Jazz

At RealGM, a look at a young team with an old soul.

Draymond at the 5

At RealGM, a look at the big picture implications of the most dominant line-up in basketball.

Beating The Warriors 2.0

Over at RealGM, I've got a big picture look at the Warriors five-out line-ups and how they represent the end-point of the small-ball revolution. At this point, I'm thinking the only question in the NBA right now is whether there's any line-up out there that can beat Draymond Green at the 5.

There are three possible counters to Golden State’s five-out line-ups.

1) Play two traditional big men and punish them at the 5 and the 4. (3-out basketball)

That's the Grizzlies strategy. It didn't work for a couple of reasons. There were holes in their big men's game - Marc Gasol is more of a facilitator than a scorer and Z-Bo is more of a scorer than a facilitator - and they didn't have enough perimeter shooting to force Golden State out of the paint. The Warriors moved Green from Z-Bo to Gasol and they basically double-teamed Z-Bo with Barnes and Andrew Bogut and dared Tony Allen to beat them from the perimeter. They cracked the code of the Grizzlies in that series and it's hard to see Memphis being able to make a run at them anymore unless they find another wing player they can put next to Courtney Lee and Mike Conley who can defend, shoot and create his own shot off the bounce. They've tried Rudy Gay and Jeff Green in that spot and neither one has been able to make up the difference.

The Clippers are going to try with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan and we saw the downsides of that approach last night. DeAndre can’t score with his back to the basket so the Warriors can hide Barnes on him without any fear. Nor do they have the shooters who can give Blake space to operate while also being able to defend Golden State’s wings. They are either playing perimeter players who kill them on defense (Jamal Crawford + Paul Pierce) or who kill their spacing (Lance Stephenson). My guess is the Clippers are going to need to go to option #2 with Blake at the 5 if they are going to have any chance of beating the Warriors.

If they meet again in the Finals, the Cavaliers are going to try and give the Warriors a different look with Kevin Love at the 4 and Tristan Thompson at the 5. There are two basic problems with this approach - Tristan can't score to save his life and Love can't defend to save his. Maybe he can punish Harry Barnes on the box and he can definitely do some damage on the offensive boards but is it going to be enough to make up for what happens if the Warriors put him in the two-man game? If they run a 1/4 pick-and-roll with Barnes picking for Curry, the only way for Love to defend would be to give him a broom to whack Steph on the head as he goes around him or block his shot as he raises up for an open look off the bounce. That's why I'm not so sure a #fullsquad Cleveland team would be that much better against Golden State.

The Hawks are interesting because they have mobile big men who can defend in space - Paul Millsapp and Al Horford - and who can spread you out, attack you on the box and play high-low. They play five-out basketball with a 6'10 guy and a 6'7 guy upfront so they would have most of the advantages of playing big against Golden State without many of the disadvantages. If they want to really get freaky, they could play Paul Millsapp at the 5, which is apparently a thing that has worked well against the Warriors in the past. Their problem, of course, is that they still have to get through Cleveland and LeBron James.

The Thunder have a lot of different options if they want to stay big against Golden State and they might have to do that considering how much they have invested in the 4 and 5 spots. I just wonder if Adams + Ibaka can punish the Warriors enough on offense and if Kanter + Ibaka can play enough perimeter defense. Adams + Kanter might be their max interior offensive combo but it's hard to see them spreading the floor well enough to counter Golden State packing the paint (especially if Roberson and another iffy shooter are on the perimeter). If they are going to stay big, it's going to come down to Enes Kanter and then it becomes a matter of Kanter post-ups vs. Kanter defending the two-man game and which is going to be more efficient. Mitch McGary is another wild card they could throw out there but he hasn't been able to get consistent playing time under Donovan yet.

