We The North goes south real fast
Raptors exit playoffs in shockingly meek fashion, and changes are on the way
WASHINGTON, D.C.— Dwane Casey said he’d be “shocked” if his team didn’t play its guts out on Sunday night. Really. He did.
Maybe the Raptors head coach was being optimistic, as is his effusive, inspiring way. Or maybe he was just lying for the pre-game cameras. Still, if you watched every minute of the Raptors’ playoff fourand-out with the Wizards, Sunday’s 125-94 Game 4 capitulation probably didn’t surprise you.
What it did do, perhaps, was scare you or shame you. Patrick Patterson, the Raptors forward, called it both “horrific” and “embarrassing.”
Certainly it further informed us all about the precise identity of this Raptors roster. This was a collection of athletes that did plenty of impressive things this season. They won a franchise record 49 games. They made the playoffs for the second straight season. But as Patterson was saying after Sunday’s listless blowout loss, the Raptors peaked around they time they reeled off a 24-7 win-loss record. And after that? “Something happened during the course of the season that caused a change,” Patterson said. And the change was not for the better. The Raptors squad that stumbled down the stretch of the regular season was the same team that never found its footing in the playoffs. All it took was eight days to rack up four straight losses — the first four-game playoff sweep in franchise history. Just as suddenly, Toronto’s rare good-news sports story transformed itself has transformed itself into a far murkier storyline.
What do the Raptors really have here? What are they really building on?
They’re building on a team that seemed to go out of its way to avoid playing any- thing resembling conscientious defence. The Wizards, who had 99 points through three quarters on Sunday, shot a murderous 48 per cent for the series.
They’re building on a team that seems to go out of its way to avoid making the sensible pass. Sunday’s meagre 17 assists were the latest case in point.
They’re building on a team that, all through their late-regular-season swoon, insisted they’d be ready for the playoffs, and weren’t. These Raptors told the world they could adapt their game to the playoff grind, and didn’t. To wit: Terrence Ross went to the free-throw line precisely zero times in this post-season. Even DeMar DeRozan, the team’s go-to seeker of in-the-paint punishment, only got there twice on Sunday.
“I was surprised, but I kind of saw it coming,” Casey would say later. “Emotionally, I thought we were just drained. Once they hit us with the haymakers, we didn’t have enough emotional fortitude to sustain it.”
None of it was becoming of a serious post-season contender. And none of looks particularly easy to fix.
“The regular season is totally different from the playoffs,” Kyle Lowry said on Sunday, speaking of too-late realizations. “I think we’re got to take that and understand that and raise our level.”
They’re building, too, on a team with Lowry as its centrepiece. And these playoffs might have said more about Lowry than they did about anyone else on the roster. Lowry’s three seasons in Toronto have been a career saver and a fortune maker. Being a Raptor, being adored by the Raptors’ rabid support base, made him a fan-selected all-star starter in February’s NBA mid-season classic.
And it made him plenty of money; this year was the first of a four-year deal worth $48 million (U.S.) he signed in the off-season.
But since he got the cash and the all-star nod — well, as Patterson said about the team, something happened. Maybe it was a combination of a lot of things. But Lowry didn’t deliver when it mattered most.
“I was very unsatisfactory,” Lowry acknowledged after it was over.
Sunday was another lamentable display. Burdened by foul trouble in two of the opening three games, Lowry picked up his second foul before the first quarter was half over on Sunday. He also picked up a technical foul for whipping a frustrated chest pass in the direction of a referee on an ensuing timeout. And then came Lowry’s most egregious sin — committing his third foul less than a couple minutes later, putting him on the bench for the last 5:06 of the opening frame.
It was a brainless, careless foul — an undisciplined bit of bait-taking that saw Lowry over-commit on a Bradley Beal pump fake. With Lowry out, the Wizards reeled off an 18-12 run to grab a 14-point firstquarter lead. Washington shot 71 per cent in the opening 12 minutes. That wasn’t the Raptors defending their guts out. That was them demonstrating their gutlessness.
To some on the roster, it wasn’t shocking. Patterson had been enumerating his team’s weaknesses on Saturday afternoon.
“We just need a tougher mentality,” he said. “We need a different mindset, better focus. And hopefully things will change.” What changed this season? “Maybe teams just figured us out,” Patterson said. “Maybe our candle just is burned out.”
Burned out, indeed. We the Torched. Meek the North.
But come the off-season, there’ll be a new motto in town, as Masai Ujiri gets to work on a roster makeover with cap space and a clearer sense of his team’s many faces. It’ll be Tweak the North, at the very least.