Point Blank – May 3
Did the Raptors really get a Monkey off their backs (cue Steven Tyler and the gang, unplugged)…Terry Stotts may have ridden his best horses too long in a race they couldn’t win…
The second round of the NBA playoffs brought some fascinating moments last night, Atlanta chasing Cleveland down in unexpected fashion before running out of steam (perhaps it would have helped if Kyle Korver actually joined the team on offensive end of the court instead of drifting off to somewhere unseen), and then an ending in San Antonio that will keep folks buzzing for a while, especially because the series does not resume until Friday (although so far there is precious little buzz about the fact that right around the time Manu Ginobli was getting elbowed by Dion Waiters, Kawhi Leonard had a handful of Russell Westbrook’s jersey to keep him from getting free).
There will be much more on those two matchups when they resume, but for now it is back to the “Game Inside the Game” elements that will play key handicapping roles in Toronto and Oakland this evening, and on Tuesday the psychological aspects of play come front and center. It starts with this, from DeMar DeRozan, after the Raptors finally won a playoff series with he and Kyle Lowry as starters - “We got the monkey off our back, more than anything, from these past couple of years. It just feels good to get that off.”
Now the conundrum. DeRozan wasn’t very good in the series and wasn’t very good in that Game 7 win. You can repeat that same sentence with Lowry’s name as the subject. Is there a positive psychological effect that winning, no matter how it happened, has on their game? Was the “monkey” part of what hindered them against the Pacers, but the absence now having them breathing more freely? There is plenty to work with, and as we address the theme let’s let Steve Perry and Aerosmith serve as our background, a live acoustic rendition offering a chance to see them from a rare vantage point -
Heat/Raptors #1 – How much of the Toronto poor play really was the “monkey” (because the Pacers did not challenge them with all that much)?
In all of the years that I have watched playoff basketball, I have rarely seen a team win a Game 7 that was as timid down the stretch as the Raptors. In some ways it could be expected – one of the themes set up before the opening tipoff of the post-season was the Lowry had never won a playoff series as an NBA starter, and that DeRozan was joined with him at the hip through those recent Toronto failures. But outside of Paul George the Pacers did not bring much to challenge them, and there was an opportunity for the Raptors floor leaders to step up and move to a higher level when they led by 16 with 7:30 remaining. It could have been a crescendo.
It wasn’t. Toronto only scored six points the rest of the way, two of them after a forced Indiana foul with 6.5 seconds remaining. It was a horrific example of basketball grace under pressure, the offense repeatedly bogging down and burning up much of the shot clock without purpose.
So now here we go – does the mere fact that Toronto won and advanced become some kind of baptismal moment, enabling the team to play with a higher confidence level? I am not sure, because the basketball played by the Raptors in Round 1 was so uninspiring. Consider DeRozan’s 30 points on Sunday. It took him 32 FG attempts, 22 of which were missed, and nine FT tries to get to that total, and in terms of understanding his effectiveness, consider that he averaged a missed shot for every 1:48 while he was on the court. Yet here was Lowry’s take on his teammate afterwards - "We’re gonna ride with him emptying that clip. I don't care if he shot 40 times. He emptied the clip and we won, so that's all that matters."
Again, it is the psychological component that needs to be gauged in terms of establishing a good power rating. “I don’t care if he shot 40 times” can come across as being delusional, but how much does the victory alter that? For the series Lowry/DeRozan combined to shoot a frightening 31.8%, and they will have to be much better than that to survive this round. Meanwhile Miami out-scored Charlotte by 62 points in that opening series, and while the Heat had some legitimate offense struggles in the middle of it, the roster is filled with players who have been a part of teams that have won playoff series in the past, and they can be expected to play on a relatively even keel. So much so that I will be coming back to this one in a moment. But for now one quick aside - while looking at previous meetings between two teams can be a fundamental starting point for a series handicap, this one does not bring much to work with. There was not a single encounter of the four meetings when both teams had their current starting lineups on the court, so the past performance profiles get relegated to a far lesser weighting here.
Trail Blazers/Warriors #2 – Did Terry Stotts burn the physical bridge from Game #1 to game #2, or did he instead build a psychological one?
As part of the lead on Monday I noted just how wrong it was for Portland to have been forced to open on Sunday, and how grading the game required some adjustment for the setting. In some ways it could have just been a throw-away. But Terry Stotts did not perceive it that way, and it becomes a major issue heading into tonight.
The Trail Blazers were physically a step slow in Game 1, falling behind by 20 points in the first quarter, and were out-scored 15-0 in fast break points in the first half. No blame for that – C. J. McCollum had played 38:53 and Damian Lillard 38:34 in that Friday close-out of the Clippers, and they were playing as though wearing ankle weights. So with the outcome decided early, you give them the day off, and have them come out fresh on Tuesday, right? Stotts didn’t do that –
Game 1 Minutes FGs
Lillard 41:44 8-26
McCollum 40:09 5-17
Why in the hell would hehave them out there for that long, in games in which they had littlein the tank, especially knowing the set-up for tonight – six consecutive playoff games with only one day off in between, and three plane trips? It comes back to the psychological component again, wanting his team to make at least something positive happen on the court on Sunday.
Let’s go to Lillard now - "I really liked how we competed. Regardless of how many points we were down, the momentum they had, how much the crowd was in the game, we just kept fighting. At the end of the game, the end result was we lost by 12 points and not 35 points. I was proud of the way we competed."
Much like reading into the psyches of the Raptors, this gets a little delicate. Do we genuinely give Portland credit for scrapping, when the reality may have been every bit as much Golden State backing off with the lead? Or is the key factor what the Trail Blazers believe about themselves? If they come away with the notion that they actually drew the game down from 20 in the first quarter until the final margin of 12, then it is something inside of their head that can build a little confidence?
Hence, why Game 2 is a difficult read. Did Portland gain something on Sunday by closing up the scoreboard a bit, or did the Trail Blazers instead lose something because Lillard and McCollum played far longer than they should have? And while some basketball pendulums may call for that duo to shoot better off of that dismal collective 13-43, there is the genuine basketball issue that a Livingston/Thompson back-court may be the tallest in playoffs history (I don’t have the time this morning to look it up, so perhaps some of you may have that answer), and that means some tough wingspans to shoot over.
In the Sights, NBA…
It should not be any surprise to see #507 Miami (8:05 Eastern) make the ticket. I have the Heat rated as the better team overall right now, with a veteran cast that has the savvy and maturity to handle the playoff road. I will treat this as a sequence going in, taking the +4.5 tonight (I do not expect those early +5’s to show again) with the plan on playing again on Thursday if it does not work. Even with a heavy Zig Zag influence I would expect to still be able to get at least +3.5 for Game 2, so I will have the mindset that if Miami manages to take one of the two games to the final possession I will break even (this does not mean, of course, that if the Heat win the game tonight I come right back; that becomes an entirely different set-up). Indiana won a game on this court, and was sitting on a margin of -3 in the final seconds of two others, and Miami brings far more to the proceedings than the Pacers did.
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