[Anton123Participant]

 I watched a couple Toronto-Milwaukee games and just got finished watching the first game against Cleveland. Got to say the Raptors offense is just so boring and predictible. 

It’s not even that it’s all ISOs, the players who get the ISOs (Lowry and Derozan) always do the same things: contested jumpers and straight line drives. The Raptors were the worst passing team during the regular season and don’t seem any better in the playoffs. 

Who is to blame for the offense being so basic? The coach or the roster? 

Basically all of Toronto’s offense is generated by Derozan, Lowry, and Ibaka. All three have very little creativity to how they get their shot and aren’t great at finding open teammates. Still, the number of ISOs has got to be at least partly on the coach, right? At the beginning of the game Toronto tried getting Jonas involved, but did so by simply giving him the ball and standing around looking to see what he would do. Once he missed a couple ISO shots he never really got the ball again. 

[canadabasketballisrisingParticipant]

 Most has to be on the coach. Hes not a bad coach, but not a great one either. They’re stuck until a greta one becomes avaialble, so they can overpay for him. 

 

 

[OhCanada-Participant]

 Its not on the coach. Casey preaches ball movement. His most frequent statement is "the ball moves faster than a ball handler or defender". Hes been pleading for the team to run and push the ball. The scheme isnt based on iso’s.The idea is for Lowry and Derozan to suck in double teams by calling for pick and rolls and getting the off ball defender to try to trap them then to whip the ball around finding the open man. If they dont double and they use man coverage its game over Lowry or Derozan will just kill any defender in the league so theres always a double which leaves an open man somewhere. Theres been alot of problems with this though.

  Lowry and Derozan struggle passing out of the double when pressured. Both Ibaka and Valanciunas struggle catching the ball and making the easy pass. And it seems that on most nights at least two of the three 3 and D shooters are off the mark being Carroll, Patterson and Tucker. So even when everything works if you have these guys missing wide open shots the whole gameplan is for nothing. 

In the beginning of the year the offense was running so smooth. I think alot of this needs to be pointed to the fact that Tucker and Ibaka are really still new here and Lowry has only played I think 10 games with this team now. They are sort of out of sorts and theres no time to build chemistry right now. Patterson has been dowright awful and has no confidence in his shot. Im excited to see what Caboclo can bring and feel like Casey should have gone with Caboclo instead of Patterson a while ago because Pats been that bad. 

For some reason everyone wants to blame Casey but its not on him. The players have too many missed shots. Ibaka takes a ton of contested jumpers. They drop easy passes and have tons of unforced turnovers. To be honest Ibaka isnt nearly as good offensively as adverstised all he can really do is shoot and he has been streaky at best. 

Im still optimistic for this team but Cleveland is as good as ever and they are gonna score alot. I dont think Toronto can keep up the scoring pace unless everything starts clicking. 

 

 

 

 

[OhCanada-Participant]

 Another thing is teams dont double Toronto like this in the regular season. Its like an unwritten rule or something. They only do it in the playoffs or if they REALLY want to beat Toronto for whatever reason. The Bulls would always do it this year but I think thats because they were always a fringe playoff team. Indiana too but I think all the Indiana games came within the last qaurter of the season when they were making thier playoff push. This is why Toronto did so well offensively in the beggining of the year as well. With that being said the pressure double on pick and rolls is obviously the gameplan against Toronto and as we saw against Milwaukee they struggle when you use that. Thats why I was confused when Kidd went away from it. 

 

 

[SeattleSuperChronicsParticipant]

 Sweep City- We The North- hahahaha Demar kicking himself for resigning long term. Stuck playing with bumass Lowry

[OhCanada-Participant]

 Also to add to Antons post which is right on the money theres reasons why Valanciunas doesnt get touches. Lowry is a very good passer but his support is not good at moving off the ball and getting open. With Houston he had tons of double digit assist marks. Valanciunas struggles getting decent post position. Even when he gets bad position he struggles catching the post feed. He struggles catching the ball while moving. All around he is a low IQ player and isnt agile or athletic to utilize his work ethic. His post moves are fluid but badic and it takes him a while to read how he is being defended. His low IQ and clumsiness tends to force Lowry and Derozan to force the issue offensively as they are afraid to pass him the ball which has a high probability of ending up in a turnover. 

That pretty much covers everything. This all leads to the Raptors being in best described as repetitive and predictable as Anton stated. 

 

[bdmoteParticipant]

 They finished right by the cavs this year in Ws and Ls so, the boring O works doesnt. I love basketball played like that not flashy and is efficent good B-ball to watch.

[Author]

Posts