TORONTO - With five games in seven days, Dwane Casey had strongly considered giving his team Thursday off; that is until their ugly loss the night before changed his mind.
At this time of the year full, hard practices are few and far between so, after taking their annual team photo, the Raptors settled in for a lengthy film session followed by individual workouts on the court. It may have been the first time all season that defence wasn't at the top of their agenda.
To no surprise, Toronto's offence - once ranked at the very top of the league - has gone dormant in the absence of the team's floor general, who also happens to be its best and most valuable player.
Life without injured all-star point guard Kyle Lowry was not supposed to be easy. He does so many things that help you win on both ends but, after Wednesday's 105-96 loss to Washington, it's clear where the Raptors are missing him most.
"That's where we really miss Kyle," DeMarre Carroll said of the offence, which shot 37 per cent against the Wizards. "He knows the feel of the game to get guys involved, including myself. That's why he's an all-star. I think that's what he does, man. He gets you the ball where you want it and he knows how to get guys going."
That's the challenge they face for the foreseeable future. Although the Raptors hope to have him back for the playoffs, which begin six weeks from Saturday, Lowry remains out indefinitely after undergoing surgery to remove loose bodies from his right wrist on Tuesday.
Toronto had won its first three games without Lowry, mostly on the strength of its defence (they held opponents to 98.0 points on 44 per cent shooting), big comebacks (they overcome double-digit deficits in each contest) and DeMar DeRozan's brilliance (he averaged 37.7 points). However, more often than not, their offence has looked like a disjointed mess.
Outside of DeRozan and newcomer Serge Ibaka, no one has stepped up as a reliable scoring threat. Guys seem lost, unsure of where their shots are going to come from. There isn't much floor spacing out there and, most alarmingly, the ball is as stagnant as ever.
It's worth noting that, even at the best of times, the Raptors aren't a high-assist team. At 18.3 per game, nobody in the league averages fewer this season. Prior to Lowry's injury, they were assisting on just 47.2 per cent of their field goals, also ranked dead last in the NBA. In the four games since, that number has dropped to an abysmal 36.5 per cent. They totalled three assists though the first 36 minutes on Wednesday, and failed to record any in the third quarter. Certainly their poor shooting had something to do with that - you can't get credit for the assist if you don't make the shot, of course - but it's not hard to see there's more to it.
"You've got to move the ball, man," Carroll said. "That's the bottom line. They say the ball travels faster than dribbling so that's obvious, we've got to move the ball."
"I think a lot of times we're getting caught, guys are getting caught not knowing what to do, trying to run the ball to [DeRozan] and not just playing basketball and overthinking it. When you lose a guy that averages 22 points and eight or nine assists you're trying to figure it out. I think that's the biggest thing what's going on right now."
"DeMar's going to get his offensive game going no matter what so we can't just rely on him to carry us throughout the whole game," added Cory Joseph, Lowry's replacement in the starting lineup. "Teams are going to do their best job of double-teaming him, they're going to try to get the ball out of his hands so we've got to be able to be aggressive and confident, knock down shots and take them when they're there. We can't just give him the ball and just go stand in the corner and be like 'take us home' type of thing. He's going to get his points. Obviously a lot of our offence [goes] through him but we've got to be able to attack and move the ball of the outside."
Only three NBA players have a higher usage rate (percentage of team plays used by a player when he's on the floor) than DeRozan this season (34.4 per cent): Russell Westbrook, DeMarcus Cousins and Joel Embiid, who has played 1,134 fewer minutes. Without Lowry his usage rate goes up to 38.9 per cent, which would be second only to Westbrook.
Lowry, who has a 25.0 per cent usage rate and ranks 11th in the league in touches, is the team's best playmaker and it's not especially close. His impact on that end of the floor puts him in elite company. He's fourth in the NBA in offensive win shares, trailing only James Harden, Isaiah Thomas and Kevin Durant, and ranks fifth in offensive box plus/minus, behind Westbrook, Thomas, Harden and Chris Paul.
Despite the upgrades Toronto made at the deadline - adding Ibaka and P.J. Tucker - Lowry and DeRozan remain the team's only two players that can consistently create offence, both for themselves and their teammates. Now, without one of them, and especially when the other is on the bench, ball movement will be crucial if the Raptors are going to balance out their scoring attack.
Unfortunately, it's not just Lowry's playmaking that they miss; he's also their best three-point shooter - both in terms of percentage (42 per cent) and volume (3.3 per game). Without him and Terrence Ross - who was sent to Orlando in the Ibaka trade - the Raptors are left with a backcourt rotation (DeRozan, Joseph, Delon Wright and Norman Powell) that has combined to hit 91 threes this season. Lowry's made 185 himself. Ross had 96. In fact, Lowry and Ross accounted for over 53 per cent of Toronto's three-pointers prior to the all-star break.
The hope is that by sharing the ball more and relying less on DeRozan offensively it will open up better looks for the team's remaining three-point shooters: Carroll, Patrick Patterson, Ibaka and Tucker - all of whom are capable, though none of them inspire fear in opposing defences quite like Lowry.
On the season, the Raptors are shooting 37 per cent from beyond the arc (seventh in the NBA) and making 9.2 threes per game. Since Lowry's injury and the trade of Ross they're averaging 6.5 and hitting them at 32 per cent clip.
As they set out on a five-game road trip, beginning with a rematch against the Wizards in Washington on Friday, the Raptors are searching for ways to ignite their anemic offence. They can be better and they should be better but, as long as Lowry is out, their best offence may have to be a dominant defence.
It's pretty straight forward, but if you can't score as many points, you need to give up fewer. With the addition of a couple strong, veteran defenders in Ibaka and Tucker, the Raptors have had something of a resurgence on that end, the Washington game notwithstanding. Their offence has carried them through most of the season but their fate over these final 21 games may come down to the very thing they have been preaching since the first day of training camp.
"That's how we won three games in a row, through defence," Carroll said. "[The offensive end is] where you miss Kyle, but we've got to figure it out and we've got to do it on the defensive end. That's how we're going to win these games without Kyle, is on the defensive end."