Raptor Recalibration, Game 6: Reverting to bad habits, Embiid’s non-scoring dominance and more

What I texted Eric shortly before tip-off Thursday was not intended to be a Game 6 preview. A little frustrated with myself for a few things of late, I threw the following message my lovely colleague’s way:

“Have you ever thought of not making the same mistakes over and over again? Like, learning from them and not repeating them, or at least make some new ones? Me neither.”

Well, it sure turned out to be prescient. After seemingly solving a lot of the persistent issues that plagued them over the first four games of the series, the Raptors had turned in a very good Game 5. They optimized the centre rotations, attacked the weak spots in Philadelphia’s otherwise stout defence, shut down key plays and minimized their exposure to poor bench minutes. They shot a heck of a lot better, too, but 3-point variance alone didn’t explain the return to form.

Then here they were Thursday, in a 112-101 loss to the 76ers that will now force an anxious Game 7 in Toronto on Sunday, reverting to all the earlier issues. If their earlier problems had been buried, it was the night that the skeletons came to life. So a lot of this edition of the recalibration may found familiar.

As established by now, the morning after each playoff game, we’ll reconvene here to try to sort through everything that happened. I’ll continue to tweak the format — a key coaching decision, adjustments and rotations, key statistical trends and so on — based on feedback, so please keep that coming. I was going to name it “The Ghosts of Right Now” and we all lost on “Wake and Blake,” so here we are.

McCaw’s cameo

With 1:18 to play in the second quarter, Kyle Lowry picked up his third foul. When the Raptors found themselves with a dead-ball scenario, 29.6 seconds to play and a defensive possession ahead of them, they yanked him. It’s a smart risk-management move. Even though Lowry isn’t a high-foul player, there was a certainty it was just one possession, and because the clock would likely be short if they got the ball back, the lost value of having him out there was minimized. Lowry is a good defender and a deep 3-point threat, but we’re talking fractions of a point over a 30-second span to minimize a potentially disastrous longer-term scenario.

As J.J. Redick checked in, Nick Nurse sent Patrick McCaw to the table for Lowry. This, too, was justifiable. McCaw has impressed all year with his defence and is the type of long, slithery defender who fights around screens well enough to be a reasonable Redick defender. Out of a set inbound play, Redick was likely to be a major threat and McCaw, on paper, might be the team’s best-equipped check for Redick.

Except McCaw instead drew the Jimmy Butler assignment after he and Kawhi Leonard conceded a gimme-switch without Redick so much as touching Leonard. Again, McCaw is a good defender. Butler is a far different assignment, one who has the aggression and strength to exploit McCaw’s biggest weakness, his relative lack of strength. With Leonard, Pascal Siakam and Danny Green all also on the floor, McCaw was tasked with picking up Butler, doing a good job forcing him high up on the floor to make things difficult and then having little chance when he started his attack.

It was made worse by Leonard turning over the ensuing offensive possession and Butler scoring again, a pretty major swing heading into halftime.

This is obviously a pretty small thing. Fractions of a point, and all. In yet another blowout, there wasn’t a ton of marginal decision-making to choose from, and this type of minor misalignment of skill set and role is, I think, part of why the bench players have struggled more than expected this year.

Key statistics

One game after scoring 33 fast-break points, the Raptors were down to 11 here. It’s overly simplistic to look at one stat as a bellwether, but that one would be the one you choose for this team’s offence. And this, despite forcing 18 Philadelphia turnovers. Credit the 76ers transition defence, too. Toronto just couldn’t get anything going on the run. (The game wasn’t even that slow, relative to the series, as the 76ers did a good job attacking quickly the other way.)

• Ben Simmons had 18 points in the paint alone, with Butler chipping in another 16. For a team that concedes a reasonable rate of shots in the paint with the belief they can contest them well, the Raptors sure abandoned one of those two things Thursday.
• The 76ers grabbed 80 percent of the rebounds on their own glass and 39 percent on Toronto’s. That’s a major regression from Game 5.

You knew there was going to be a Mike Scott game at some point. The tattooed Raptor Killer had 11 points with a plus-29 mark in 20 minutes. Up until garbage time, he’d outscored the entire Raptors bench, playing the role of James Ennis III.

