Raptors Playoff Preview: This might be Toronto’s year
By Kevin Yeung
Do you guys realize how good DeMar DeRozan has been this season? While the world at large has been happy to yell into the void about the inefficiency of the long 2-pointer, DeRozan has been kind of killing it. There comes a point when drawing a line in the sand becomes purely academic and distracts you from the very real fact that something good and in fact not bad is actually happening. You can yell it from the rooftops, friends: DeRozan put himself top-five in scoring (TOP-FIVE TOP-FIVE TOP-FIVE) and the Raptors are sitting pretty in the third seed (NO DEBATING).
We’re keeping it simple, but only because nobody else seems to want to. Averaging a meticulously crafted 27.8 points per game off the grace and valor of your mid-post reverse pivot-side-step-pump fake-step-through floaters? Your fave could never.
If you were to scrutinize the numbers further, you’ll find that DeRozan has improved his shooting percentages basically across the board from all ranges inside of the 3-point line, which are the kind of subtle increases that erase the need for those more time-consuming and existential questions. You’ll also find that he’s taken more 2s in proportion to 3s over last season, which is only practical, and more long 2s in general. That hasn’t always worked out for the Raptors but most commonly has, which compares favorably to the basketball of most other teams.
Read More: A snapshot of every NBA team’s 2016-17 season
Between DeRozan and Kyle Lowry — injured for a chunk of the season but still Kyle Lowry, as we can all agree with much less hand-wringing — the Raptors have continued to chug along in much the same way as they always have, basing a top-10 offense around the handiwork of their two stars. They took a roundabout path to get there, but it’s yet another season eclipsing the 50-win threshold. January was a tough month, when much of what people generally worry about with the Raptors re-emerged amid an extended stretch of losses: inconsistent defense, questionable effort, an inexplicable attachment to DeRozan isolations in the late-game.
They came back with a backbone. One might have thought that this would be the year that Masai Ujiri would cave and make a trade that didn’t need to meet his usual standard of highway robbery, but then he turned Terrence Ross, Jared Sullinger and three draft picks of little consequence into two of the most important Raptors ever. The Raptors have always played their best basketball when Patrick Patterson is at the 4, opening up the floor for DeRozan’s ground game, and now they have Serge Ibaka who does that while protecting the rim (and, increasingly, able to manufacture his own bucket from the block as well). P.J. Tucker lives to put clamps on LeBron James, which isn’t to say beyond a doubt that he’ll be able to accomplish it (because that’s a really hard thing to do), but the internal crazy in his eyes says he just might.
Dwane Casey saying, “Don’t f — k around with the game, because if you f — k the game, the game will f — k you,” is a direct grab from the P.J. Tucker Book of Shower Thoughts. With outspoken leaders on the defensive end has come a very strong sense of culture change. These aren’t last year’s Raptors — they have not just a defense but a defensive identity now, and it seems to have re-galvanized the team in entirety.
***
One of the Raptors’ most enduring rivals has been themselves, even after making it to the Conference Finals for the first time in team history last season. As they do from time to time, they made it much harder on themselves than it had to be. Neither Lowry nor DeRozan were making their shots, and in typical Bad Raptors fashion, the ball most commonly defaulted to DeRozan crossing over behind a screen to launch janky 19-footers en masse. Improbably, the Raptors were saved by Playoff Jonas Valanciunas. Best not to count on that again.
In that sense, the Bucks feel like a fitting first round opponent, who could bring out the worst in the Raptors and force them to overcome it. The Bucks are far from the best defense in the league, but where they have everybody else beat is in sheer capacity of arms. Taking advantage of their length, the Bucks fly across the court providing additional help. Any offense that stagnates gets swallowed up, but any offense that can swing the ball around and hit the shooters in the corner probably breezes through — and could you imagine the Raptors breezing through the first round? It’s like facing a mirror, with the Inner Raptors demanding to know if they’re about to be played by themselves again.
Let’s say, though, that the odds of DeRozan and Lowry struggling to score are pretty low. A gentle reminder to play for the pass and to work hard on defense might be exactly what they need. If there’s a legitimate concern, it’ll be getting production on both ends at once, just because we still haven’t seen that consistently yet in the Ibaka/Tucker Era. But we also haven’t seen the reformed Raptors at full health yet, with Ibaka and Tucker and Lowry all at once, and the recipe for success is at least there on paper.
The Raptors are as strong as ever, and for the first time in a long time, somebody might actually be able to shake LeBron out of the NBA Finals. The Cavaliers have had a few different rough patches over the course of the season — enough to instill some doubt — and their defense looks like it could be exposed. You have to imagine that they’re still the favorites to come out of the East, but it feels like less of a certainty this year, at least on the surface. The Celtics and the Wizards — great teams and even better to watch — belong on the threat matrix as well, but they have flaws of their own, in putting out balanced two-way lineups and in maintaining it across 48 minutes. Nobody’s perfect, and the Raptors sure as heck aren’t, but the window of opportunity seems to be open.
Next: Grit and Grind is over. Grit and Grind begins anew.
This is one of the most tormented franchises in the league, and in a year where they might be able to accomplish something, I think it’s important to show them some love. The Raptors could go out and drop Game 1 to the Bucks on Saturday because panic and confusion is a thing they do well, but they might also go out and snap off a deep playoff run because basketball, generally speaking, is also a thing they do well.