A brief look into Miami Heat's success, other small ball teams and why the Raptors playing small ball is a terrible idea

After watching the game between the two teams last night, it became clear to me that the Raps playing small ball would be ineffective or at the very least be inconsistent and in a way take away some of the team's strengths and exposes its weaknesses. In other words, it doesn't make any sense.

Comparing them with the Miami Heat, well you can say that it would not be fair for the Raps since they are the NBA champs but you would have to since the Heat is probably the only team in the Nba history that have made the small ball a success (aka be champs).

In all honesty, it was a stupid idea to try to beat the heat in their own game. It is pretty evident that Casey still has no idea how he would run the team. There was a lot of good things going on early and by far the best start we've had this season and a lot of it was focusing on feeding the bigs and the bigs making plays then we revert back to the same old same old.

Okay, unto the point. Playing small ball requires you to have certain things. You would need shooting (3pt shooting is key), good ball movement (offense and defense) and agility. You would then utilize all these things by spacing the floor with your shooters, driving in and kicking the ball out and moving the ball constantly in order to create good shots. All of which the raptors are terrible at and I can even say that the team overall although very athletic isn't really that agile.

The apparent strength the raptors have is rebounding, being top 3 in the offensive rebounding which is a bigger factor of why we are one of the leaders in total rebounding. Heat on the other hand is literally the worst in the nba in rebouning (oRb as well) since they are sacrificing interior presence to run this style while we on other hand is sacrificing our greatest strength to run a style we suck at.

GS warriors rebounding has been impressive and could mean great things to come for them

they make their shots count

Unto the offensive stats which is a more telling tale. Rebounding is something potentially that we could work off of but our offensive stats does not really go hand in hand with this style of basketball.  We all know we don't have any legitimate 3 pt. threat and we run a lot of iso ball and our stats says the same. 

Not a recipe for success. running iso heavy ball while having no three point threat or inside presence.

better than expected but against other small lineups, raps will likely get outscored in the perimeter

TOR@MIL

for this post, i would just focus on the end game for the raptors and how they failed to properly close out the bucks. 

I would have to say that this does not bode well for the season. If there has been one thing that the raps has been consistent in so far is that they have an awful end game.

the bucks made a run in the fourth mostly because of TO's  but i'm not going to start there since I think it is bound to happen in the NBA and I don't expect our bench to always deliver.

i'm going to start here. first off the starters just came back this should be the time where they stop the run and take control of the game
this play was also in my last post and like I said this kind of play ALWAYS happen in raptor games. a breakdown in what supposed to be an isolation type of play.

1) lowry hand off is fine but he should cut to the basket or go in the deep corner to take advantage of the mismatch

2) the amir high screen, one of the worst things in our offensive scheme, leads to him taking more threes.

his man is basically just covering rudy for free.

3) similar play for DD next possession and again not effective

leads to a turnover into 4v2, WHAT ARE YOU DOING RUDY RUN!

Now again the rotation issue,  ROSS subs in for rudy. I don't see the point of doing this considering rudy went back in a minute or two but it could have or should have lost us the game. Ross was completely lost in defense,  the switches didn't happen, people got lost in screens. He was at fault too but again its team defense.

 you can see mayo calls for  the ball, he even could've cut to the open lane but chose to shoot a 3 which he makes

and again. (fortunate miss) complete breakdown

 

and again. (another miss)

The better play call in the end probably saved the game. I think the raps could use more of having rudy setting up a high screen as they make use of both derozan and gay by splitting the defense's attention to both sides. 

so much better than standing in a corner

drop off to amir, whoever guards derozan has to stay inside and can't deny the pass 

drop off to derozan who has alot more to space to either run to the rim or pull up. amir also has more space to go for the board as the defense will collapse to derozan

Also to add to the point, MIL missed 5 out of 6 free throws in a period when were only ahead by 5 points. They also could not convert on fast break with a man advantage a few times and even lead to us scoring a fast break bucket one time. 

In conclusion, this was really just a lucky win for us and if this trend continues like last season we would end up losing a lot of games that we should be able to win.

