Paul George is a beast, and the Raptors’ playoff demons are back
Welcome back to the playoff stage, Paul George. It missed you — at least as much as the Toronto Raptors did not miss it.
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After missing nearly all of the 2014-15 season following the devastating leg injury he suffered during a summertime USA Basketball scrimmage, the Indiana Pacers swingman continued a season-long return to stardom by taking over the opening game of the 2016 postseason. George scored 27 of his game-high 33 points in the second half on Saturday, torching fellow All-Star counterpart DeMar DeRozan on one end, locking him down on the other and setting up his teammates to lead seventh-seeded Indiana to a 100-90 win that wrests home-court advantage away from the second-seeded Raptors in their first-round playoff series.
“I love it. I love it,” said George — who added six assists, four rebounds, four steals and two blocked shots in 37 1/2 minutes — after ESPN’s Israel Gutierrez asked him about the feeling of being back in the playoffs in a post-game interview. “I’m looking at it as no pressure. I’ve been here before, being the low seed, my rookie year, so […] all I’ve got to do is come out and play, try to do as best as I can leading. You know, my guys are behind me. They’ve got all the faith, all the trust in me. Coach [Frank Vogel] got the trust in me. Just got to come out and perform.”
Perform he did, dominating the action after intermission to knock the Raptors back on their heels and stir the echoes of their ignominious postseason history. Eight times, Toronto has made the playoffs, and eight times, Toronto has lost its first playoff game. (The Raptors did come back to win their first-round series in 2001, knocking off the New York Knicks in five games.)
It has happened in each of the last two years for Raptors teams coming off the winningest season in franchise history under head coach Dwane Casey. The 2014 edition began a seven-game loss to the veteran Brooklyn Nets in which the Raps lost both the opening and deciding games on their home court. The 2015 version kicked off a four-game sweep at the hands of the Washington Wizards in which Toronto was, frankly, embarrassed.
After a franchise-record 56 wins that sewed up the No. 2 seed in the East behind stellar seasons from DeRozan and point guard Kyle Lowry, this year was supposed to be different. And yet, following a dispiriting effort in which the Raptors shot just 38 percent from the field as a team and committed 20 turnovers leading to 25 Pacer points, here they are again, in an 0-1 hole and, if not necessarily fearing the monster under the bed, at least wondering if he really might still be down there.
It all looks so familiar, doesn’t it?
— Bruce Arthur (@bruce_arthur) April 16, 2016
DeRozan wilted, proving largely unable to generate clean looks against the tenacious defense of one of the game’s premier perimeter stoppers en route to 14 points on 5-for-19 shooting, and largely unable to prevent George from getting just about whatever he wanted on offensively.
Frank Vogel on Paul George: “The biggest reason we won.”
— Candace Buckner (@CandaceDBuckner) April 16, 2016
Whether still bothered by the right elbow injury that affected his shot late in the season, by the physical and active defense of Indiana’s George Hill, or both, Lowry was utterly ineffective. He scored just 11 points in 41 minutes, missing 10 of his 13 field goal attempts and five of his nine free throws, while undercutting his seven assists with six turnovers.
All afternoon long, the Raptors’ stars looked tight, scanning and thinking rather than reading and reacting, due in part to Indiana’s on-ball pressure at the point of attack and the specter of shot-blockers Ian Mahinmi and rookie Myles Turner at the rim.
Dwane Casey: “I hadn’t seen us play that tentative on the offensive end all year. That’ll change.”
— James Herbert (@outsidethenba) April 16, 2016
In the early going, they were able to push through the disjointed and stagnant offense, thanks largely to trips to the charity stripe — Lowry and DeRozan both drew fouls in the first 70 seconds, which seemed a good sign for a Raptors team that ranked third in the NBA this season in free-throw attempts per game and free-throw rate — and dominating work on the offensive glass, with center Jonas Valanciunas bulling his way to eight points and nine rebounds in the first quarter to help pace Toronto to a 24-19 lead after 12 minutes.
After playing DeRozan and Lowry for nearly the entire first quarter, Casey went with an all-bench unit to start the second — a relative rarity for the Raps, who feasted on opponents all season long at the starts of second and fourth quarters by having Lowry run with reserves Bismack Biyombo, Patrick Patterson, Terrence Ross and Cory Joseph. But with George getting an extended rest after having played the entire first period, Indiana continued to struggle offensively as well, falling behind by eight on a Patterson 3 midway through the second. A late-quarter surge led by five quick points from C.J. Miles, however, helped Indy go into the locker room down just two at half, 45-43, despite getting just six points on 2-for-9 shooting from George.
