Coach Casey in no rush to make any bold moves
Experience with Mavericks has taught him to stay the course
It’s the big buzzword of the NBA playoffs, thrown around annually because it’s what people think should happen between games, that coaches will watch video until their eyes bleed trying to figure out what drastic changes need to be made one game to the next. Adjustments, they say. Adjustments are everything. Balderdash, or something close to that, says Raptors coach Dwane Casey.
“When people say making adjustments is when I laugh,” Casey said Sunday after the Raptors had a film and relaxed work session at the Air Canada Centre. “Going all the way to the championship (as a Dallas Mavericks assistant in 2011) we changed very little, maybe a substitution and we still won.
“That’s when I laugh when people say, ‘He beat him because he made 50 adjustments.’ You can’t do that. I’m not that smart by the way, I don’t know what coach is.”
Casey, however, is smart enough to know the only major “adjustments” his team needs to make trailing the Washington Wizards 1-0 in the best-of-seven series that resumes Tuesday night are pretty simple and don’t take a doctorate in basketball science to figure out.
They have to make shots they know they can make, they have to play at a bit faster pace, they need more production out of their point guard/leader and they need to rebound better on the defensive end. That’s not genius stuff; just the facts. Two of those changes have to come from point guard Kyle Lowry, who struggled through an uncharacteristically bad day, just 2-for-10 from the field with no major impact on game he fouled out of with about two minutes to go in regulation time. And no one knows that more than Lowry.
“Honestly our tempo has to be different,” he said. “We have to play our game. I think (Saturday) we really bogged down and played too slow.
“That started with me from the beginning of the game. I should have been pushing more and pushing the pace.”
The Wizards may have had something to do with it, but not all that much. The Raptors simply shot the ball horribly and the usual crispness to their offence disappeared.
Lowry having a bad game and poor shooting performances from Lou Williams and DeMar DeRozan are problems the Raptors have to fix themselves. No tinkering necessary.
“We have to get out and get in transition and shoot the shots we normally take,” said Lowry. “For me, I have to start off the game with a faster pace and getting up and down a little bit more.” The mood Sunday around the team was far from doom and gloom, even though the Raptors gave away homecourt advantage so quickly.
There remains a quiet confidence about them and especially a confidence in Lowry, who has a way of using negative situations and public knowledge that he was not good as some kind of motivation.
“I have no doubt that Kyle Lowry will come back and play at a level that he’s played at and has made him successful,” said Casey. “That’s who he is. He’s a guy who plays better with a chip on his shoulder. He’s been doubted all his life since junior high school so I think he’ll bounce back. I don’t think shooting is where you rate him. I think making winning plays, defensive plays, draw and kick, not turning the ball over, those are the winning plays that he’s excellent at.”
As for other adjustments? Don’t expect a lot the casual fan can see.
“We’re not going to scrap the offence and go to a different offence, we’re not going to scrap the defence and go to a different defence,” Casey said.
“It may be a matchup. It may be which way we force a guy. It may be a subtle way of changing the size of the floor with our offensive plays to get better spacing. Different things, little subtleties like that.”