The Rotation: Raptors find something, and appreciate Chris Paul before he’s gone

Welcome to The Rotation, our daily playoff wrap-up of our favorite stories, large and small, from this weekend’s NBA action.

The Toronto Raptors find something

By Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh)

The Raptors finished the weekend on somewhat solid footing, having won Game 4 and evened their first round series with the Milwaukee Bucks. Let’s say they’re out of the enormous hole they dug themselves but are still standing right on the edge; it wouldn’t take much more than a gentle nudge from Giannis Antetokounmpo to send them tumbling back to the bottom.

The story of Game 4 was DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry playing good basketball. For that to be a surprise — the two best players on a 50-win championship contender playing well — should tell you a lot about where the Raptors are right now. Lowry and DeRozan put up 51 points with a 59.4 true shooting percentage in Game 4. In the three games prior to that, they had averaged a combined 32.3 points per game on a 48.8 true shooting percentage. In their 31 playoff games with the Raptors prior to this season, they had combined for 40.1 points per game on a 49.4 true shooting percentage. One more number-stacked sentence to put this in context — during their five years together in Toronto, they’ve combined to average 40.3 points per game on a 55.0 true shooting percentage.

Watching DeRozan and Lowry struggle in the playoffs has become an annual tradition, and it is utterly and completely baffling. I don’t ascribe to the belief that there is some fundamental soft spot in their psyches which makes them incapable of rising to the occasion. I suppose it could be argued that there is something about the nature of their offensive skills (DeRozan in particular) which makes the vulnerable to the increased intensity and focus of a playoff defense. But the fact that this trend has now persisted across multiple series against defenses of varying qualities kind of undercuts that theory. That the Raptors have just been the repeated victim of fate, handed matchups that specifically work against them also seems far-fetched, given the consistency.

The truth is probably some random bad luck along with a helping of the those three elements — playoff intensity, bad matchups, and the additive pressure of having struggled in the past — but even that isn’t entirely satisfying as an explanation. DeRozan and Lowry are clearly capable of dominating offensive performances in the playoffs. The problem is not that they don’t want it badly enough. So why is Game 4 an example of the exception rather than the rule?

It would be nice if we could all lean into Game 4 as some sort of breakout, see it as two supremely talented players vigorously shaking monkeys off of backs. But we all know that isn’t happening. I would love to be done with the “Lowry and DeRozan suck in the playoffs narrative” but it’s a vicious and unfortunately entrenched arc. Anytime the shots aren’t falling, it’s going to rear its head again.

The J.R. Smith continuum

By Matt Rutkowski (@MontaWorldPeace)

J.R. Smith is everything. When you do writing, you’re supposed to use things like adjectives and verbs to describe stuff that happens and the people who do said stuff, but I don’t know how to describe J.R. Smith any more. I guess I never really did; I just didn’t know it.

J.R. Smith needs to be used to give meaning to other things and events. J.R. Smith is a descriptor, not the other way around. Like, when I think I need to channel him more into my everyday life..

https://twitter.com/BellyUpBetting/status/856230065503444993

…I don’t know how I would explain that to someone. That moment says more than I could ever say about it. It’s just a state of mind that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

In general, people find their place on continuums like the following

Cockiness <——|——> Confidence
Awareness <——|——> Obliviousness
Likability <——|——> Unlikability
Talent <——|——> Luck
Relatable <——|——> In his own world
Laughing with <——|——> Laughing at
Caring what people think <——|——> Not caring about anything
Torso Skin <——|——> Wearing a shirt

You aggregate them all together, and there you have a nice little breakdown of them as a person. Where they push to one extreme or the other is where you find the darkest marks of their personality.

But J.R. Smith doesn’t fit this. Smith seems to be somewhere near the middle of all of these axes. That, generally, would make him average. But he’s not. He’s J.R. Smith. This means there must be a second axis we’re not accounting for. Something like this:

J.R Smith
^
|
|
|
Cockiness <——|——> Confidence

This doesn’t help either. It’s reductive reasoning, but maybe the problem there is I’m trying to do reasoning. What would J.R. Smith do?

That. He would do that.

You can write any story around J.R. Smith and use him as an example to confirm any of your prior held beliefs. If you want to use that behind the back pass as an example of just how this generation isn’t locked into the game and care more about being on SportsCenter highlights than they do winning, I wouldn’t have a way to convince you otherwise. If you wanted to say that it was a lucky play on the part of the defender flailing his arm backwards and that given where the ball was as J.R. was trying to collect it that going behind the back his pass was probably the quickest option to hit the guy streaking next to him, and that this was actually a tremendous subconscious kinesiological awareness on Smith’s part, then yeah. You do that too.

Do whatever you want. That’s what J.R. would do. Maybe just being ourselves is the closest we can get to being like him. He just does it more spectacularly.

Play of the Weekend: Quin Snyder draws up a beauty

By Jeff Siegel (@jgsiegel)

There were a lot of great plays from the eleven games we saw this weekend, but none stood out to this Xs and Os nerd quite like Utah’s gorgeous SLOB (SideLine Out-of-Bounds) play at the end of Game 3 against the Clippers.

