The Raptors can make some excuses for losing Friday’s game in Brooklyn: No Kyle Lowry was massive and losing Amir Johnson in the third quarter after he had turned in one of his best performances of the season was crushing as well, plus the streaking Nets are fighting for their playoff lives, but … simply put, the defending in this one was awful. Just when the Raptors teased that they were turning a corner in that department, they put on matador gear and showed the Nets non-stop red. The results weren’t pretty. The season-long Raptors fatal flaw resurfaced: Most of these guys can’t keep anybody in front of them. Greivis Vasquez got torched all night, Terrence Ross has gone from a plus defender last year to one of the worst in the NBA (check the stats if you find this to be hyperbole, he is right near the bottom). Lou Williams wasn’t as good defensively as he has been at other points.
- All of the penetration either set up easy kick-outs (which a better three-point shooting team would have capitalized on, making this an easy Nets win instead of a close one), but mostly resulted to easy forays to the bucket. Deron Williams got there at will, Brook Lopez carved up the Raptors inside and overall, the team surrendered a ridiculous 74 points in the paint (most brutally, in the fourth quarter, when Brooklyn shot 12-for-14 down there). You couldn’t even beat the woeful Knicks with an “effort” like that.
- When Brooklyn stole Thaddeus Young from Minnesota in exchange for the repatriation of Kevin Garnett, it was a terrible development for the Raptors. That’s because Young had torched the Raptors throughout his career, dropping dagger after dagger against them. Now, he is on the team’s biggest rival. In this one, Young was the best player on the floor, no matter who was trying to guard him. He shot a video game-esque 12-for-15 from the floor for 29 points. He is now averaging 16.4 points a game against Toronto during his career, his best mark against any team, and shooting 56% from the floor, his third-best mark. He’s a problem.
- If the defence remains a rumour, any opponent will make quick work of the Raptors in the playoffs, whether its the Wizards, Bucks, Nets or Heat. One would suspect the Raptors will try a lot harder defensively in the playoffs, that pride will kick in, but who knows, it isn’t just about effort. Some of them are just not built to play defence.
- On that note, Dwane Casey is a big Greivis Vasquez fan (as is Masai Ujiri) but he is being badly exposed with a bigger workload. While you can hide him a bit against backups, when he starts, he gets throttled by opposing point guards. Lowry regressed defensively this season as well, but even Jose Calderon didn’t struggle as much defensively as Vasquez does. It’s another problem.
- One could argue a bigger problem is the regression of Ross. DeMar DeRozan plays far better offensively when he has Ross beside him stretching the floor and that’s a major reason why the Raptors continue to feed Ross big minutes, but his defensive slippage has been both inexplicable and … wait for it … a major problem. Ross has gone backwards at a time most players with his talent go the other way. It will be fascinating to see what the team does in the off-season, but he doesn’t look like the answer at small forward for a variety of reasons. One of the league’s worst rebounding and defensive teams desperately needs an upgrade at small forward and power forward, given Amir Johnson’s unfortunate medical situation (he just can’t stay healthy enough to be the dominant, full-time starter he once was, which really is a shame). Johnson’s latest injury was mostly bad luck. Valanciunas had just made a great block and the shot clock expired but Johnson was still contesting and a bunch of players were still crashing the boards and too many limbs got tangled up under the hoop, which led to Johnson landing on one of them and hurting his ankle again.
- Positives: DeRozan’s solid all-around game, which followed his great month of March; The early ball movement; Nets shooting just 43.8% at the rim against Valanciunas vs. 63% against the other Raptors; Despite all of the negatives, the Raptors were in control for much of this game and still had a chance down to the wire.