A franchise-record 49 wins, original Raptors star Damon Stoudamire honoured, Kyle Lowry finds his jump shot, DeMar DeRozan keeps on rolling, showing no signs of injury and then says this , one heck of a night to finish the regular season.
- The usually defensively-solid Hornets looked like they had already booked their tee times but three things still stand out because Gerald Henderson and Bismack Biyombo weren’t taking any plays of: DeRozan seems like he might have solved the Henderson riddle. Henderson locked him up for years, but over the past week, DeRozan has easily bested him twice. Lowry had no trouble scoring at will over Charlotte’s defenders after two brutal shooting games in Florida and then against Boston and Valanciunas made a variety of pretty moves to score consistently inside against Biyombo, merely one of the NBA’s premier rim protectors. He missed two shots, he was told after the game. “Sorry,” Valanciunas replied with a smile. His third season ends with averages of 12 points and 8.7 rebounds on 57% shooting (second in the NBA behind only DeAndre Jordan’s ridiculous 71%).
- More interesting stats: The Raptors finish the season No. 3 in offensive efficiency, but just 23rd in defensive rating (the team finished a respectable 10th in net rating). Toronto finished third-last in assist% (percentage of scores assisted on), a dismal 25th in defensive rebound percentage (one of this team’s biggest flaws), but fourth overall in turnover percentage (so they don’t create many assists, but they don’t turn the ball over much either). The team ranked No. 6 in true shooting percentage, which is an important stat. Toronto finished just 25th in opponent’s effective field goal percentage, that’s not good, but 10th in opponent’s turnover ratio, that is good.
- Some more: Greivis Vasquez ranked No. 10 in the NBA in catch-and-shoot effective field goal percentage; Terrence Ross finished 20th in catch-and-shoot points; Opponent’s shot 46.5% at the rim against Valanciunas, which puts him with the likes of Hassan Whiteside, Josh Smith, Timofey Mozgov, Dwight Howard and Nerlens Noel. Rudy Gobert (who got worse as the season went on in that category) and Serge Ibaka led the league; James Johnson’s 63.7% FG% on drives led all NBA players with at least 50 drives. Patrick Patterson was 5th, Amir Johnson was 8th; Lou Williams ranked No. 15 and Ross No. 16 in points per touch (points scored per possession of ball); Valanciunas trailed only Whiteside in points per half-court touch; DeRozan ranked No. 7 in pullup points per game.
- Canadian content bonus – Andrew Wiggins covered exactly 200 miles while on the court this year, second only to Damian Lillard. Cory Joseph had an average speed of 4.7 miles per hour, second only to teammate Patty Mills.
Couldn’t get this in for the Damon Stoudamire piece, but he had interesting things to say about Lowry, who he knew as a first and second-year player in Memphis:
“You know Kyle has always been the underdog. He never was respected in high school. He never was respected in college,” Stoudamire explained.
“He gets drafted, I’m there, me and him are kind of splitting minutes. They draft Mike Conley. Now you’ve got three point guards, he goes and stews in the corner, I can remember the first pre-season game he’s the third point guard. I just told him, ‘you’ve got to prove yourself, probably I’m going to get traded,’ which I did, I got traded to San Antonio. I told him they are trying to see which one of them is the point guard for that team, it’s not losing the battle.
“The funny thing about it is he gets traded, he goes to Houston, Houston trades Aaron Brooks. Aaron Brooks came off being most improved player. He’s always had to prove himself, he’s always had to play with a chip on his shoulder. What he’s been doing this season, I would say it’s the same thing, he wanted to prove everybody wrong.
I’m going to get on him a little bit though because, I’m like, ‘he’s taking games off for rest?’ That’s what they put on the file. Kyle Lowry never took games off for rest. Never. Just tell him. I hope he didn’t get big-time all of a sudden after he made the all-star team.”
- This is the last Points Per Game of the season. With three beat writers and a columnist covering every Raptors playoff game, there just isn’t enough left to cover in this space.
Thanks for reading!