The Spurs are probably the team with the best chance of beating the Warriors with a conventional line-up. They have two big men who can shoot, score and pass - Tim Duncan and LaMarcus Aldridge - and they can put three perimeter players who can space the floor, defend and control tempo around them. I just wonder if Duncan and Aldridge can score enough points in the box to make up for the points they would give up defending on the perimeter. If they meet Golden State in the playoffs, it will be the last stand of the two-post team. Of course, the Spurs would also have the versatility to try options #2 and 3, which is what would make a chess match between Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich so fascinating.

2) Play one traditional big man who can attack Green at the 5 and surround him with 4 wings. (4-out basketball)

I think this has a much better chance of working than 3-out basketball. You can think of 5-out vs. 4-out vs. 3-out as being on the earthquakes scale. The level of difficulty in running efficient offense increases logarithmically as you move up. It's much easier to space the floor and move the ball with one big man in the paint as opposed to two and it becomes child's play when you have five guys spread out along the three-point line. I think last year's playoffs pretty much proved that 3-out isn't going to work against the Warriors. This year's playoffs is going to be about 4-out.

The Pelicans actually gave the Warriors some trouble in the first-round with Anthony Davis at the 5 because they have enough wing players - Quincy Pondexter, Tyreke Evans, Jrue Holiday, Eric Gordon and Norris Cole - to fill out a respectable line-up on both sides of the ball around him. Of course all those guys have to be healthy at the same time and they are going to have to dig out of a massive hole just to make it too the playoffs.

If I was the Clippers, I'd go with this line-up: Paul, Redick, Wesley Johnson, Lance, Blake.

- I don't think DeAndre makes enough of a difference on the boards to make up for the fact that he constantly leaves Steph open on the 1-5 pick and roll and can't do anything to attack a smaller player on defense.

- If they went with this group, they could have Blake switch on Steph (which he did reasonably well in the 4Q last night) and they would give him a lot more space to operate on offense.

The play TNT using to show Blake needs to be smarter was an awful example. No one was moving or open

— sam esfandiari (@samesfandiari) November 20, 2015

- There's just no way they can have Paul Pierce or Jamal Crawford out there against the Warriors. They are too old and too slow to defend in that type of space.

Oh, one last thing: Pierce-Crawford tandem has played 40 minutes against the Warriors this season. Their DRtg is 134.1. Bye.

— Justin Russo (@FlyByKnite) November 20, 2015

- That would be their best defensive 5 and you would hope Lance could be in the Iguodala role of the iffy shooter whose spacing isn't as big a deal when playing in max space. I still haven't given up on Lance and he's more than big enough to match up with Harry Barnes at the 4.

- I think A) that 5 could give the Warriors a run B) it's the only 5 on the Clippers that could and C) Doc won't use it. He's too committed to DeAndre, Pierce, Jamal and Austin Rivers and those guys aren't going to get it done against Golden State.

The problem with the Cavs going 4-out against the Warriors is the same with them going 3-out - all their bigs are at least somewhat one-dimensional. We already saw that Tristan + LeBron isn't going to work and Blatt went away from Mozgov + LeBron in last year's Finals. Love + LeBron is going to get slaughtered on defense. I think they have to go 5-out to have a chance.

The Thunder can go 4-out with Ibaka at the 5 but he can't punish Draymond on the box which negates a lot of the value of having a big man out there.

- My guess is they would try something like this: Serge + KD + Roberson + Waiters + Russ. The idea being that Roberson's lack of shooting is less of an issue in 4-out and that Waiters is a better two-way player than Morrow or Augustin. I'm not sure why Kyle Singler has been so bad in OKC but they really need to figure out how to get him going because he's (theoretically) their best two-way player on the wing after KD.

The Spurs can go 4-out with LaMarcus at the 5, Kawhi at the 4 and Green, Manu and Parker on the perimeter. My question with that is Manu and Parker and whether they can hold up athletically against the Warriors perimeter on either side of the ball.

- Given how much age they have on the wing, they might be better off going LaMarcus - Diaw - Kawhi - Green - Mills and playing a hybrid 3.5 out style of basketball. I'd really like them to have one more 6'6+ athletic wing next to Green and then initiate the offense with Diaw and Kawhi. I'm thinking the Spurs are one player away from really being able to run with the Warriors.

