Deluge of threes always in long-range forecast
Raps might not drain 16 of 30 again, but it’s the way they roll now
So certain ghosts of the past have been eviscerated. Toronto’s ancient Game 1 bugaboo has been conquered. And now at least one question facing the Raptors, as they prepare for Tuesday’s firstround Game 2 against the Wizards, probably won’t make them any happier than all that prodding around their weird aversion to showing up in postseason openers.
Still, it’s more than fair to ask: Was Saturday’s three-point explosion a fluke?
The Raptors, after all, made a remarkable 16 of 30 attempts from deep in their Game 1 win, a franchise playoff record. And the Wizards, in various post-game comments, suggested they’re willing to gamble that kind of marksmanship isn’t sustainable. The book on Toronto all season, after all, was that they were a shooter or two short of being a truly scary offensive team, and nobody’s ready to be convinced that book needs to be rewritten.
“There was a lot of guys who we didn’t expect to make those threes who made ’em,” said Bradley Beal, the Wizards all-star. “We’ll live with those.”
In other words: Tip of the hat, gentlemen, but good luck reproducing that horseshoe-fest.
In some ways, Beal makes a valid point. Toronto shot 53 per cent from three-point range on Saturday night. In 82 regular-season games they exceeded that level of accuracy exactly never. That’s right, never. Toronto’s best threepoint shooting night in the regular season, percentage-wise, was 52 per cent — a 13-for-25 affair against the Bulls back in November. They shot 50 per cent or better from deep on just two other occasions. On a typical night, they were a 36-per-cent three-point shooting team, 18th-best in the league in accuracy.
So do the crude math. If, say, Toronto shoots its usual 36 per cent from three on Saturday, assuming the same 30 attempts, they don’t make 16 threes. They make 11. That’s a 15-point swing that drastically changes the outlook. Seen in that light, a 114-106 Game 1 win suddenly doesn’t look so convincing.
But Toronto coach Dwane Casey shrugged off the notion that Saturday’s performance was some kind of unrepeatable one-off.
“That’s who we are,” Casey said after Sunday’s workout at the BioSteel Centre. “We based our whole offensive philosophy around shooting the three, and volume threes. At some point, we’re going to make a lot of them.”
For a team so devoted to the long bomb, that’s the only reasonable attitude to embrace. The Raptors, after all, can say they reeled off all those threes without the services of backup point guard Fred VanVleet, who missed Saturday with a shoulder injury and may or may not play in Game 2. VanVleet, a 41-per-cent threat from three-point range this season, has been the team’s most reliable converter of open jumpers from behind the arc.
Whether or not he’ll be fit to play on Tuesday — and Casey proclaimed him “much better” on Sunday — will be a significant factor.
Still, Delon Wright was excellent in VanVleet’s stead on Saturday, making 3 of 4 from three-point range en route to an 18-point performance. So as much as it’s easy to pooh-pooh the unsustainability of such outings — because, clearly, nobody is going to go 75 per cent from three-point range — you have to give the Raptors credit for enabling that kind of night.
If Wright doesn’t take those shots, or misses them on account of a lack of confidence, the pressure on all-stars Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan only increases. If the Raptors don’t empower all their players to feel free to launch it from behind the arc, it only makes it easier on the defence to tighten its focus on Toronto’s pair of all-stars. C.J. Miles, Toronto’s designated sharpshooter, was explaining the virtue of a teamwide embrace of firing up three-balls.
“You might not call certain guys shooters,” Miles said, acknowledging Beal’s postgame observation. “But it’s part of their skill set. The shots we get in our offence, we work on ’em every day. We drill ’em. And those guys know where they’re coming from.”
In other words, as much as Toronto’s opponent might believe Saturday night was a fluke, Toronto doesn’t believe it to be so. Seven different Raptors fired up at least two three-point attempts, and nobody on the home team’s bench was raising an eyebrow at the choice.
“Nobody’s going to say anything to anybody about shooting the basketball if it’s a play that we know they can make, if he’s 1 for 9 or 8 for 9,” said Miles.
That, mind you, is the duality you need to accept if you’re going to roll the dice with a bomb-tossing team. Not every night can be a 53-per-cent night. And Miles, who made 4 of 7 from deep on Saturday, is a living illustration of the boom-or-bust reality. A couple of springs ago, when the Raptors were pushed to seven games in a first-round series with the Indiana Pacers, Miles was on the opposing roster. Though Miles, at the time, was known as what Casey calls “a hotbutton player” — meaning the Raptors were aware of his ability to blow open a game with his long-range impact — he was a decidedly cold presence. Miles shot 2 for 20 from three-point range in that series; before Saturday, he was a 27-per-cent career playoff three-point shooter. Before Saturday, he’d never made more than two in a playoff game. But on Saturday, boom.
“Some of it, I hate to say it, is psychological,” Casey said of Miles. “There’s nights when C.J. — the basket looks like Lake Ontario out there. And there’s some nights it looks like a bathtub.”
That’s essentially what the Wizards were saying Saturday night; that if the Raptors seemed like they were hoisting threes into one of the Great Lakes in Game 1, the target figures to look considerably smaller as the series progresses. In other words, so long as Lowry and DeRozan are contained, the Wizards are willing to take their chances as various Raptors throw prayers.
Miles, who’s in no danger of ceasing to cock it back, offered advice to teammates who might be made to waver.
“Believe in what you do — because they’re putting you out there because they believe in you,” Miles said. “So if you don’t believe in it, it’s definitely not going to work.”