indiana, which is about the rate you’d expect if you pulled someone from the stands and asked them to hit the long ball. The whole team shot just 28% from distance against the Pacers, and the strangest part of that performance was that the Raptors had a lot of open looks. Halfway through that series, after Indiana had drilled Toronto to even it at 2-2, the Raptors were shooting 25% on wide-open threes — those with a defender no closer than six feet away. That is how you struggle to beat an inferior team.
So, the Bucks. They have a fabulous player in Giannis Antetokounmpo, who leads them in everything, and then a bunch of good-to-serviceable guys, which sounds a lot like last year’s Pacers team.
It’s not entirely like 2016 over again, though. Ibaka and Tucker haven’t just stiffened the Raptors’ defence, they are also capable shooters who could be called upon if the Bucks load up on DeRozan and Lowry. Casey says there is no doubt that DeRozan, having played a long stretch without Lowry, is better equipped to distribute the ball, which would be a sea change from the last playoffs, when he was determined to keep shooting even as the shots weren’t falling. He was proud of emptying the clip, as he said, although his sights were crooked.
But, this is the funny thing about this team, after all the playoff experience and all the changes — trades in which management gambled that this version of the Raptors could get back to the East finals and have a fighting chance in it. As much as whatever happens now will greatly inform the future of the franchise, with Lowry and Ibaka both free agents this summer, and with president Masai Ujiri still having to decide whether he wants to lock himself into this roster for the long term, the Raptors have to play to their ability first. They are 13-2 against the Bucks over the past four seasons and 3-1 this year, with the only loss coming when Lowry was hurt. Nothing in their recent history suggests Toronto will make this easy, but the opportunity is there. When Ujiri made those trade-deadline moves, it gave the Raptors the most complete lineup they have ever had. It gave them a roster that should be able to at least slug it out with the reigningchampion Cavaliers, even if that matchup comes a round earlier than it did last year.
But, the Raptors still have to make more than they miss. Over to Casey again: “At the end of the day, when DeMar kicks it out to whoever is on the wing, they’ve got to make the shot.”
That, they do.