Raptors note Nets take a 2-0 lead in Q4

No two games are alike in the NBA playoffs. Even in a series in which the defending champion and number 2 compete with 53 wins against the understaffed number 7 with 35 wins, there is no script. And games 1 and 2 of the first round between the Toronto Raptors and Brooklyn Nets couldn’t have been more different.

In Game 1 on Monday, the Raptors led wire to wire with up to 33 points. In Game 2 on Wednesday, Brooklyn took the lead 26-12 and was on top for most of the first 40 minutes.

But by the fourth quarter, the champions looked more like the champions, figuring things out offensively and using a 19-5 run to take control. The Raptors scored a 104-99 win that put them 2-0 ahead when the series changed the game graphics for Games 3 and 4.

The stat

+22 – Point difference of the raptors in the restricted area in game 2.

As the Los Angeles Lakers would tell you by now, it’s a make-or-miss league. In Game 1, the Raptors made 22 3s. And there was a lot more missing in Game 2 when they shot 9:35 from a distance.

The networks made a defensive adjustment by switching all screens. This is a team that has done everything possible all season to keep their rim protection centers in color. Only the Milwaukee Bucks had allowed a lower percentage of their opponents’ shots to go into the restricted area than the nets (28%).

But in the playoffs, teams will give up what they have been doing all season if the matchup calls for it. The offense of the raptors is based on ball movements. It came third in the secondary assists per game and eighth in the passes per 24 minutes of possession. And to suppress some of that ball movement, the Nets had Allen do something he had seldom done in his three seasons in the NBA: switch screens and defend the guards one-on-one.

The adjustment worked in the first half when the Raptors only scored 50 points out of 52 offensive possessions and settled for a few too many jumpers. They tried more 3s (21) than shots in the restricted area (17) and reached the line for only 11 free-throw attempts in half.

In the second half, things changed. The Raptors scored just four points more in the last 24 minutes (54) than they did in the first 24 (50), but they made it with seven fewer possessions (54 out of 45). In the second half they made more shots in the restricted area (16) than in the 3-point area (10) and came to the line for 17 attempts.

With the extra looks inside, the scoring of Game 2 flipped most of the numbers from Game 1:

“I think this is a really good example of playoff basketball,” said Raptors coach Nick Nurse afterwards. “Every game takes a completely different shape. Now I would assume that Game 3 will take a different one. That’s what makes it so interesting and fascinating, I think.

The Raptors aren’t the most complete team this postseason. But their title fight last year put them in many different situations and they have learned that there are different ways they can win. It’s just about finding things out before the clock runs out at the end of the fourth quarter.

“I always say there are many ways to win a game,” said Sister, “and you just have to find one.”

The film

When the defense switches screens, the offensive can chase mismatches, trying to isolate a guard against a slow big one, or put a big against a small guard. The Raptors did quite a bit of this – “found a matchup that we can use to hit the color and then make a good decision, either quit or throw away or ditch,” says Nurse – and they were late in getting buckets from a Serge Ibaka Post- Up against Caris LeVert after a move.

But their isolations from Allen were mostly empty. According to Synergy Play-Type-Tracking, the Raptors scored just two points on six isolations against Allen (although Pascal Siakam left a few points on the line after a foul), with five of those six isos coming before the fourth quarter.

For the past 12 minutes, the Raptors just weren’t using many screens and attacking more 1-on-1.

“They cut a little more and adjust a lot less screens,” said Nurse of his team’s approach to alternating defense. “Then we just try to stay away from ball screens too. We tried to do more off-ball, pin-down and some set games. We usually like to play a pretty overt crime, but we called tonight. ” lots of games just to move them around and create a series of switches before we attack the color. “

Here are a few ways they succeeded in the fourth quarter:

Play 1
The Raptors’ second possession over the fourth lasted 20 seconds but did not include a single screen. They almost lost the ball at one point but late in the time VanVleet was able to get past Caris LeVert, pull help, and throw the ball for an Ibaka layup.

Play 2
Three possessions later, VanVleet waves his teammates over to the left side of the floor so he can play 1-1 with LeVert again. He blows through the bubble star of the nets (who may be feeling the toll of the offensive load it carries) for another layup.

Game 3
Ibaka sets a screen for VanVleet, but instead of using it and seeing a change from everyone, VanVleet rejects the screen and attacks the color again. Tyler Johnson can stay with him and force a miss.

Play 4
VanVleet isolates himself from Johnson upstairs on the ground but makes a quick pitch to OG Anunoby, who attacks the seam created by the Allen shading towards VanVleet. LeVert helps from the weak side and commits a foul.

After Norman Powell missed a jumper on the fourth possession in the first possession, the Raptors scored 21 points on their next eleven possessions to turn a six-point deficit into a seven-point lead. They figured out how to attack the nets’ new defenses and carried them out with the game on the line.

The night of the coach

Wednesday was a day for the Raptors’ coaching staff to earn their paychecks. They have a seasoned, skilled core of players who don’t necessarily need a lot of guidance from night to night. But since Game 2 is a lot more of a slog than Game 1, and the nets adjustments work well, players needed some input from the sideline.

“There are games where they put a lot more on the coaching staff than they do other games,” said Nurse. “Some nights they got a lot of suggestions and answers and they want to do this and that because they’re lying on the floor and doing it. And some nights everything seems to go wrong and they’re like, ‘You have to help us man, what the hell are you doing here? ‘

“So they’re good at being into those two things. Tonight was really much more about rooting it out, there were a lot of matchup changes, coverage changes, stuff like that.

“We really had to hold on, we got hit pretty hard, they tried to knock us out and we just held out long enough to keep fighting and gutting it.”

What’s next?

The nurse says we should expect something different in Game 3 on Friday (1:30 ET, NBA TV), so we expect something different. We saw some 3-2 zone holdings from Toronto on Wednesday in the third quarter, and we may see more of them in the future.

The nets must get LeVert to the basket more than in Game 2 when he shot 5v22, with only one of those 22 shots coming into the restricted area. Maybe they take a page from the book of the raptors, forego sending a screen to LeVert, and leave it isolated with more space.

After a brutal foray by Rodions Kurucs (only Marc Gasol’s) we saw another rotation change from the Nets, who put Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot on the grid and only played against eight players on Wednesday. Brooklyn will likely do without Joe Harris, who left Orlando after Game 2 to attend to a personal matter.

The Raptors aren’t getting complacent and should have another offensive fold or two if Brooklyn continues to switch screens as generously as it did on Wednesday.

In the words of the Likely Coach of the Year, that’s what makes it so interesting and fascinating.

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John Schuhmann is a Senior Stats Analyst at NBA.com. You can email him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.

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