The Raptors' offense won Game 3. How much of it is repeatable?
It wasn't surprising to see the Toronto Raptors come away with a Game 3 Finals victory over a wounded Golden State Warriors team that was missing Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, and Kevon Looney. Certain aspects of that game followed a foreseeable script, like Steph Curry having a mammoth scoring night that still wasn't enough to propel his depleted supporting cast to a win. However, the outcome did come about in somewhat unexpected fashion.
Despite all the injuries and non-shooters on the court, the Warriors didn't lose the game at the offensive end. Thanks to Curry, they actually scored at a more efficient clip than in Game 2, when they had Thompson for three-and-a-half quarters.
No, Golden State lost because Toronto's offense - which had been thoroughly squelched in the second half of Game 2 - spontaneously reignited and burned them to a fine crisp. The Raptors got 106 points from their starting lineup, hit 17 3-pointers, and posted an absurd 52/45/95 shooting split as a team, good for a 67.4 true shooting percentage that ranks as the third-highest mark of any game this postseason.
But, like with most things in this strange series, you can't consider much of what happened in Game 3 predictive, because we're dealing with several distinct iterations of the Warriors, some of which remain theoretical. The expectation is that Thompson will play in Game 4. Durant has already been ruled out, but the team is still talking as though he'll be back for Game 5 or 6. Looney, initially thought to be lost for the series, reportedly has a chance to return before all is said and done.
In any case, let's review what made the Raptors' offense so successful in Game 3, and consider how much of it they can realistically repeat against a healthier Warriors squad.
Lowry, Gasol in attack mode
We may never know which anonymous Raptor scrawled "Let it rip" on the team's whiteboard before Game 3, but we can make some educated guesses about the players it was intended for, and we can say for certain who embraced it.
Kyle Lowry and Marc Gasol are in many ways two versions of the same player. Just as their intelligence and intuitive playmaking can make the team's offense purr, so too can their deference and passivity grind it to a halt. It was a case of the latter in Game 2, when both guys faded from view in the second half - combining for just seven shooting possessions - and the Raptors faded with them. But then Lowry and Gasol proceeded to set the tone from the opening tip in Game 3.
On the Raptors' first offensive possession, Lowry burrowed into the lane, got Shaun Livingston on his hip, and drew a shooting foul. The very next possession was a post-up for Gasol. He, too, earned a pair of freebies by drawing a foul on DeMarcus Cousins. The pair ultimately combined for 30 shooting possessions, their highest combined total in these playoffs. Gasol's 26.3 percent usage rate was his second-highest mark as a Raptor, and his highest since February.
Beyond establishing Gasol in the post (he posted up six times after just four combined in the first two games), the Raptors made a point of involving him more in the pick-and-roll, whether it was in combination with Lowry, Fred VanVleet, or Kawhi Leonard. Gasol, in turn, mixed in a few more slip screens and dives to the hoop with his more common pops to the 3-point line, keeping the Warriors' bigs on their leaden toes. If Gasol wasn't rumbling all the way to the rim, he was drawing help and putting his on-the-move passing chops to use:
Lowry, meanwhile, was driving the ball as frequently and purposefully as he has at any point this postseason. Something about seeing Livingston in front of him seemed to ignite Lowry, who kept dusting him off the dribble and getting into the teeth of the Warriors' defense, forcing its jaws to instinctively snap shut. Golden State collapsed in the paint to an excessive degree (part of the reason Toronto attempted just 14 shots in the restricted area), but that left the defense vulnerable to shooters and cutters. Lowry made sure it did. The Raptors scored a comical 43 points on 25 possessions when Livingston was his primary defender.
It wasn't just Livingston who was cooked by Lowry, though. All game, Lowry looked to drag those immobile Warriors bigs into high pick-and-rolls and attack them downhill. He made just one shot at the rim and attempted just two, but he was the engine of what became a drive-and-kick onslaught:
It didn't hurt that Lowry was also letting it rip from deep, attempting nine 3-pointers and knocking down five.
And maybe the most important thing he did was give Leonard a break by letting him work off the ball a bit more. At times during the first two games, Leonard looked overburdened by the offensive load he was carrying, and with Draymond Green guarding him for most of Game 3, the Raptors saw no need to force things through him. Instead, Lowry became the primary initiator, and if anything, the offense seemed to breathe a bit better. Leonard still wound up with 30 points on 26 individual possessions, but he handled the ball for a total of just 4.6 minutes after averaging six minutes through Games 1 and 2. Lowry, conversely, handled the ball for 7.8 minutes after averaging 4.9 minutes of possession in the first two games.
Is it repeatable?
For Gasol, as long as the Warriors' frontcourt is in its current state, the answer should be yes. There's no reason he can't continue to carve up Cousins and Andrew Bogut in space, and there's no reason he can't keep looking for his own offense against a Warriors defense that's tilted toward stopping Leonard.
Looney's return would make Gasol's life a bit more complicated. On top of having a more mobile defender to throw at him, the Warriors would likely switch more pick-and-rolls, which might take away some of his effectiveness as a roll man and place a greater emphasis on his post-up game, which comes and goes. A Durant return would make things even more challenging. That would finally unlock the Warriors' small-ball "Death Lineup" with Green at center, which would render Gasol's offensive contributions moot if he were unable to keep up.
Lowry faces a more immediate challenge, with Thompson's expected return set to rejigger the Warriors' defensive assignments. Thompson, Green, or Andre Iguodala will slide back onto Lowry, which will make his path to the lane more of a gauntlet than a red carpet. Against Green or Iguodala, Lowry might transition back to more of an off-ball role: Rather than trying to beat them off the bounce, he could use the Warriors' propensity to help against them by darting into open spaces and spotting up on the perimeter.
