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OT: The Official Toronto Raptors Thread

I think we might actually be able to Warriors-killers. Siakim might be better suited to defend Durant than any player in the league.
 
This was my point about the bench. Our bench allows our starters to play up tempo 100% of the time, and the second they are tired, the bench comes in at 100% tiring out the opponents starters who may still be on and gassing the inferior benches. Constant bursts of effort by a fresh five is crazy hard to play against for a whole series. Give er Casey...don't change


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Hoss said:
This was my point about the bench. Our bench allows our starters to play up tempo 100% of the time, and the second they are tired, the bench comes in at 100% tiring out the opponents starters who may still be on and gassing the inferior benches. Constant bursts of effort by a fresh five is crazy hard to play against for a whole series. Give er Casey...don't change


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Yeah, I agree with this. Benches shorten in the playoffs not because coaches want to use fewer players, but because most coaches have fewer quality players they trust with each W/L being so ****ing important. We should be running opposition starting 5's ragged as a strategy, change absolutely nothing about usage, make teams either allow us to wear down their best 5 with high tempo on both ends of the court, or force them to rely on further and further into their bench than they were gameplanning for.
 
i assume it is still true that the raptors dominate in the 4th - this is why and over 7 games i do not see that becoming anything but more of an advantage

i will be curious to see how other teams adapt to that
 
worm said:
i assume it is still true that the raptors dominate in the 4th - this is why and over 7 games i do not see that becoming anything but more of an advantage

i will be curious to see how other teams adapt to that
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we do dominate fourth quarters. but our offensive efficiency at the end of games takes a massive nosedive.
 
zeke said:
I think we might actually be able to Warriors-killers. Siakim might be better suited to defend Durant than any player in the league.
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I don't know if I'd go that far. Klay is one of the few SG's big enough to give Demar problems with getting his shot off. Curry (if healthy) will force Lowry to run a lot...a lot and I think we might need to get creative with our rotation and put long ass armed Delon on Curry more, and move Lowry to an easier matchup to get him some easier defensive minutes so increase his offensive impact (I really don't want him chasing Curry around off the ball for 7 games). KD is KD and I don't like anyone we have (or that exists on the planet earth really) guarding him. Just too much range, too much versatility. Oddly, I dig our chances for Serge & Val to flat out pimp Donkey & Zaza.

the GS second unit is interesting though, and somewhat scary. A lot of length, a lot of size, alot of experience, decent athletes. Livingston is a match up problem, and guys like Swaggy scare me in short series play. A guy like that who can go nuts for short periods of time and literally be unguardable from range can change a series off the bench. Same reason anyone smart should be afraid of CJ Miles...he starts feeling it and it's ****ing curtains unless your starters are blowing ours out.

We absolutely need our bench to beat up on GS to have a chance to win that series, and I think the GS bench is good enough to play ours close enough to even that their starting group rolling over ours wins the series in fairly brutal fashion.
 
worm said:
what does that mean?
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That we go to iso ball and look a lot like previous iterations of the Raptors where ball movement dies and the shot difficulty increases.


That we're really good defensively covers up this issue a bunch because we also tend to force tough shots down the stretch. Problem is that the deeper and deeper into the playoffs you go, those tough shots are taken by Kyrie, Lebron, Harden, KD, Steph, etc and not by 2nd/3rd tier "star" players.
 
worm said:
what does that mean?
Click to expand...

I don't have the stats in front of me so this is based on memory, but... essentially we have a very positive 4th quarter points differential. However, that only tells part of the story, because in close games, we score fewer points per 100 possessions in the fourth quarter (and more specifically a defined subset of 'crunch time') than we do normally.

Or, in other words, in close games, we have seen them revert to ineffective iso ball. Which is a legitimate concern I think.
 
VanVleet is gonna get PAID this summer.

we better not let the luxury tax get in the way of re-signing him.
 
Someone will take norm. The metrics aren't bad on him if you ignore this year and the contract isn't bad in the new environment. Don't forget as well that we are a team others will be looking to emulate in style of play. Any gm trying to overhaul his bench would do worse than to look at a raptors cast off.
 
JV might be the most underrated player in tbe league. if he got this much ball regularly his numbers would be awesome.
 
1.HOU 53-14 .791 -----
2.GSW 51-16 .761 2.0
3.TOR 50-17 .746 3.0
4.BOS 46-21 .687 7.0
5.POR 41-26 .612 12.0
 
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