GETTING A BAD RAP?
Recent playoff woes give fans pause
The but has trailed the Toronto Raptors all season, and to be clear we are referring to the conjunction, not their posteriors.
As in: The Raptors are rolling to a third straight Atlantic Division title, but they lost in the first round of the playoffs in each of the previous two appearances.
Or: The Raptors gave DeMarre Carroll $58 million in the offseason to be the defensive stopper that the team has lacked, but he has only played 23 of their 69 games.
And: The Raptors have been anchored by consistent great play from their All-Stars, Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, but even with an improved bench each is averaging more minutes per game this season than they did last year.
This is the strange thing about Toronto’s season. Even as the Raptors win games at a clip better than at any time in their history — a 105-100 victory over Orlando on Sunday gave them 48 on the season, one short of the franchise record with 13 games left — there remain reasons for, if not doubt, then at least mild concern. And none of those concerns will be at all addressed for another month.
Admittedly, these are pretty good concerns to have. When your worries about a team all centre on what might happen in mid-April, it suggests that things must be decent in mid-March. And, they are. Since a Jan. 4 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers dropped Toronto’s record to 21-15, the Raptors ripped off a 27-6 stretch including Sunday’s game against the Magic. Remarkably, Carroll has been out of the lineup that entire time, and starting centre Jonas Valanciunas also missed several of those games.
The injuries haven’t slowed Toronto, which has the fifth-best offensive rating in the NBA and the 11th-best defensive rating. Perhaps more importantly, the hot streak this season feels different than the 24-7 run the team went on to start last season, precisely because it is coming in the second half. By this time last year, the Raptors had cooled off into a team playing .500 ball, and it showed when they were swept out of the playoffs by the Washington Wizards.
This time around, they are beating the teams they are supposed to beat, playing very well at home, and holding their own against the league’s best teams. It’s all very unfamiliar for a franchise that still just has one playoff series win in its history.
But what might be the most unexpected development this season is how the Raptors’ play contrasts with the mood at the end of last year, even though the team as currently constituted is not dramatically different from last year’s version.
When the team was cleaning out its lockers at the Air Canada Centre last April, there was talk of the need to play more reliable defence, and to not let loose play on the offensive end leak onto the other end of the court. Lowry, the unquestioned team leader, didn’t give coach Dwane Casey much of an endorsement other than that he respected him “as a man.” There were questions about whether Valanciunas and swingman Terrence Ross could be key cogs on a contending team. There was uncertainty about free agents Amir Johnson and Lou Williams.
And now, Johnson and Williams have been replaced by Luis Scola and Cory Joseph, but all those other questions remain. Valanciunas is an offensive talent in a league that is barge-poling away from running offence through the centre. With backup Bismack Biyombo starting in his place, the Raptors were still a tidy 15-7. Ross is averaging nine points a game, which is fine for a backup, but it isn’t enough to draw much of the offensive load away from Lowry and DeRozan.
In the end, Lowry and DeRozan might be good enough that none of that matters. Lowry routinely takes games over in the fourth quarter — he scored 15 of his 32 points in the final frame on Friday as the Raptors pulled away from the Boston Celtics at home — which makes him somewhat of a rarity in the Eastern Conference.
And DeRozan, despite being a rarity himself in today’s NBA in that he scores a lot but does not shoot many threes, has become relentlessly predictable. He draws a ton of fouls — third in the NBA in free-throw attempts — and puts up a lot of shots, where he leads the league in two-point attempts. He’s not pretty, but effective.
Sunday’s game was a fairly typical Raptors affair. With Casey opting to rest Joseph and with Valanciunas and forward James Johnson still recovering from injuries, the starting lineup was the two All-Stars, plus Scola, Biyombo and rookie Norm Powell. It was enough. The Raptors trailed late, but the Magic couldn’t hold off the guards in the fourth. DeRozan scored 25, including 13 free throws, as he does. With the Raptors leading by just one and a minute left, he drove to the basket, made a tough layup and drew the foul. Orlando knew what was coming, and couldn’t stop it.
No one knows if this team can finally make the playoff leap next month. But it is doing just fine right now.