Offensive movement stalls at Staples
PHOENIX— It was a pass DeMar DeRozan probably wouldn’t have even contemplated for the bulk of his career.
Watching DeRozan drive baseline early in Monday night’s game at the Staples Center, it was easy to cast back to a time when he mostly saw the floor through self-imposed tunnel vision. It was DeRozan’s self-made facility for scoring, from the field and from the free-throw line, that defined his NBA rise and made him millions. Relentless aggressiveness, combined with world-class craftiness in the arts of drawing fouls and draining mid-range jumpers, turned DeRozan into an all-star.
But on Monday night, like a lot of nights this season, DeRozan sized up a reasonably attractive baseline scoring option and chose, instead, to share the ball. Jonas Valanciunas was open for a short jump shot in the lane. DeRozan fed the big man. The big man bounced one off the rim and in.
Just like that, Toronto’s new offence, with its emphasis on faster-paced ball movement, was justifying the raves it had earned in the lead-up to the game from Clippers coach Doc Rivers.
“(Raptors coach Dwane Casey) should get amazing credit,” Rivers said before Monday’s game. “Because it’s easy to stay where you’re at and just keep winning. And (the Raptors) won a lot of games. They clearly (weren’t) going to win the East with the way they were playing.
“But to change is one thing. To get your players to change is a whole other thing.”
All the kind words weren’t worth much to Casey in the wake of Monday’s 96-91 loss to Rivers’ injury-depleted squad. Playing the second leg of back-to-back games, the Raptors showed an ugly glimpse of their former selves in the loss’s late stages, when DeRozan and Kyle Lowry often took turns with the ball in isolation while the L.A. defence successfully loaded up for stop after stop.
If the circumstances were hardly playoff-esque — this was Star Wars Night in December against a Clippers team that isn’t expected to sniff the post-season — the late-game outcome was at least slightly reminiscent of Toronto’s maddening offensive stall-outs of post-seasons past.
The Raptors will try and get it right here on Wednesday night, when they conclude a four-game road swing against the Suns.
“We were moving the ball (earlier in the game). And then somehow, some way, we stopped doing it,” Casey said after Monday’s disappointment.
“Their second unit came in and changed the game, changed the tempo. And we continued not moving the basketball. We’ve got to continue to do that. We’ve got to be a ball-moving team.”
Twenty-five games into the season, Casey sounded like a man who understood he will need to keep preaching the virtues of Toronto’s new approach for the 25 games to come, and the 25 after that, and probably beyond. Not that Monday’s failure should be taken as a sign that all is lost — far from it.
But Toronto’s late-game discombobulation in the face of the Clippers’ on-ball blitzes certainly was a telling look into the ever-present possibility that, when the fourth quarter arrives and the defensive pressure rises, DeRozan and Lowry will be tempted to revert to their old ways.
“We’ve got to learn from it,” Lowry acknowledged. “The world is not ending, it’s just one loss. And we’ve got to continue to learn from it.”
When you listened to Casey acknowledge how pushing change on his team hasn’t been without strife this season, it was easy to come away with the impression that the tweaks to the game plan remain an ongoing negotiation. Lowry and DeRozan, by virtue of the fact they’re earning a combined $53 million this season, hold a substantial chunk of the power in the relationship. So the transformation, let’s be clear, is taking place very much on their terms.
“Selling them, it was a challenge. Those two guys were all-stars. They were Olympians. ‘So why do we need to change, coach? One on one, I’m one of the best in the league going one on one,’ ” Casey said before Monday’s game.
“But Kyle understands, and DeMar understands that for us to go — and to keep teams from keying on them and taking them out once (the playoffs arrive and) you have time to prepare for a week — they understood that.
“They’re smart players. It’s nothing to take away from their game. The challenge was there.”
The challenge is worth continuing to pursue. The Raptors, after all, have been terrific when they’ve embraced a more inclusive style of play. And when they haven’t — like Monday, when they combined for just one assist in a stagnant fourth quarter — it’s been noticeable.
The Raptors finished last in the league in assists per game last season with 18.5. This year they’ve leapfrogged into sixth place with 23.2. So it’s not surprising that they’ve compiled a 1-5 win-loss record in contests in which they’ve tallied 18 or fewer assists as a team. They finished with precisely 18 assists in Monday’s loss.
Stats don’t tell the whole story, of course. Monday’s game was another example of DeRozan’s willing overhaul of his approach. He finished with eight assists. It was the seventh straight game in which DeRozan has been credited with five or more assists, the longest such streak of his NBA career. The Raptors are 13-2 in games in which DeRozan has dished out five or more assists this season. So chalk up Monday’s loss to tired legs or bad luck or the underuse of Jonas Valanciunas, who probably deserved a few more late touches on a night that saw him go 8-for-10 from the field.
Big picture, the offensive trend is promising.
“I think in some ways it’s made DeRozan tougher to guard,” Rivers said before Monday’s game. “Because they’re striking so quick. You can’t load up on him. He’s beating you in transition. And now he’s making plays. I think he’s just become that much better.”
Whether or not DeRozan and the Raptors are that much better in crunch time — well, Monday’s game suggested Casey will need to continue to preach beyond the day his new message sounds old.
“It’s been fun. Doing something new, it’s been fun for us as a coaching staff. It’s been fun for me to do something different,” Casey said. “And I think in the long run it’s going to be fun for (DeRozan and Lowry), once they get comfortable.”