- The reason I have them going with LaMarcus over Duncan at the 5 in a 4-out offense is the long big man has to be able to defend in space and the younger and more athletic player seems much more suited to do that than the 37-year old. Duncan is still the better interior defender but the thing about the Warriors going 5-out is they are going to spread you out and force everyone to guard 25+ feet from the basket. A prime TD could do that but it seems like an elderly TD has to play back.

3) Try to beat them at their own game and play 5 wings at the same time.

Oklahoma City: KD - Singler - Roberson - Waiters - Russ

- Roberson's shooting shouldn't be a huge issue in 5-out spacing and if you close your eyes you maybe can envision Singler and Waiters as two-way wings who can stay with Barnes and Iguodala. From there, you have Roberson guarding Klay and then Russ vs. Steph and KD vs. Draymond. The reason those two guys are so great in Golden State is because they are playing in maximum space and I'd love to see what KD and Russ can do in a similar scenario. I'm not saying they should go this line-up in Game 1 but I hope they would at least try it at some point in the series.

- You know who they could really use? My man Jeremy Lamb whose currently killing the game in Charlotte. I can defend a lot of the decisions that OKC's front office has made in the last few years but the decision to go with Waiters over Lamb is absolutely indefensible not just from a results standpoint but a process one as well and it makes me question what exactly is going on over there. They obviously have a great drafting department but are the people who are making the draft picks the same as the people who are making the NBA decisions?

-- Waiters per-36 in 2014: 15.4 points, 3.4 rebounds, 2.3 assists on 39.2% shooting, 31.2% from 3
-- Lamb per-36 in 2014: 16.8 points, 6.1 rebounds, 2.5 assists on 41.6% shooting, 34.2% from 3

-- Waiters per-36 in 2015: 13.4 points, 4.9 rebounds, 2.2 assists on 40.7% shooting, 46.4% from 3
-- Lamb per-36 in 2015: 19.3 points, 6.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists on 54.7% shooting, 35.7% from 3

-- To top it off, they gave up a first-round pick to get the significantly worse player and gave away the significantly better player for nothing.

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- I spent a lot of time over the last few years defending OKC because I figured they would eventually bust out a line-up of Serge - KD - PJ3 - Lamb - Russ except they never did. Lamb has already proven them wrong and I haven't given up on PJ3 yet either.

San Antonio: Kawhi - Kyle Anderson - Green - Manu - Parker

- You have to stretch a bit to really give the Spurs a 5-out line-up but I could see Anderson being a bigger part in these types of line-ups as the years go by.

Cleveland: LeBron - James Jones - Smith - Shumpert - Kyrie

- I know LeBron doesn't want to play as a 5 but if Draymond can do it he really has no excuse. If he wants to lose to Golden State in the Finals again he can keep on being too cool to bang in the paint.

Here's how I'd handicap how these teams stack up against the Warriors in large part because of the amount of trust I have in their respective coaches to go with the line-ups that would actually have a chance:

1 - Spurs
2 - Cavs
3 - Thunder (Too soon to say with Billy D but I was never too impressed with his tactical flexibility at Florida)
4 - Clips (Doc's a good coach but it feels like he has some blind spots with "his guys" and his son)

The bottom line is that if you don't play your optimal line-ups against the Warriors, you are going to get slaughtered. And if you are going to beat them in a seven-game series you have to be as willing to think outside the box as Kerr was in last year's playoffs.

If none of those work, I'm thinking the best counter to the 5-out offense is the complete 7'0 - a guy who can score, shoot, pass, rebound and defend in space and at the rim. That's the counter-revolution to the small-ball revolution and those guys are just starting to come into their own in this league - Davis, Towns, Porzingis - but that's an article for another day. The possibility definitely exists that the Warriors rampage through the league until the next great generation of 7'0 is ready to play with them and they move the zeitgeist back to the big men.