Once they got to the back, George went straight to the videotape.
“After the first half, I watched film in the back coming out,” he told Gutierrez. “I was getting great looks; I just wasn’t being smart about my approach. I did a better job with that.”
Yeah, I think it’s fair to say he did.
George absolutely dominated the third quarter from the jump, blocking a DeRozan runner and drilling a 3 in the first minute of the frame to give the Pacers their first lead at 48-45. He patiently probed the Raptors’ defense, finding his way into open spaces and either pulling up for rhythm jumpers or getting into the paint to create for others. He scored 17 points in the frame on 6-for-7 shooting while putting the clamps on DeRozan, giving Indiana a three-point lead after three quarters and leaving the natives at Air Canada Centre mighty restless.
“I got locked in, I got focused, I made shots,” George later said.
Again, DeRozan and George got extended rests at the start of the fourth quarter, with the Lowry-led bench unit knotting the game up before George checked back in with just under eight minutes left. DeRozan returned a minute later, with the score tied at 76, and George went to work, setting up Rodney Stuckey for a 3 that gave Indiana a four-point lead before initiating a drive-and-kick that got Toronto’s defense in rotation. The Raptors scrambled to keep up with Indiana’s ball movement, but wound up leaving open the one guy they really shouldn’t have: George.
He kept the pressure on, breaking down Toronto’s defense and feeding the young Turner for point-blank buckets on consecutive possessions before calmly drilling a 15-footer as if DeRozan wasn’t even there to give Indy an eight-point lead with 2:36 remaining. The Raptors would get no closer, and the fans who had roared in support couple of hours earlier left, for the third straight year, with their hearts in their throats.
Fan exodus starts. They’ve been through this so many times now, but keep coming back for more.
— Ryan Wolstat (@WolstatSun) April 16, 2016
There’s plenty of reason for them to keep coming back — Toronto didn’t win 56 games by accident, and there’s still a lot of series left — but there’s plenty of cause for concern, too. George, it is now definitely proven, can guard DeRozan, and DeRozan does not seem to be able to return the favor, so Casey’s got to find someone who can.
That was supposed to be DeMarre Carroll, whom Toronto paid a princely sum last summer precisely for his gifts in defending top-flight perimeter scorers. But after missing two-thirds of the season with foot and knee injuries, he still looked little like himself on Saturday. If he can’t be equal to the task, Casey might need to take a closer look at longer minutes for rookie Norman Powell, who started the game and looked good early before Casey put him in the deep freeze while shuffling his rotation in search of both someone to stop George and a workable mix that includes the recently returned Carroll, or perhaps big, tough chaos agent James Johnson.
It might also behoove Casey to get to reserve power forward Patrick Patterson (nine points on 4-for-5 shooting, six rebounds, one block, one assist) earlier, and to stay with him later (he played just over one minute in the third quarter in which the Pacers took over). Might also be a decent idea to look for opportunities to get DeRozan when he’s not guarded by George, and to stagger minutes so that Toronto doesn’t have to go through stretches with both DeRozan and Lowry on the bench. (Though, to be fair, Joseph played brilliantly as the lead facilitator on those all-bench units, and might have been the Raptors’ best performer on Saturday.)
Then again, maybe the rotation decisions and lineup optimizations only matter so much; if Lowry and DeRozan continue to miss 75 percent of their shots, Toronto’s dead. George doesn’t expect them to — “They missed shots. Them two guys are good […] We’ve got to continue to make it tough on them. That’s all we’ve got to do” — and Carroll, who helped spark the Atlanta Hawks to an Eastern Conference finals run last spring, was already sounding sage, soothing, veteran-leadership-heavy tones after yet another disappointing start to a Toronto postseason.
Carroll to DeMar and Lowry: “I don’t think they’re rattled. Told them don’t hang your head. It’s a long series.”
— Ryan Wolstat (@WolstatSun) April 16, 2016
It just got shorter, though. And if Paul George can do this a few more times — and this version of Paul George, the one who went toe-to-toe with Peak LeBron James and didn’t bat an eye, most certainly can — then it might get real short, real fast.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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