The Toronto Raptors, up until this game, has scored 120+ points in 5 straight. They were a bit offensively deficient in this game, hitting only 9 three pointers to Boston’s 20, and getting dominated 14 to 3 on the offensive boards. They did a great job defensively on Tatum and Brown, holding them to a combined 29 points on 8-27 shooting. But that’s not the whole story – when you put that much defensive attention on those two guys, the corner threes are going to be wide open for the role players. Pritchard and Ojeleye took full advantage, hitting a combined 12 threes on 16 attempts and leading their squad with a combined 44 points. As a Raptor fan, you can live with those two beating you. The real killer was the offensive boards though. That’s something Toronto needs to improve if they want to be able to take down Boston in a potential playoff series. Here are my player grades for the night.
Siakam and Lowry: A-
There’s no debate that Siakam’s playoff performance against the Celtics was poor, averaging only 14 PPG over that series. However, he lead the team tonight alongside Kyle Lowry. He had 23 points on 8-15 shooting and hit 2-4 of his threes. He was constantly posting up whoever was on him and taking them down low, getting to his spot, and more often than not hitting his little jump hook or push shot. He was also confidently stroking it from 3, looking a lot like the Siakam we’ve seen in the past. As for Kyle Lowry, he took his game up a level tonight, scoring 24 points on 10-15 shooting, most of which were scores attacking the paint. These guys took advantage of Boston’s lack of interior protection in the paint and delivered.
Baynes, Powell, Stanimal and Boucher: B
After Siakam and Lowry, Toronto had a significant drop-off in performance. Baynes played solid in his 21 minutes, putting up 8 points and 8 rebounds on 4/9 shooting. Powell had 15/4 but was in foul trouble in this game with 5 on the night and didn’t shoot that well at 6/15 and 0/4 from three. Similarly, Boucher had the same issue scoring 12/6 and getting up to 5 fouls late in this game. Stanley Johnson only played 16 minutes, but scored 9 points on 4/5 shooting.
For Toronto, no one else really showed up in this game. They didn’t get a whole lot of contributions off the bench, and their top scorer on the season in Fred VanVleet only put up 5 points. When the playoffs come around, Toronto has to find a way to try and get 20+ out of their 3 best players each night. If they can consistently get offensive production from those guys, they will be a tough team to beat. As we know, this Raptors team is transitioning into an offensive team, ranking 7th in offensive efficiency this season compared to 17th in defensive efficiency this season according to TeamRankings.com.
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