Back & Forth: Peter Kaye & Alex Dzintars look ahead to the second round (and beyond)

With the Raptors-Nets series in the books (as well as the Celtics toppling the 76ers), yours truly, Peter Kaye, and fellow LIR contributor Alex Dzintars decided to have a back-and-forth discussion about the upcoming Raptors-Celtics series, which teams scare them the most in the East, who’s a better player: Siakam or Tatum, as well as a whole other range of topics.

I hope you all enjoy this as much as Alex and I did.

If you aren’t following Alex on Twitter, then what are you waiting for!

This following e-mail exchange took place between August 18th and August 23rd.

Peter Kaye

Alex — I think we can both agree that this whole season has pretty much been a victory lap and a Raptors fan fever dream. The team’s championship swagger is off the charts. My championship swagger is off the charts. It’s almost as if the basketball gods asked me to script the perfect season for our title defense (the ending is either us defeating the Lakers or the Clippers in the Finals — but I don’t want to spoil the ending of my Raptors fan-fiction for you).

But here we are currently in the opening round of the playoffs, going up against KD and Kyrie’s Nets (hey, it’s not my fault they both decided not to show up). Can you believe we’re going to eliminate Durant two years in a row! Wild eh!

Never once as a Raptors fan have I put the cart before the horse, but I think we can start looking past the Nets right? Would the basketball gods somehow find a way to punish our hubris?

Alex Dzintars

Let’s! As in, let us start looking past the Nets. Arguably, eight of their rotation players are on the bench and — although reductive to say — they’re just happy to be here. LeVert is a great talent, and maybe the third best player on a championship team, but that’s a question for next year rather than next week.

So let’s get crazy and look ahead (god forbid for a Raptors fan). I wanted to start this conversation with you because our Twitter activity is going in different directions for who we want to avoid in the postseason! You seem to fear the Heat the most, and I’m over here sweating the Celtics. What’s the deal? Given the bracket, the Heat match-up seems unlikely.

Peter Kaye

I have to admit, I very much like our side of the Eastern Conference bracket. We get to avoid Giannis until the Conference Finals. We also avoided the Heat in a potential Round 2 match-up (let the Bucks-Heat go at it and hopefully we’ll see the winner in the Conference Finals). Going through both Miami and Milwaukee would’ve been a murderer’s row. Now, we only have to play one of them.

So yes, you are right — the Heat give me greater concern than the Celtics would’ve in a second round series. There I said it. That’s not to say that the Celtics aren’t a good team. They are. But does anyone on their team scare you? Like, really scare you?

There are only two players in the East who really scare me: Giannis and Jimmy Butler. Giannis for obvious reasons; Butler, well, he scares me because he plays with the confidence of someone who has been to multiple Finals even though he hasn’t been out of the second-round.

Travel back with me to the 2019 Conference Semi-Finals if you will. Butler almost single-handedly dragged the Sixers past us; he did not look scared at all of the bright postseason lights. Any time he had the ball in that Game 7, I was nervous. Hell, the entire arena was nervous (I had the good fortune of being in the building for Kawhi’s buzzer-beater). That feeling of nervous-doom that he created has to mean something. He alone made me feel like his team could beat us (Butler scored 5 points, including tying the game with 4.2 seconds left, in the final 5 minutes). Embiid didn’t give me that same feeling; nor did Ben Simmons (in fact, I couldn’t have been happier any time Simmons was on the floor during that series; go stand in that dunker’s spot and clog the lane, Ben!).

So, tell me, Alex, who on the Celtics gives you that inevitable feeling of oh shit, we might lose this series? Is it Kemba Walker and his playoff experience? Is it Jayson Tatum (who had like three great weeks before the shutdown and everyone was ready to hand him the crown)? Is it their big man depth? Is that it? Does Kanter and Theis scare you (LOL!)? Is it that Brad Stevens is a better coach than Nick Nurse? Please tell me dear Alex!

Alex Dzintars

You’re absolutely right about Butler — heck, I even wrote about him a few months ago for these very reasons!

But here’s the thing about the Celtics. One, they’re on our side of the bracket (sorry, had to). Two, they’re ranked in the Top-5 in both offensive and defensive efficiency (which is the hallmark of any NBA championship contender). Kemba has looked healthy-(ier) and Tatum is back on his quick ascent into the NBA’s top-10 best. All of their wings are capable of scoring and creating on their own, as well as containing Toronto’s guard play, which has often been an advantage over teams, as well as the Raptors’ forwards. Brown especially looked like he was ready to contain Siakam in the most recent bubble match-up. And it doesn’t really matter that the Celtics are undersized at Center because both Ibaka and (especially) Marc don’t really punish those mismatches.

With that out of the way, I will admit two things that eases my feelings about this match-up. First, is that this Gordon Hayward injury matters. He’s out for 4 weeks, which means he’ll likely miss the entirety of the BOS-TOR series. He’s one of their wings that can create on-ball and spot up off-ball. Without him, Boston leans more heavily on Smart as part of the starting lineup, and maybe has Kanter as the first player off the bench. After that, it gets dicey: Wanamaker, TimeLord, Ojeleye….not exactly a murderer’s row. The other thing is that Coach Nurse probably didn’t show his entire playbook in ANY of this season’s games against Boston. Everyone should consult this great article at fivethirtyeight.com by Jared Dubin and Krishna Marsu. It details how the Raptors have adjusted in their defensive intensity based on scheme. In all of the Boston games, the Raptors each time played an extremely passive style of defense, opting not to change much of what they showed the opponent. This may be the best option in order to defend multiple shot creators OR Coach Nurse might be keeping the cards close to the vest.

