Raptors walk line between rest, rust
With playoffs three weeks away, team won’t realistically move up or down in standings
NEW ORLEANS — Luis Scola has been through enough basketball wars in both the NBA and internationally to know exactly where the Raptors are right now.
In his words, the Raptors are in “a grey area” — not really close enough to take a run at the No. 1 spot, nowhere near close enough to lose No. 2 to No. 3 so really just in a holding pattern.
They are likely to remain in that holding pattern for three weeks until the playoffs open. Officially that’s April 16 but the Raptors, if history is any indication, likely won’t open until the 17th on the second day of playoff basketball.
Either way, it’s three weeks where winning isn’t necessarily the entire focus.
“We’re in a little grey area right now” Scola said. “But we still have to remain focused. It’s just a few weeks but we still have to play well. It’s going to be important because it will carry over into the playoffs.” Therein lies the concern. Complacency breeds bad habits in any professional sport and must be avoided at all costs.
With nothing really to play for over the final 10 games of the season, the onus falls on Dwane Casey and his coaching staff to avoid even a hint of complacency.
Even with back-to-back losses at the beginning of the just-completed three game road trip, Casey believes the Raptors have thus far avoided that pitfall. There’s no question he’s on alert to even the first signs of it, but he likes what he has seen from an effort standpoint.
“Everything was kind of off-kilter a little bit,” Casey said of the early part of the trip. “It wasn’t from lack of effort, I don’t think, it was just a lack of rhythm. We have to be smart on how we rest guys versus losing our rhythm.”
Saturday’s get-healthy win over the undermanned New Orleans Pelicans provided the perfect blueprint for how to get that done.
The answer isn’t sitting guys out and getting rest that way, but building a comfortable lead early on so the guys who need the rest aren’t required late in the game. The Pelicans are ripe for that kind of treatment because of the incredible run of injuries they are dealing with, but that doesn’t mean over the final 10 games, particularly towards the end with games against the Knicks, 76ers and Nets, they can’t do it again.
DeMar DeRozan was one of four Raptors starters who weren’t required at all in the final quarter of Saturday’s blowout win over New Orleans and he believes the game was the perfect template for how the Raptors can walk that fine line between rest and rust.
“We got to start taking advantage of games early on so we don’t have to fight to the end and exert so much energy late in the game,” DeRozan said. “We do what we have to do early and put a stamp on the game, then we will be able to sit like we did.”
Scola, meanwhile, isn’t in quite the same boat as either DeRozan or Lowry in terms of minutes and rest needed. With Patrick Patterson coming in behind him and playing the majority of the minutes down the stretch, Scola rarely exceeds 23 minutes a night. He’s also not as young as either of the Raptors co-leaders but he’s also probably peaking right now in terms of performance.
He’s on a run of five consecutive games with three or more threepointers and a two-game run of four in each. As a guy whose job is to stretch the floor and open up lanes and space for Lowry and DeRozan, that kind of success shooting from deep is a huge advantage for the Raptors.
Scola though, as he normally does, refuses to get too high about the run he’s on.
“I had part of the year I wasn’t making a lot but I was shooting very well early on and I’m shooting well now,” he said. “That shot is like that. It kind of goes up and down. You just have to remain confident and shoot it when you’re open. Eventually they are going to go in. Eventually the numbers will play out.”
That goes for Scola’s success of late and the struggle Lowry is having from distance of late, where he is just 4-for-22 in his past three games.
Lowry will focus on getting his three-point game back in rhythm, not to mention his foul shooting, a real sore point with the Raptors point guard right now. Scola will focus the next 10 games on maintaining that stroke from three so when the playoffs do come around he’s still firing on all cylinders.
In short, everyone will have something to focus on over these next 10 games, even if wins and losses become less important.
What is important is that come April 16 or 17, this team is locked in and ready to put to bed any worries they can’t carry over success from the regular season into the playoffs.