Ben Simmons + Brandon Ingram

At The Cauldron, the first in a weekly wrap-up series on the top prospects in the 2016 draft.

Duke vs. Kentucky

When it comes to draft evaluations, a game like Duke vs. Kentucky is worth its weight in gold. There's NBA prospects up and down each roster so in just about every sequence you can learn something about different parts of multiple player's game. A game like this is the closest thing you will see to an NBA game so how a guy looks here goes a lot farther for me than how he looks against NJIT or Siena. 

This was my first chance to see most of the freshmen on these two teams. There were a lot of interesting things going on and I reserve the right to change my opinion but here were my first impressions (and second and third for some of the older guys) on all the top NBA draft prospects in this game. It's a lot of irresponsible speculation based on a laughable small sample size with nothing to back it up but my own hunches but this is a blog so what did you expect really. **There's nothing here on Brandon Ingram because I have a big thing coming on him at The Cauldron.

1) Skal Labissiere didn't show all that much

He was in foul trouble for most of the night, which is understandable for a 7'0 shotblocker playing on the biggest stage of his career. He never got into much of a rhythm and Kentucky almost never featured him in the offense so it was hard to get a great feel for what he could do on the offensive end of the floor.

Skal (6'11 225) really struggled with Marshall Plumlee's (7'1 250) size and physicality. Plumlee pushed him around on the offensive glass, particularly in the first half, where he almost single-handedly kept Duke in the game.

When you make a play like that in the paint, you tell the other big man "weight room". In this one, Plumlee just pushes Skal out the way like he's not even there.

Plumlee is 23 and Skal is 19 so it's somewhat understandable that he got manhandled. At the same time, when Skal gets to the NBA, they are all going to be that big. If he thinks Marshall was a problem, wait until he goes up against Miles and Mason.

Here's where I worry about Skal. He's kind of frail and he doesn't have a really wide frame so I'm not sure he'll ever have the type of size to bang with guys like Andre Drummond much less someone like Karl Towns or Derrick Favors. He's an undersized 5 and he's not all that long (7'2 wingspan) and he's not an elite athlete. He's a good athlete but he's not bouncing off the floor and playing above the rim on the level of someone like Nerlens Noel. 

And while he could possibly play as a 4, that's going to come down to his offensive game. Can he shoot 20+ foot jumpers, much less 3's? Can he put the ball on the floor and attack guys off the bounce? Can he make passes on the move and read the defense? Does he have the type of high-level post game that will allow him to leverage his size at the 4 position, especially in the modern NBA where fewer and fewer teams are trying to score with size at the 4? Those are the things I'm going to be watching with Skal because if he doesn't have great offensive game I'm not sure he has the physical tools to be a Top 5 pick type of big man.

This is pretty much the extent of how Skal was used against Duke. 

A roll man:

(Also notice Tyler Ulis making a great pass to find Skal.)

Offensive boards:

You can see the combination of skills with Skal. He's long, athletic and he can finish in the paint. He'll have a long career in the NBA, no matter what. The question is what type of offensive game he can develop because if he's just going to be a roll man at his size and athleticism than maybe he's just Ed Davis. It's obviously way too early to come to any firm judgments about his game but I'm thinking that's his floor. 

2) Jamal Murray isn't very athletic

Murray did a lot of really good things on Tuesday and he was a huge part of Kentucky's win but what really stood out to me initially was his overall athleticism. When I think of a John Calipari PG going in the Top 10, I think of guys like John Wall, Derrick Rose and Brandon Knight. That's not Murray at all. He's a below the rim player who isn't very explosive and isn't very fast. He's smart and crafty which makes sense given his physical limitations.

He just has very little lift off the ground. He can't finish over the top of Marshall Plumlee. Here's Murray getting blown by on defense by Matt Jones, who isn't exactly a speedster with the ball in his hands.

