It takes more than two to tangle
They honed the new system. They reeled off a franchise-record 59 regularseason wins, and two playoff victories, proving it worked.
But when the moment got big and the pressure intensified in Sunday night’s Game 4, the Raptors abandoned it. Out the window was the ball-sharing, threepoint-focused offence that helped produce the NBA’s second-best winloss record. In its place was an ugly version of a tired, old act. Raptors fans are familiar with previous incarnations of Two Guys Taking Turns Going One on One. This showing, like many of its predecessors, did not go well. The good news was DeMar DeRozan, in the course of the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss in Washington, became the first player in Raptors history to score 1,000 playoff points. The bad news was he appeared to be determined to score 1,000 more before the buzzer.
DeRozan, in the course of the final seven minutes, launched eight shots, many of them ill-advised. By trying in vain to single-handedly take over a game, he helped give away a winnable one.
“He doesn’t have to do that,” Dwane Casey, the Raptors coach, said after Monday’s practice. “That’s why we changed what we do. That’s why we changed our offence, to make the sure the ball is moving, clicking. And it’s one of those things. Sometimes you fall back into that (one-on-one) mindset. Which, at some point in the shot clock, you have to have that. But not that early in the shot clock.”
DeRozan, both immediately after the game and on Monday, didn’t spare himself harsh self-analysis for his 2for-8 fourth-quarter blank-fest.
“I blame myself for a lot of mistakes, a lot of forced shots late in the game,” he said Monday.
That the best-of-seven series is now deadlocked at two games apiece isn’t all on DeRozan, mind you. It’s taken a team to transform what could have been a stranglehold on the Wizards into two days of earnest self examination in the lead-up to Wednesday’s Game 5.
Kyle Lowry, the resident floor general, ought to have done more to halt the procession of bad processions. Lowry, a diminishing force at age 32, registered just one fourth-quarter assist to go with two turnovers and 2-for-5 shooting.
It fell at least partly on Lowry that too often on Sunday the ball stopped moving. And when it didn’t, too often it ended up in the opponents’ hands. Toronto had 18 turnovers.
“It’s not like they’re doing something that’s confusing us,” Casey said of the Wizards’ defence. “We’re confusing ourselves.”
And it’s not simply the fault of DeRozan and Lowry that, faced with a chance to go up 3-1 in the series and with Washington’s hottest offensive star, Bradley Beal, fouled out for the final 4:58, Toronto didn’t make a single fourth-quarter threepointer. Some of that fell on Delon Wright, who turned down viable three-point shots on three of Toronto’s first six possessions of the final frame, setting the nerve-frazzled tone of a team suddenly afraid to step into the same shots it had been letting fly all season.
Some of it was on Serge Ibaka, a Game 3 no-show who hardly redeemed himself with a flat Game 4. Ibaka, too, neglected to pull the trigger on at least a couple of three-point chances that helped transform promising sequences into bogged- down, stagnant disasters late in Sunday’s loss. (Ibaka also offered the weakest imaginable no-help defence on the John Wall shot that essentially sealed Washington’s win). And as for C.J. Miles, a key force in Games 1 and 2, he was 1-for-8 from three-point range in Games 3 and 4 combined. Before Game 4, Casey spoke of Miles’ need to “fight for space harder.” But Miles couldn’t create regular separation on Sunday night, either. He played seven minutes of the fourth quarter and could only squeeze off one three-point try.
“Every one of my teammates, I don’t care if they miss 20 shots in a row. You got a shot, shoot it,” DeRozan said. “That’s the confidence we had in one another all year.”
All that considered, you could see why DeRozan became afflicted with tunnel vision. Why bother passing to confidence-challenged teammates who’ve already proven their unwillingness to shoot?
The belief in Toronto’s bench is in decline for a good reason. If Fred VanVleet wasn’t out with a bum right shoulder, he’s likely a factor in Sunday’s final moments. Nobody besides Miles made more fourthquarter three-pointers for the Raptors this season than VanVleet.
So it was encouraging on Monday that VanVleet, who has missed all but three minutes of the series, was practising three-pointers at the BioSteel Centre, his shooting shoulder tucked into a black brace. Listed as day to day, it’s not impossible VanVleet could play Wednesday. Still, the risk of reinjury is real and needs to be weighed. Contributing offence is one thing. Fighting through Marcin Gortat screens might not be the best medicine for what ails him.
VanVleet or not, the Raptors will need the bulk of its bench mob producing more on Wednesday. Toronto’s depth defined its wins in Games 1 and 2, when Toronto averaged almost 15 three-pointers a night. If Toronto’s three-balls are falling — if the options are many and the floor is spread and the defence is scrambling — those swishes beget more open shots, which create driving lanes, which leave DeRozan and Lowry looking like the best players on a final-worthy team rather than the inadequate all-stars of an also-ran. That’s the reason for the system. That’s the beauty of its design. To abandon it again would be to ignore the many mistakes of playoffs past and imperil the here and now.