Targeting the Warriors' bigs
Looney's injury hasn't been played up to the same extent as Thompson's and Durant's, which is understandable. But that doesn't mean it isn't a big deal. We saw in Game 3 just how badly the Warriors need him.
Every big man Golden State rolled out got singled out and barbecued. (Bogut was by far the best of the bunch, which seems like a bad sign given that he was playing in Australia until three months ago.) The Raptors turned Leonard loose by screening Draymond off him with one of their bigs, and until the Warriors started trapping, Leonard faced little resistance on his way to the cup or the free-throw line (the damage still wasn't as bad as it could've been, since he missed two uncontested layups).
Whether it was Cousins, Bogut, or Jordan Bell tasked with staying in front of them, the Raptors turned the corner like they were running a cone drill. And when the bigs dropped back in the pick-and-roll, the Raptors drilled pull-up threes on them. Poor Jonas Jerebko got tossed into the deep end for 10 minutes, thrashing around while Pascal Siakam swam circles around him:
After Siakam got going in the first half, the Warriors responded by sticking a center on him, as earlier playoff opponents had done. That limited his individual scoring, but it did little to deter the Raptors, who were happy to use Siakam as a screener and a trigger man in dribble-handoffs (he racked up four second-half assists) while continuing to pick on the biggest targets on the floor. This was easily the best Toronto's pick-and-roll offense has looked in The Finals, and maybe all postseason.
Is it repeatable?
The Raptors can keep exploiting this Warriors front line, but even just having Thompson back will make things a lot easier for Golden State by bumping at least one of their overmatched depth pieces from the rotation. And if Thompson is healthy enough to handle the Kawhi assignment, as he did with aplomb in Game 2, that will once again free up Green to rove and provide necessary support to the bigs in the pick-and-roll.
Getting Looney and Durant back, of course, would turn this weakness into a strength for Golden State: Looney could switch screens; the Warriors could downsize; they wouldn't have to play Jerebko, Bell, Bogut, or even Cousins; Durant could guard Siakam, Leonard, or Gasol.
Of course, that's all contingent on those guys not just returning, but returning somewhat healthy. We'll see.
Shooting the lights out
It's a make-or-miss league, and Toronto still needed to hit a boatload of shots in order to win Game 3. Whenever the Warriors began to make a push, the Raptors would land a haymaker. All told, Toronto shot 10-of-14 at the rim, 9-of-19 from floater range, 7-of-11 from the mid-range, 17-of-38 from three, and 20-of-21 from the free-throw line.
Some of that was beyond the Warriors' control, but their negligent defense still had a ton to do with it. They lost track of shooters, their rotations were slow all night, and the Raptors swung the ball around faster than they could scramble. The Warriors consequently surrendered 13 corner threes. Danny Green, another guy who "let it rip," shot 6-of-10 from deep, and six of those attempts were classified as "wide open" by NBA.com.
The Warriors kept making the same vexing mistakes, like allowing open looks by overhelping in the middle of the floor. Watch Cousins inexplicably abandon Gasol to double Siakam up high, allowing Gasol to cut for an easy bucket. Then watch Draymond help down on a Siakam drive from the corner that wasn't particularly dangerous - just to try for a no-chance strip - conceding a Lowry three in the process:
And here's an example of the Warriors collectively being way too focused on the ball during semi-transition. Four defenders key in on Siakam, while Leonard streaks down the right wing unheeded (he then took a Siakam feed and cruised in for a layup):
Is it repeatable?
Even if the Warriors defend this poorly again, the Raptors will be hard-pressed to replicate their shooting performance. Going 8-for-18 on wide-open threes isn't unusual - the Raptors shot 40.9 percent on such looks during the regular season, and 45.7 percent after acquiring Gasol - but going 9-for-20 on contested or semi-contested threes? On the road? That's tough.
The thing is, the Raptors probably don't need to go 50/40/90 again to win Game 4. The Warriors have scored 109 points in all three games of the series, and they have a ton of stuff to clean up to hold the Raptors under that magical benchmark. Having Thompson back would help in all the ways that have already been laid out, but the Warriors' defense has frankly been mediocre all season, and throughout the playoffs, even when the team's been fully healthy. Three of the four highest true-shooting games in the postseason have come against Golden State. Meanwhile, Kawhi has yet to have a signature performance. (Of course, maybe he won't!)
If there's an aspect of the Raptors' success that seems poised to regress, it's their late-shot-clock offense. They hit a ton of bailout shots in Game 3, capped by VanVleet's absurd rainbow dagger that iced the win. They've been working the shot clock for the entire series, perhaps as a calculated tactic to control the pace and keep the Warriors out of transition. But they pushed that to an extreme on Wednesday night, taking 16 shots in the last four seconds of the shot clock - nearly 20 percent of their total shooting possessions. Somehow, they came away with 18 points. Meanwhile, since those shots are typically taken under duress, they don't usually lead to efficient offense. (The Raptors in the playoffs have shot 31.5 percent from the field and 30.6 percent from deep in those late-shot-clock scenarios.)
Some of those shots were the result of sound offensive process - patient ball movement that continued until the Warriors' defense eventually sprung a leak. Some were the result of solid Warriors defense and then a desperate heave. But others were undoubtedly the result of the Raptors dithering with the ball, or standing around while one guy ate up the clock trying to create one-on-one, only to toss someone a grenade.
According to Inpredictable, the Raptors averaged 19.6 seconds per possession after the Warriors made a shot in Game 3, but somehow converted those possessions into an average of 1.44 points - a preposterous number. Ultimately, that's not sustainable. They need to get into their sets earlier, and move with a bit more urgency in the half court.
(Advanced stats and tracking data source: NBA.com)