Quote:
Originally Posted by TheAlpineOracle
I think it's very fair to question their basketball IQ. You can live with the jacking up of low percentage shots. These guys are athletes and alpha-males with big egos. They think they can make these shots and you never want to take their confidence away. That said, it's another thing to be taking shots with 20 seconds left on the shot clock with a ten point lead in a game in the final 3 minutes. That is just plain stupidity. The Raptors should have been able to win that game no problem even if they never made another basket. Use the clock, force Indiana to foul to stop it and get to the line.
With Lowry, it wasn't the shots took, it was the ones he didn't take. Multiple times he drove to the basket and gave up a layup or a trip to the foul line only to kick it out for a ridiculously unnecessary 3 pointer. All these misses allowed Indiana to crawl back into a game multiple times that they had no business being in.
This is not a new issue though. This team simply does not know how to win or bury a team when they have the lead. I've always blamed Casey, but I'm really starting to wonder if there's anything he can do with guys like Lowry and Derozan. The Raptors had a great record this year, but the amount of times they let teams back in the game is absolutely staggering.
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I wanted to reply to your response to my message following game 7 but everytime I got started it seems I have been pulled away from my computer.
The Casey vs players debate clearly lies somewhere in the middle. Casey is a great fundamentals coach and clearly is well liked/respected by his players, but I don't think there is any question his weakness is his ability to make savvy in-game adjustments, and that their offensive philosophy late in quarters/halves/games is quite bad. He's the kind of coach who (in an ideal world) they would keep for one more year to really hammer home the defensive principles he has instilled in them this year, and then move on to a more savvy in-game manager to take them to that next level.
Anyways, I went back over the recording of the game and this is my thought:
The issue with Lowry passing up shots in order to kick the ball out is because of how well the Pacers defended the Raptors set from around 7-3.5 minutes left. We had stationary shooters setup in each corner on multiple possessions, not moving, which essentially took them out of the play completely. We also utilized an extremely high screen set by our big about 5-6 straight possessions as well. Because of how far away from the basket the screen was occurring, the Pacers didn't have to respect JV or Biyombo rolling to the basket as they were too far to possess any real threat after the screen. This meant the ball handler had to attempt to gain penetration on two men who were cheating down on the screen in order to deny penetration which was generally very effective for them. This essentially left one wing player open as a viable passing option at the three point line as the other two were never moving and thus covered, and the big just very rarely was in a decent position to threaten the basket. Couple that with our insistence on running down the clock, and you get what we got. Cutoff penetration, hurried kickouts to a wing who only has 4-5 seconds on the shot clock to make something happen and no one in a viable position to pass the ball to.
When Casey finally did timeout (another thing that bothered me on film was how long he waited to call a timeout when the offense was melting down) we actually came out of it with a nice play. We utilized a screen with our guard instead of big. This allowed Lowry (I believe) to penetrate to the hoop not having to worry about a Indiana bigman in his path, and then passed off to a slashing DeMarre Carroll who had come off the three point line near the elbow completely unguarded, which gave him a wide open attempt at a short floater that he should have made.
Anyways, I'm not a basketball coach. I'm a football guy. But what I saw in Casey's late game offense wasn't off ball movement, fluidity, and low IQ guys passing up open teammates in order to jack shots. It was a bunch of guys standing around, waiting for the clock to run down before penetrating to the basket in hopes that a defender would cheat down to leave a corner three open. If the former was happening, I would agree with you about low bball IQ. But it just doesn't look to be that way to me. It looks like guys were doing what they are supposed to be doing and just getting completely shut down. Yet Casey never called TO to settle things down and try something different until the damage had mostly been done and panic had set in.
I'm excited for the Miami series. I think anyone who wants Demar benched is nuts tho. He's our best player right now like it or not with Kyle banged up. I'm probably a bigger Powell supporter than anyone and there is no reason he can't play bigger minutes with Demar still in the lineup. With Joe Johnson at PF for Miami it affords you an opportunity to move Carroll to the 4. Powell can come in for Wade, and Demar can handle Deng. I don't hate that at all. I think we matchup nicely on paper, now we'll have to see how we do in person.