This was probably his best play all night. It's a fantastic move to get around Plumlee but you can still see how much work Murray has to do to finish at the rim in traffic against NBA-caliber size and length. 

That's the type of play that Andre Miller has to make. There's nothing wrong with this fast break play here between Murray and Isaiah Briscoe but it does showcase the athletic limitations of Kentucky's two McDonald's All-American combo guards. John Wall and Eric Bledsoe they ain't.

Murray is so big for a PG (6'5 205) and he's such a smart player that he should be a pretty good NBA player regardless. I just wonder how he's going to be able to match-up with the elite athletes at his position at the next level and whether that puts a ceiling as to how good he can be. In terms of athleticism, you can't even compare him to a guy like Kris Dunn.

3) It's the same story for Isaiah Briscoe 

Where to begin? Here's Grayson Allen, who had a terrible night in his own right, getting right around Briscoe and getting into the heart of the Kentucky defense.

Even when he gets around a guy like Ingram, there's not a ton he can do when he gets into the lane.

Briscoe can't finish over the top of the youngest Plumlee and he certainly can't finish through him. This was by far the best game I've ever seen from Marshall and he gave Kentucky trouble all night. He's pretty old (23) and unaccomplished to be an NBA prospect but Miles didn't exactly light the world on fire before his senior season either.

So as not to be accused of hating, here's Briscoe being very creative about getting his own shot in the lane and using the rim to protect him from a shotblocker. These are the type of plays that Briscoe and Murray are going to have to make all season and I'm really curious to see how they will look with the type of length and athleticism that LSU can throw at them on the perimeter.

4) Grayson Allen got a wake-up call

After rampaging through two mid major teams to start the season, Allen got a taste of what life in the NBA is like courtesy of Kentucky's interior defense. He repeatedly got into the lane and he repeatedly got his shit sent right back in his face.

Coming out of half, the sideline reporter said the Duke coaches told her these were the exact shots that Allen was getting and making in the first two games. That's the difference between playing in the NCAA and playing in the NBA. Skal and Marcus Lee are NBA big men and they aren't going to let you just walk into the lane and throw up weak garbage. Grayson better learn that discretion is the better part of valor and just pull up for the mid-range jumper or bust out a floater. This is also why you see NCAA big men put up absurd block rates. NBA guards are eventually going to stop taking the ball at you after you pack their shot 1-2 times. Grayson went 2-11 on Tuesday, mostly on shots like this.

His defense in this game was no great shakes either. He's Tyler Ulis blowing right by him in transition like he's not even there.

5) Tyler Ulis was out here doing things

Ulis was the best player on the floor for Kentucky for most of the night and he was really the difference in terms of winning the game for them. He could go wherever he wanted to go on the court and he had the sense to know when he could look for his shot and when he was better off setting up his teammates. He knows exactly who he is and he doesn't make a lot of bad decisions with the ball in his hands.

He's crazy fast and the Duke guards had a very difficult time staying in front of him.

You can never count on a guy Ulis size (5'9 160) being able to play in the league but he has done a fantastic job of maximizing his physical ability. He has everything you would want in a guard except for size and if he had Murray or even Briscoe's body he'd be a lottery pick for sure. He can shoot 3's, get his own shot off the bounce, run the offense and be a pest on defense. He might as well stay four years at Kentucky and become an NCAA legend because he'll never be as effective in the NBA as at this level.

Top 10 NCAA Games

At RealGM, a look at the best games to watch the best players in the country.

Kings vs. Raptors

After a disastrous start to the season that saw them in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, the Kings appear to have righted the ship a bit this week, going 3-0 with DeMarcus Cousins back in the line-up. It really isn't much more complicated than that. The way the Cousins is playing right now, he gives the Kings a chance against almost anyone, especially at home.