TOR@ATL result: LOSS current: 1 loss streak record: 1-1

So this is my first raptors blog, well we lost can't do anything about it so I'll just start a blog.  figured it'll be a long season, definitely gonna have lots of up and down just from what I've seen from the last 2 games. I'm just gonna go make some quick points on some really stupid things that kind of lead us to losing this game, partly due to coaching and the typical mistakes some players makes "COUGH COUGH RUDY GAY".  

also to point out i'm not expecting the team to play like the spurs but i'm just going to point out the OBVIOUS things that almost always occurs in raptor games

quick points on most of the first half, they did OK:

JV covered horford ok

pick and roll was very effective for ATL, almost all their points was from P&R and horford creating

lowry attacked basket very well

tor attacked basket constantly with good success

rudy had some success attacking, team had ZERO success in the perimeter

augustin was very good, he got into the PAINT at will and made some plays, meshed well with DD 

UNTIL late:

DAYE over pscho T subbing, beginning of the end. daye really cost us 

A) he took too many shots B) terrible for the team defense

even bench had hard time to cover the pick and roll. 

ATL has a sound offensive plan that TOR never tried to adjust for. TOR's 1 on 1 defense is great but ATL ran the P&R and got better at doing it throughout the game as they eventually made their 3 pt. shots.

3RD QUARTER:

i can't say that they did terrible, it was just that two misplays that cost us 6 points which really inflated the lead.

we were always around 9pts back.

4TH QUARTER:

this is where i would like show most of the shit i picked up on. and to be honest, this quarter should be any teams best quarter since you should have make adjustments BASED on how first 3 quarters went OR run your best plays.

start:

look at this shit, yes that is essentially FOUR GUARDS with hansborough who is undersized. the players didn't play badly but like 8 out of 10 times this lineup will NOT cut the deficit.

they couldn't get rebounds and had a hard time getting buckets

here is where rudy gay's decision i think killed our chance to take over late in the game. he has a mismatch against horford who he can take to the paint.

you can also see that milsap is outside covering lowry and korver as help which is great.

he then takes a fucking jumper as soon as he gets it and misses.

this was just terrible, then coming back to the other side they quickly took advantage of GAY covering horford leading to a foul into points.

absolutely KILLED our flow.

here is the next play, CLASSIC RAPTOR PLAY that always happens in these situations

 they are looking for derozan and probably should have made the pass here (derozan should've approached lwory instead of pulling back but the pass should have been here)
he would have alot of space to create here but it didn't happen

then they literally call a screen for him like the play is dead here they are just forcing it, if its really close im ok with it but you have still have lots of time.

they got him the ball afterwards late in the clock, into a triple team. this is why i believe derozan deserves more credit, he is forced into alot of these type of plays where he can't do much.

then unto the next play, again same situation. a bit better since its earlier in the count. 4 people is literally looking at him.

it would have been ok (lots of space on the other side, lowry corner three, amir top of the key) , but what happened was terrible since BOTH HIM AND FIELDS rolled into the basket at the same time w/c killed the play

at this point comback for an average team is a longshot, you'd have to play perfect for the rest of the game to get back, good luck with that.




the rotation really really hurt us this game, everyone played for fucking no reason. i dont fucking understand why but its just stupid. it lead to communication problems that ATL's P&R game got them easy points and none of these players won't really get you fucking buckets so WHY?

the decision of having FIELDS play late game and benching JV was just TERRIBLE. it would not have change the results dramatically
but its the obvious choice for the long run (JV experience, etc.
considering that he was our best 1 on 1 defender against horford who killed us late
having rudy gay be in a constant mismatch
fields was fucking covering a shooter, no point of having a fucking good defender on a shooter
fields can't shoot for shit so doesn't help space wise.

i'm going to stop here since a new game is coming up, its time to move on. this is mostly me venting out so whatever. alot of these issues came from last season as well so nothing has changed it seems. however lowry i think is playing better and our bench could be capable of a lot more.