• The Raptors still can’t really score without Leonard. Their offensive ratings with him on the bench in this series: 47.8, 35.7, 70.8, 100.0, 142.3, 105.3. For the series, the Raptors have a 22.3 point-per-100 possession swing on offence along with Leonard on the court, even as his true-shooting percentage has come back down to earth slightly (67.7 percent on 32.1-percent usage).
• Lowry and Joel Embiid are tied for the playoff lead with plus-134 marks. Leonard and Green are in the top 10 as well. Fred VanVleet is in the bottom 10 among players still in the postseason, as are Boban Marjanovic, Greg Monroe and T.J. McConnell. Series of extremes, indeed.

I feel like Eric covered this well, but just in case: The Raptors were 7-of-25 on wide open threes, once again generating a ton of good looks and just not converting. They’re getting up five more wide-open threes per-game than Philadelphia in this series and shooting 32.2 percent on those, more or less wasting them.

Rotations and lineups

Embiid hit the bench early and Marc Gasol didn’t follow. We’ve been over the benefits of tethering those two too many times already in this series, even on nights like this when the 76ers are winning the Embiid-Gasol minutes. In this case, it would have been an earlier hook for Gasol, and the Raptors are trying to keep Siakam’s stretches shorter, complicating things. Credit Brett Brown for tweaking his pattern slightly to carve out some Embiid-against-bench minutes.

(Game 6 rotations, courtesy NBAViz)

As an update, Embiid’s net rating drops from plus-50.8 to plus-12.6 with Gasol on the floor for the series. Band-Aid, gun-shot wound, etc, but it’s important.

The Raptors starters lost their minutes, somewhat of a rarity. They were minus-3 in 19 minutes, dropping their net rating for the playoffs to a very healthy plus-24.1. That group, by the way, has played the second-most minutes of any postseason lineup and only one fivesome that’s played more than 40 minutes has them topped for net rating.

• Serge Ibaka in with the starters for Siakam played to even over eight minutes. The Ibaka-Gasol duo was minus-7 in 13 minutes overall and dropped to a more modest plus-5.5 net rating for the playoffs.
• The Ibaka-VanVleet-Norman Powell trio own a minus-24.4 net rating in 39 minutes this series. The Raptors can’t survive playing three bench pieces together. There’s just not enough size or shot creation.

That group that has the Raptors’ starters topped? Philadelphia’s starters. That group owns a plus-25 net rating in 145 minutes after posting a minus-3 on Thursday. Yes, this was, quite unexpectedly, the weird occasion where both starting groups were outscored. We’ve talked about how Philadelphia’s weird sub pattern allows for both starting units to win their minutes because they get heavy run against transition units, and here was the opposite, with transition units being a little better. Weird one.

• The 76ers’ big plus-16 run over five minutes came with Scott and Ennis on for Butler and J.J. Redick. A group with Ennis in place of Simmons worked fairly well, too (plus-5 in five minutes).
• Philadelphia has to stop using a real backup centre. Pretty much any groups with Marjanovic or Monroe has been unplayable in the series, and they gifted Toronto 15 points that way here. Marjanovic has a minus-75.6 net rating for the series, Monroe a minus-15.2 and Amir Johnson a minus-45.9. My guess is they’ll use Scott and Simmons as the de facto backup centres Sunday.

Matchups

As always with NBA.com matchup data, grains of salt are required here. They assign possessions based on the time spent guarding someone on a possession, not necessarily who defended each player at the possessions’ conclusion. Samples are small and noisy, so use these only descriptively.

Embiid continues to not score particularly effectively against Gasol, even as he makes an outsized impact on the game. I thought Gasol had a really poor night and still he helped limit Embiid to 4-of-9 shooting with five turnovers and just one assist in 53 possessions. For the series, Embiid is shooting 36.4 percent against Gasol with a turnover every 13 team possessions and nearly double the turnovers to assists. Still, the 76ers made it a point of emphasis to make Gasol defend in space early, and while it wasn’t Embiid scoring, it was effective.

