Ugly 1-to-won ratio hangs over opener
For runners, once upon a time, it was the four-minute mile. For the Raptors, year after year, it’s Game 1 of the NBA playoffs.
Technically, it’s just a single outing in the grand scope of a post-season series. Mentally, it’s become an ominous barrier the franchise has yet to break through. Toronto’s hardcore, tightlywound basketball fans know all about the ugly numbers. The Raptors, since they first made the playoffs in 2000, have played in nine first-round Game 1s. They’ve won none of them. That’s zero. Zilch. Goose egg.
And as the team prepared for Saturday’s opener against the Washington Wizards — Toronto’s 10th first-round Game 1 — head coach Dwane Casey could offer no easy explanation for their so-far winless ways.
“It’s a phenomenon,” Casey said. “There is always that one hurdle you’ve got to overcome. That’s the major one we’ve got to overcome.”
It’s never been a question about whether the Raptors have been good enough to win their share of these post-season openers. They’ve been the Las Vegas favourite in more than half of them. But like professional baseball players who suddenly forget how to throw a ball or world-class golfers who yip on the simplest of two-foot putts — year after year the Raptors seem to arrive at the opening game and lose themselves in the moment.
“It’s got to be mental more than anything,” Casey said.
The Raptors have been favoured in four of their most recent five first- round Game 1s. They were favoured by 7.5 points last year against Milwaukee. They lost by 14, only to promptly recover and win the series in six. They were favoured by seven points two years ago against Indiana; they got beat by 10, before they eventually bounced back to win that series, too.
As No. 1 seed to Washington’s No. 8, the Raptors are favoured by eight points Saturday, the biggest spread among the Eastern games. And they’re not pretending like they’re not somewhat haunted by their dismal openinggame history.
“We’ve lost a lot of Game 1s, so we’ve gotta play it like a Game 7,” said Kyle Lowry, the all-star guard.
Play it like a Game 7? Genius. At least the Raptors have won a couple of those.
Lowry, of course, has been one of the key reasons why the Raptors have persisted with their maddening playoff-opening losing streak. In four tries in a first-round Game 1, Lowry is shooting a combined 27 per cent from the field. DeMar DeRozan, Lowry’s running mate in all four of those losses, is shooting 29 per cent.
“We’ve just been so uptight in Game 1s,” Lowry acknowledged Friday.
Which is why Casey has attempted to minimize talk about the franchise bugaboo.
“We’ve talked about it, we’ve made a point about it, but I don’t want to overdo it,” said Casey. “I have all the faith in the world we’re going to come out and be the similar team we’ve been in the regular season. That’s the trust we have in our players.”
Lowry and DeRozan, to be fair, aren’t the first Raptor all-stars to suffer this malady. It was 18 years ago this spring that Vince Carter travelled to New York City for the first post-season game in franchise history and promptly melted under Broadway’s bright lights. Carter had averaged 33 points a game against the Knicks in the regular season. He shot a dismal 3 for 20 in Game 1, at one point punching the game ball in a rare act of on-target aggression.
“I wasn’t my normal self,” said Carter after it was over.
That’s been the recurring theme in post-game analysis of playoff-opening botch jobs. A year after Carter spoke those words, the player dubbed Half Man, Half Amazing resembled half an athlete, going 5 for 22 from the field in another firstround Game 1 loss at Madison Square Garden. The next season, when Toronto’s NBAers made a miraculous late-season run to earn a post-season berth with Vinsanity sidelined by injury, coach Lenny Wilkens barely recognized his players when they opened the first round in Detroit by scoring a mere 63 points in a blowout defeat.
“We were, like, in a fog,” Wilkens said after that clunker.
The fog didn’t lift for a firstround Game 1 disappointment against the Nets in 2007 — the infamous red T-shirt game. After the downer, head coach Sam Mitchell said he didn’t recognize the squad coughing up turnovers and bricking easy shots.
“We just did some things we haven’t done for 82 games,” Mitchell lamented.
With every loss, the angst has been building, and for obvious reasons. According to WhoWins.com, teams that win Game 1 of an NBA playoff series have historically advanced to the next round 77 per cent of the time. Losing Game 1 makes things difficult, which might explain why winning Game 1 is also difficult.
So, what’s a psychologically stymied team to do? Pull the fire alarm at the Wizards hotel at 3 a.m.? Paint the visitors locker room a fume-spewing purple in the hours before they arrive? Offer up Drake’s courtside seats to a couple of qualified psychotherapists?
As Casey pointed out Friday: “I’m not a psychologist. I’m a basketball coach.”
He might need to be a little bit of both if the Raptors are going to finally turn a postseason Game 1 into Game Won.
“I think this is a different year for us,” Lowry said. “Different offence, different system, different type of way we play the game and approach it. It’ll be fun.”
Unless Saturday brings an historically different result, it’ll be anything but.