DeRozan, Lowry add to bad playoff rep
It has become an annual spring ritual in Raptorland: Examining the wreckage of a Game 1 playoff defeat, determining if the damage is repairable.
And in this case, there’s nothing to suggest Sunday’s 97-83 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks isn’t something that can’t be overcome. It was one game. It was also Kyle Lowry’s usual game in a playoff series opener. He’s played in six Game 1s as a Raptor. And in those half-dozen outings — all of them losses, as is the ancient franchise custom that predates him — Lowry is averaging a dismal 10 points a game on about 13 field-goal attempts. When your team’s beating heart is thumping so haphazardly — 2-for-11 shooting on Saturday, 27 per cent from the field in career series openers as a Raptor — well, best of luck.
“It sounds like a yearly song we sing,” Dwane Casey, the Raptors coach, was saying on Sunday, “but we’re going to go as (Lowry) and DeMar goes.”
That’s obvious, of course. This is a two-man offence if there ever was one, complete with the league’s lowest assist rate in more than a decade. And here’s what we’ve come to understand about that two-man offence. The heightened intensity of the post-season often puts a dent in its predictable, one-on-one-based style. Which is a big reason why Toronto’s duelling all-stars are so often slow out of the blocks.
Some players raise their games this time of year. DeRozan and Lowry mostly raise questions about theirs. And here we go again.
“It gets worse,” Lowry said, speaking of his perennial post-season struggle. “It got worse (on Saturday).”
Just to refresh your memory about how ugly this can get, remember that DeRozan, for all his all-starworthy virtues, has established a long track record of post-season fall-offs. Basically he’s a 45-per-cent shooter in the regular season who devolves into a 39-per-cent shooter in the playoffs. (He shot 33 per cent from the field on Saturday.)
And Lowry’s career dip is nearly as stark. He’s a 42-per-cent career regular-season shooter who morphs into a 38-per-cent guy under the bright lights and micro-scrutiny of the NBA’s championship tournament. When DeRozan and Lowry have seen their offensive effectiveness take a hit, so have the Raptors. A season ago, Toronto had the fifthmost efficient offence in the league in the regular season. By the end of their run to the Eastern final, they ranked 12th among 16 playoff teams. Two seasons ago they finished third in regular-season offensive effi- ciency. In the playoffs they ranked 15th of 16 teams.
This is who they are — a gaggle of players predictable and limited enough in their attack as to be seen as stoppable. DeRozan’s reliance on mid-range jumpers and free-throwinducing drives isn’t always conducive to beating the more concentrated defensive approaches of the post-season (although Saturday’s 27-point performance, in which he took 21 shots but went 13 for 14 from the free-throw line, was encouraging enough.)
Still, the Raptors would obviously prefer both of their all-stars on comfortable footing, which is why Casey was insisting on Sunday that Lowry needs to be more aggressive in his approach. Lowry is the Raptor most gifted at creating shots for both himself and teammates by breaking down the defence in ways that are difficult to stymie through simple strategic tweaks. So it says something that Lowry bristled at the idea that he could have done more in Game 1.
Actually, Lowry essentially scoffed at the coach’s concept, insisting he made all the correct reads when he was incessantly double-teamed.
“You got four arms on you, but I gotta be more aggressive,” Lowry said, speaking with obvious sarcasm.
Lowry, in his usual argumentative way, suggested it’s his teammates who need to step it up.
“(The Bucks) game-planned really well for us. That’s one thing about the playoffs, teams are gonna game plan for me and DeMar,” Lowry said. “We gotta figure out ways to make tough shots or everybody else gotta help us. We gotta get other guys to get even more open looks.”
None of this is to say the Raptors shouldn’t be able to beat the Bucks. Speaking of open looks, on Saturday Toronto missed 16 of 24 shots deemed either “open” or “wide open” by the NBA’s player-tracking technology. Knock down a few more of those and it’s a different game. Knock down a few of those and maybe the Raptors offence doesn’t grind to a halt down the stretch, missing 28 or 35 second-half fieldgoal attempts while coughing up seven turnovers.
“We got some open shots. A lot of shots we normally make weren’t going in and we can live with that, because we know we’ll make shots,” said P.J. Tucker, the veteran forward. “For us, it’s more about the defence.”
No doubt the Raptors need to find a way to make life more difficult for Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Greek Freak, who went 13 for 18 from the field in a long-reaching, hard-dunking display of dominance. Making more shots, and thus limiting Antetokounmpo’s effectiveness on the fast break, would help, too. And playing harder wouldn’t hurt, either.
“They beat us, they outworked us, they out-physicaled us, they outscreened us in every area that you could possibly talk about, and that’s what we showed the guys on film this morning,” Casey said. “To win in this league, we have to play at another level. You can’t play on a regular-season level. You have to screen in playoff form, you have to cut in playoff form, you have to run in playoff form.”
The problem, of course, is that “playoff form,” if you’re talking about a certain couple of Toronto all-stars, doesn’t necessarily come with positive connotations. If you’re DeRozan and Lowry, Tuesday’s Game 2 would be as good a time as any to head off your usual playoff fall-off and find a way to rise.