• Green continued to see the bulk of the Butler matchup and Butler continued trying to hunt it, increasing his volume. The offence running through Butler still looked like a net win for Toronto at the team level because of how everything else kind of halts amid poor spacing, but Leonard on Butler completely shut him out (zero points in 15 possessions) and might be a bigger part of a Game 7 gameplan.
• Redick was shut out by Lowry over 27 possessions, going 0-of-4 with one turnover and just one assist. That continues a series trend of Redick performing worse when guarded by Toronto’s point guards and breaking free when he gets switches and cross-matches.

Simmons finally got some help on Leonard, guarding him for just 21 possessions. Butler picked up some of the slack and held his own, while Ennis was mostly ineffective. What’s worth noting, though, is that the non-Leonard Raptors couldn’t offer much help in the Ennis matchup, and that might be what Philly goes to more if their Game 7 strategy is once again to let Leonard get his and shut everyone else out.

• Butler spent the bulk of his time on Lowry, and Lowry was actually really aggressive against his pal, shooting 56 percent more frequently than normal (4-of-8 for 10 points and two assists in 32 possessions). At the other end, Butler actually scored posting Lowry up for a change.
• Gasol shot just twice in 28 possessions guarded by Tobias Harris. He had two assists, but the Raptors have basically spent entire games not punishing Philadelphia for that matchup. It has opened up some room for others thanks to Gasol’s screening putting Harris in unfamiliar situations, at least. I know why Gasol is hesitant, but whatever he’s thinking passing looks like this up, he has to know that an open trailer three is a better outcome than Green putting the ball on the floor.

Adjustments

Can I just re-post from Game 4 but say “the opposite?” My editors are telling me no.

The one thing I’ll say the Raptors continued doing a better job of was using Siakam more dynamically to pull Embiid away from the rim a bit. There were more Siakam dribble hand-offs, which are still a work-in-progress but are worth trying. If he ever becomes a threat above the break, these could be deadly.

The Raptors also utilized some elbow action with Siakam and Leonard, something that the 76ers have hurt them with on the other end.

Leonard also made some nice reads, though once again he’s better picking up passing opportunities in transition than in the half court. Gasol sure helps.

I also really liked this move from Leonard, attacking the double team from the direction it was coming as Embiid’s momentum was taking him the other way.

I thought the Raptors had pretty good offensive process earlier in the game, but the cold shooting and persistent hesitancy eroded some of the advantages they created.

I have decided against posting the supercut of Philadelphia’s offensive rebounds out of respect for your sanity.

Injury notes

• OG Anunoby traveled with the team for the first time since his appendectomy. He is still just doing light work, but it’s a step in the right direction. He remains without a timeline for a return.
• My wrist brace is really starting to smell funky.
• Chris Boucher remains sidelined with back spasms.

Moment of the game

I mean, this rebound was pretty cool, I guess? This game didn’t really have anything that stood out as definitive or representative, and I burned most of my good clips earlier in this piece. This is just a monstrous rebound on the part of Leonard, the type of savvy, athletic, physical play that an opponent can’t do much but shake their head at.

This unbelievably verticality from Lowry (verticalowry, as I’ve come to call it) was a candidate as well.

Song of the game

“Am I regressing or growing legs? My pride on the floor like a broken egg / Brown paper floors in an empty room, you’re crying now but I’ll see you soon”

I promise, this is not a lament of any lost downtime on my part because the series is going seven. There are the same number of days before the start of the Eastern Conference Finals anyway, and I wouldn’t have used any downtime for downtime, as we all know. Instead, I chose this song to highlight the weightiness of a Game 7 scenario but also maintain the perspective of why these moments feel so big. Yes, a step-back like a brutal Game 6 loss when most had at least been cautiously optimistic of a close-out game hurts.

The Raptors regressed, and while terms like pride or effort sometimes get thrown out as catch-alls for random bad nights, pride has certainly been a factor in this series – there have been four blowouts, and the losing team hasn’t lost the following game yet. (That means nothing. It’s just been weird, with a lot of ups and downs, not unlike life.) It probably feels a lot like same-old to Raptors fans, and anxieties will be incredibly high for Game 7. Disappointing though it may have been, everyone will be back Sunday, missing Game of Thrones and holding out hope once more.

If I may leave on the song’s closing line, a reminder that these big, stressful moments are far preferable to the absence of them: “We spent our whole lives wishing we were elsewhere and now that we’re gone we’re just trying to get back there.”

(Top photo: Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)