• The stat-line from Cousins says it all: 36 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 blocks on 22 shots including 3-6 from 3 (!) and 9-12 from the free-throw line. They were +15 in his 41 minutes in a game they won by 6 points. They couldn't afford to not have him out there for any amount of time - he's just that good and he affects the game in so many ways.
• Jonas Valanciunas is a good young C who provides a lot of value on both sides of the ball and he got demolished. Cousins repeatedly stoned him in the post, pushed him off his spots and held him to 2-9 shooting. On the other end of the floor, the Raptors didn't even bother putting Jonas on him and started the game with Luis Scola guarding him, a completely hopeless match-up. Cousins can guard the other team's C and they can't guard him, which can force the other coach into a lot of line-up contortions. That's why Jonas only played 20 minutes tonight - they had to leave Bismack Biyombo in the game the entire 4Q to give someone who even had a chance of matching up with him.
• Cousins has apparently decided to turn himself into a face-up 4 this season and the amazing part is how well it's working. He's knocking down transition 3's and he's forcing other teams to guard him out on the three-point line. From there, he can take guys off the dribble and use his length to Eurostep to the basket and finish from funky angles around the rim. Guys who are 6'11 270 should not be able to move like DMC and they shouldn't be that smooth with the ball in his hands. 
• I don't blame him for not playing much in the post because he's just going to get double teamed and the Kings don't have a lot of shooters to spread the floor for him. It's much easier for him to see the double teams when he's facing up and taking guys off the dribble and he can make all the passes in the book, although he does tend to force the issue sometimes and turn the ball over.
• What can't Cousins do? He can shoot 3's, create his own shot off the bounce, score with his back to the basket, create shots for his teammates, dominate the glass and protect the rim. His presence on the floor almost single-handedly makes the Kings a legitimate team. He's playing like the best C in the league so the real question is just how good he is in relation to everyone in the league. He's a Top 10 player for sure and the way he is playing right now you could make the argument that he's a Top 5 player. 
• The question for the Kings is can they space the floor around Cousins and what frontcourt player does the best job of complementing him? They played Willie Cauley-Stein, Kosta Koufos, Quincy Acy, Omri Casspi and Rudy Gay at the 4 on Sunday. There's room for a lot of different combinations when you play Cousins almost the entire game.
• They closed the game with Gay, Marco Bellinelli, Ben McLemore and Rajon Rondo next to DMC because you almost have to have a max spacing configuration from the other 2 spots with Rondo and Gay out there. I liked Bellinelli and McLemore together because that gives them two guards who have to be guarded out to the 3-point line and who can put the ball on the floor and make plays off the bounce. If the Kings are going to be a good team this season, that's a combo that is going to have to work for them.
• You got the full Rajon Rondo experience in this one. Toronto basically wasn't guarding him. There were two times in transition when he was bringing the ball up the floor and no one picked him up. He literally took the ball to the front of the rim without encountering any defensive resistance. (He went 1-2) The amazing thing about him scoring 7 points on 3-10 shooting is they were mostly wide-open shots. It was like he was playing in an empty gym on offense.
• Eventually Rondo started standing by the front of the rim which is crazy because it's almost impossible to force the ball into a 6'1 guy in that spot. He had 14 assists but he also had 7 turnovers because he was constantly forcing the ball into really tight spots - he had no other choice since he wasn't trying to shoot the ball. He's still really good at finding guys in transition but he just destroys your spacing in the half-court. The amazing thing about the Kings win streak is they've been playing Rondo almost the entire game during it. 
• George Karl clearly doesn't trust Seth Curry. The problem is defense - he had no chance of guarding Cory Joseph. He's not very big and he can't press up on guys without giving up lanes to the basket. It's all about match-ups for Curry and the Raptors 2 PG line-ups put Karl in a tough bind when it comes to finding minutes for his backup PG. They could get going when they get Darren Collison back.
• Rudy Gay had 27 points on 16 shots in 37 minutes. Demarre Carroll is supposed to be a defensive stopper and he couldn't bother Gay at all. Gay shot over the top of him and created easy looks at the basket whenever he wanted and then got free a few times when Carroll lost him going through screens. You can see the outline of plan in Sacramento - let Cousins and Gay dominate the ball and score in isolations and hope you can put enough defense around them to survive. 
• Willie Cauley-Stein left the game in the 1Q because of a concussion but he showed some promise in the limited time he was out there. The Kings were switching every P/R he was involved in, which was a good way to maximize his skill-set. He's a 7'0 who moves like a guard who can block shots around the rim and defend on the perimeter. Using him in that role is a great way to stifle an offense and he'd be amazing in an all-switching line-up like they use in Golden State or Milwaukee. Sacramento still needs to figure out how they are going to use him on offense but Cousins becoming a 3-point shooter does make that easier.

