The Raptors have a bunch of problems right now: Immanuel Quickley is still injured, Jakob Poeltl has become pretty much unplayable, their offense is struggling, and they haven’t been able to unlock Brandon Ingram’s scoring.
Zach Lowe added Ingram’s and RJ Barrett’s defensive limitations against this Cavs team to the growing list of Raptors concerns.
“They just can’t leave Ingram and Barrett,” Lowe said on the latest episode of The Zach Lowe Show. “They’re okay defenders, they’re just at a quickness, tenacity disadvantage, craft disadvantage against Harden and Mitchell. If you leave those guys on an island against the Cleveland guards, they’re going to lose that battle every time.”
“It’s another instance where I’m like, you just gotta mix up different tactics,” he added. “You’ve got to trap them and live with them passing it around a little bit. Trust the fact that you’re one of the most frenetic, biggest, fastest rotating teams.”
The Raptors’ defense hasn’t been what we’re used to
The Raptors finished the regular season with the fifth-best defensive rating in the league. And yet, the Cavs have been able to take that defense apart in the first two games of the series.
The Raptors have the second-worst defensive rating in the playoffs right now. They struggle to contain the Cavs’ scorers and force turnovers or get steals.
If that doesn’t change quickly, this series will be over soon. It’s difficult to win games when you can’t play to your strengths and make the other team uncomfortable. Defense is what got the Raptors through the regular season and while the offense needs to be better, finding that defensive tenacity is also the key to swinging this playoff series.
It’s time for Darko Rajaković, who’s in his first playoff series as a head coach, to make some adjustments and try different defensive looks against Harden and Mitchell.
RJ Barrett deserves a lot of credit for what he’s doing offensively
Barrett may not be up to the challenge of guarding Donovan Mitchell or James Harden one-on-one all the time, but he has been a bright spot offensively. He has been a reliable scorer for a team that sorely misses Immanuel Quickley and hasn’t gotten much out of Brandon Ingram scoring-wise.
Barrett scored a team-high 24 points on 7-13 shooting, including three made 3-pointers, in Game 1. He was the Raptors’ second-most productive but most efficient scorer in Game 2 with 22 points on 10-13 shooting from the field.
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