On the floor for Utah are George Hill, Boris Diaw, Joe Ingles, Gordon Hayward, and seven-time All-Star Joe Johnson, who buried the Clippers in Utah’s Game 1 victory, and (a few days after this play), in Game 4 as well. Hayward and Johnson are the obvious contenders to take this big shot for the Jazz to attempt to get them back in this game and Utah used the Clippers’ attention on these two to get Hill open.

Joe Ingles receives the ball from the official as Hill cuts as though he’s going through to the other side of the floor. Hayward starts the play in the backcourt and runs full speed toward the strong-side corner, receiving a screen from Diaw as he does so. Hill cuts off his path to circle back and set a back screen for Johnson to go toward the rim, on which Raymond Felton, Hill’s defender, has to help. The threat of Johnson cutting toward the rim was so great that DeAndre Jordan fell back into the paint in addition to Felton’s pause. Hill bumps Chris Paul on the screen and immediately cuts toward the ball, using a screen from Diaw to get open for the 3-pointer.

The Jazz took advantage of the Clippers’ focus on Hayward and Johnson to run a play for Hill, banking on Jordan and Felton biting on the decoy screen for Johnson. Running Hayward to the corner also took Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, the Clippers’ best defender, out of the play. Screen-the-screener sets have become more popular throughout the league and continue to present impossible problems for defenses to solve. Jordan falls back into the paint to contest Johnson’s cut, but it’s not much better for him to be up on Hill; if he plays too far up, Diaw will roll to the rim uncontested for a free layup. Hill’s 3-pointer cut the Clippers lead to one point and although Los Angeles would hold on to take Game 3, it was a beautiful design from Snyder and his staff.

Brothers don’t shake hands, brothers gotta hug

By Jeremy Lambert (@jeremylambert88)

This is my favorite moment of the NBA Playoffs and it won’t be topped. It had nothing to do with the actual game, except that it had everything to do with the actual game.

While Kawhi Leonard was going all Optimus Prime, Mike Conley and Marc Gasol were quietly matching him on the other end. Conley forced overtime. Gasol won it. In a league dominated by two stars on the wing, Conley and Gasol are a rare outside-inside presence that has consistently been one of the best duos in the league.

Look at Conley’s face in the picture. He’s crying as he hugs Gasol. He’s so happy that this awkward looking man with no jump on his jumpshot is his teammate. And Gasol is more than willing to hold up Conley with one-arm while saluting the crowd as if to say, “I love this city, but I won’t let you fall.”

I’m a big fan of teammate love. Nothing makes me happier than when two teammates seem to genuinely care about each other. There’s a difference between the kind of love shown between Mike Conley and Marc Gasol and the kind of “love” Chris Paul and Paul George show their teammates. Gasol stayed in Memphis partly because Conley told him that he would stay in Gasol stayed. Gasol stayed and Conley kept his word.

Conley and Gasol aren’t flashy. They don’t star in commercials or make headlines with record setting nights. They’ve been called underrated so many times that the word has lost all meaning. They’ve played nine seasons together, made it to the Western Conference Finals once, and didn’t even win a game in that series. It’s possible that they never win a ring together.

But they have genuine love and affection for each other. And I love that.

Chris Paul is still the Point God

By Brandon Jefferson (@pengriffey_jr)

In a season of exceptional performances, one player’s sustained excellence has been overshadowed.

The point guard position is the deepest and strongest position in the entire NBA. If you want to find a good team just look at their point guard. We have one that can snipe 3-pointers from 30-plus feet (Steph Curry). We have one that puts on Harlem Globetrotter exhibitions nightly (Kyrie Irving). We have one that bludgeon opponents with their athleticism and will (Russell Westbrook and John Wall). We have ones that can score against any defender (Damian Lillard and Isaiah Thomas). We have ones coming into the NBA that will only make this crop of guards stronger (Markelle Fultz, Lonzo Ball, etc.).

However, we only have one Point God. The one, the only, Chris Paul.

When Blake Griffin was ruled out for the entire postseason with a toe injury most thought it was the Clippers’ bad luck rearing its ugly head once more. Yet, what it actually was was the awakening of Paul.  Since Griffin left Game 3 Paul has reminded the basketball world that he’s not yet ready to hand over the title of Point God.

He followed up Friday night’s 34-point, 10-assist and 7-rebound performance with another beautiful outing last night, albeit in a loss. His 27 points, 12 assists (he’s had double-digit assists in all four games) and nine rebounds gave him his 25th career 20-point, 10-rebound postseason game of his career, only LeBron James (27) has more.

CP3 doesn’t have one skill that doesn’t stand out above the rest — unless you count yelling at taller people a skill — but the list of things he can do for a team is seemingly endless.

He’s got the handle.

He’s got the vision.

He’s got the scoring.

He’s got the shooting.

Next: 30 best NBA players who never won a championship

The point guard position has changed and the type of players that play the role have transformed over the course of time, but in the era of specialists it’s Paul’s ability to do everything well that makes him the prototype. Without Griffin, we’ll get to see if CP3 can carry a bigger load for the Clippers going forward.