The Raptors probably should have won this game. They were in control for most of it but this was a classic example of a good team without a superstar losing because they had no one who could match his impact on both sides of the ball. They couldn't guard Cousins and he made them a one-dimensional team on offense by shutting down the paint and preventing them from getting any points on Jonas V post-ups.

• I was going to say this was a better DeMar DeRozan game than I'm usually accustomed to seeing in terms of him not holding the ball and not settling for too many mid-range jumpers and looking to set everyone else up. Then I look at the boxscore and he had 24 points on 22 shots and 5 assists on 4 turnovers. They do a good job of spacing the floor around him but I can't say I'm a terribly big fan of a SG who can't shoot 3's who needs the ball in his hands and takes a ton of contested long 2's. He's a pretty good playmaker who draws a lot of fouls and he can play a little defense but I'm just not sure if the pluses out weight the minuses in terms of building a team around him.
• Demarre Carroll and Kyle Lowry did pretty much all their damage around the three-point line. Lowry can dribble into 3's, which makes him really tough to guard, and Carroll does a great job of moving without the ball, especially in transition. Neither one of them is a physically dominant player at their position and they can't finish over the top of some of the better rim protectors in the league, which puts a ceiling on how good they can be. Nevertheless, you do have to like two-way players who can stroke 3's and they give the Raptors a pretty solid foundation on both sides of the ball. 
• I guess Luis Scola is playing well this season but I'm still not a believer. He can't guard anyone on the perimeter or protect the rim and he doesn't shoot a lot of 3's. He doesn't do a lot for you off the ball and he's no longer good enough to have a lot of offense run through him. He was -4 in 20 minutes and James Johnson was +8 in 12 minutes and I don't think that was a coincidence.
• Here's what I've been wondering for awhile with Toronto:
• I feel like Johnson is an ideal defensive 4 in the modern NBA with his ability to move his feet in space at his size. Playing JJ + Jonas V together would be a great defensive combo upfront. The problem is the domino effect because he doesn't provide a lot of spacing and the floor would get kind of clogged with JJ, Jonas and DeMar. What would happen if they took DeMar off the floor and they put another plus shooter like Terrence Ross in his spot? You would have more than enough floor spacing with Lowry, Ross and Carroll, you would have four plus defenders on the floor, you could score a lot of points going defense to offense and I'm not sure that redistributing DeRozan's possessions to everyone else would really hurt the team's efficiency all that much, especially considering how much space everyone would be playing in.
• Cory Joseph played pretty well and the 2 PG line-up of Lowry and Joseph presented a lot of problems for the Kings. He doesn't shoot a lot of 3's but he's got a pretty good jumper off the dribble game. The Raptors have a lot of two-way players on the perimeter who can get their own shot, which is a pretty good start at being a pretty good team. 

Toronto has a good team but it does seem like they have hit their ceiling unless they can get more out of Valanciunas. Pairing him with a slow, non-stretch 4 like Scola isn't going to do the trick, that's for sure. Patterson is a great shooter but Johnson is the best two-way PF on this roster and the only way to make that work is to play him with three plus shooters on the perimeter. That's where committing to DeRozan really boxes you in in terms of line-up construction. If they lose again in the first round, I think the move to make is to let him walk this off-season and try something else.