Raptors have their guys
SCOTT STINSON
TORONTO — Dwane Casey said the same thing about his Toronto Raptors lineup after one of the many puzzling playoff losses last year as he did after a win: “These are our guys.”
An offseason later, those are still his guys. Kyle Lowry is back as the team leader/bulldog, and DeMar DeRozan is his wingman, although having signed a new contract in the summer he is now as rich as a pharaoh. The two all-stars, having spent part of the offseason in Rio de Janeiro as members of the goldmedal winning Team USA, remain the Raptors’ cornerstones, which is good for a franchise that has historically had trouble hanging on to its stars.
But, good is a relative term. With all of their key elements returning, with the exception of free-agent departure Bismack Biyombo, the Raptors will be good enough to win a lot of games again, coming off a season in which they smashed the franchise record with 56 victories. They will be good enough to win at least a round in the playoffs, which doesn’t sound like much, but prior to last season the Raptors had only ever won one playoff series in their history. After their appearance in the conference finals last spring, that we are granting them at least a perfunctory round-one win says a lot about how far the Raptors have come. The question is no longer whether a team built around Lowry and DeRozan is good enough to win in the playoffs: it did, twice.
But, good enough to take the next step? That one is tougher to answer.
As the Raptors wobbled their way through the playoffs last year, dropping home games to Indiana and then Miami as they needed all seven tries to get four wins in each of the first two rounds, they often looked like a team that was bumping up against its ceiling. DeRozan, who had turned into an efficient regular-season scorer by shooting a lot and drawing a lot of fouls, struggled to get calls in the playoffs and had a number of terrible shooting nights. Lowry shot the ball poorly on many playoff nights as well, leading to a difficult conclusion: in a star-driven league, perhaps Toronto’s stars weren’t good enough. Winning two rounds, and then a couple of games against the eventual-champion Cleveland Cavaliers, pushed those questions aside, but as a new season starts they remain: how far can Lowry and DeRozan take the Raptors?
For Casey, who deployed the these-are-our-guys mantra last spring even as his guys were clanking shot after shot, it’s a matter of developing some extra options. “We have to say, ‘OK, they’re taking Kyle out, taking DeMar out, somebody else has to step in’,” the coach said in an interview.
The most obvious candidate is Jonas Valanciunas, the seven-foot centre who overpowered Indiana in the first round before an ankle injury against Miami derailed his playoffs. DeMarre Carroll, who battled injuries after arriving as a big-dollar free agent from Atlanta and never really got his offensive game rolling, could also be that third option, as could Terrence Ross, the talented swingman who hurt himself in training camp on a 360-degree dunk attempt, which is pretty much the perfect Terrence Ross injury.
Talk of having bigger contributions from some of the lesser Raptors, though, sounds a bit like addressing a leaky roof by fixing the windows. If this team is going to improve on last year’s postseason run, it doesn’t need a better third or fourth option, it needs better first and second options.
Lowry shot 39 per cent from the field in the playoffs and just 30 per cent from three-point range, both steep declines from his regularseason totals. DeRozan was also below 40 per cent from the field, and he managed just six free-throw attempts per game, half of his regular-season standard. Injuries were a factor — Lowry had a bum elbow and DeRozan hurt his thumb — as was, probably, fatigue, but Casey says the Raptors have no plans to nurse their stars through the regular season in hopes of keeping them fresh for the playoffs. He points to the advantage gained by having the second-best record in the East last season, which gave Toronto two Game 7s at home, both wins. If he went the San Antonio route and limited the minutes of his best players, they could end up losing home court in the playoffs. “We’re not going to lose games just to save [Lowry and DeRozan],” Casey says.
And so, welcome to the new season, which is a lot like the old season. Casey, and his boss, GM Masai Ujiri, have said many times that they value continuity, and that this is a slow, deliberate build of a winning culture, even if it took a sudden leap forward last season.
“We’re still a growing program,” Casey says. This is why Ujiri settled on bringing Casey back even before the playoff success, and bringing back DeRozan despite his limitations. They think this group can take another step forward. It will be on Lowry and DeRozan, mostly, to prove them right.