The Hayward injury hurts, and Nurse is a savant, but these two teams have always played close games. I somehow just don’t see that changing.

Peter Kaye

All your points are valid. Also, I want to be clear here: just because the Heat worry me more than the Celtics, in no way do I think a series against Boston will be easy. It’ll go the distance. I just happen to like our chances against Boston rather than our chances against Miami.

Our bubble loss to the Celtics definitely left a bitter taste in my mouth. I’m also not going to make any excuses for it either. I’m not going to say that Nurse was holding back in certain match-ups (specifically that OG guarded Hayward in the first half and Kemba in the second half — and didn’t guard Tatum, which we all know will be OG’s primary assignment come playoff time). I’m not going to say any of that.

But one thing does really worry me about the Celtics: their perimeter defensive length really bothered FVV and Lowry. So much of our offense is our point guards getting past the first line of defense, then kicking the ball out, and the ball swinging to the open man. Against Boston, we looked really uncomfortable just getting into our offense. I’ll grant you all of that.

But can I tell you what worries me about Miami? They’re the best three-point shooting team in the league (37.9%) while the Raptors give up the second most threes per game in the Association (38.9). Their two best players, Butler and Bam, aren’t exactly marksmen from long-range (24.4% and 14.3% respectively), but every single key rotation player of theirs is lethal from beyond the arc:

Duncan Robinson: 44.6% on 8.3 attempts
Kendrick Nunn: 35.0% on 5.8 attempts
Goran Dragić (who is a Raptors killer and agitator): 36.7% on 5.7 attempts
Tyler Herro: 38.9% on 5.4 attempts
Meyers Leonard: 41.4% on 2.5 attempts
Kelly Olynyk: 40.6% on 3.5 attempts
Jae Crowder: 44.5% on 6.4 attempts

Now that’s a lot of weapons that space the floor for Butler and Bam to work their two-man game to perfection. Not to mention that the Heat can throw Bam at Siakam on the defensive end. To me, that’s a lot to worry about.

Against Miami, I’m also not sure we would have the best player in the series. The best player in a potential match-up with Miami may be Butler. And, as you know, the team with the best player usually prevails. So, with that in mind, let me ask you: who would be the best player in a potential Celtics-Raptors match-up?

Alex Dzintars

Unfortunately, it’s not Siakam, even though I really want it to be. Tatum has put himself in a different category with his recent play, and Siakam has gone the opposite direction (although Game 3 was promising); the former is making step-back 3s with a hand in his face look easy, while Siakam’s finishing around the rim feels suspect. Having said all of that, I trust OG more on Tatum than I do Brown on Siakam, and maybe for that reason the best player IN THIS SERIES doesn’t matter as much as the individual defensive assignments.

Against Miami, I feel there are a lot more exploitable edges, even with the Bam-Siakam match-up in mind. Who’s guarding all of the Raptors’ shifty guards? It’s not going to be Dragic. Maybe Nunn? If Bam takes the Siakam matchup, is Crowder on Serge? Is Meyers Leonard healthy? We saw the Raptors force feed the bigs in Game 3, which was great to see, and seems like a strategy to employ against Miami (not sure how Olynyk would hold up). The point I’m making is that the Raptors seem to have more advantages to play with against Miami over the course of a series, whereas against Boston, the only real edges I see are the C spot and now depth, given the Hayward injury.

Am I crazy? Where do you see our advantages over the Celtics? Give me some of that second round confidence!

Peter Kaye

Ah Alex, I think you’ve been spending too much time on the Boston Celtics fan site (ESPN). (Side-story: I have a friend who gets their NBA info only from ESPN and the past couple seasons they’ve always been surprised when the Celtics or the 76ers don’t make the Finals. Unfortunately, they’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid that is the ESPN propaganda machine).

Now, I’m not saying this applies to you because I know you are a well-informed NBA fanatic who enjoys a well-balanced diet of NBA information across numerous sites that cover the league. But, let me say this: if this Celtics roster was on, say, the Orlando Magic or the Charlotte Hornets, would we be hearing as much about them? Conversely, if Lowry, FVV, or Siakam were on the Celtics or Knicks or 76ers, how many statues do you think each would have? At least one? Maybe two for Lowry right?

Also, Raptors Twitter, Alex just said that Tatum is better than Siakam — get him! Here’s his Twitter link.

When I think of all the amazing young players in the East (Tatum, Brown, Bam, Oladipo, Simmons, Siakam, and Embiid), choosing the best of the bunch is an easy exercise for me. Give me the dude with the championship hardware who has already proved he can hang, and then some, on the biggest stage. Give me the dude who has already shown he can be the second-best player on a title team. None of the other players listed have shown us what they can do on the NBA’s biggest stage because none of those players have been to the Finals (and most of these young fellas will likely never reach a Finals because just making one is incredibly difficult).

I want to make a quick point about Miami though — you conveniently left out the Heat’s best defensive player (Jimmy Butler!) when discussing potential defensive match-ups. Shame on you!

But let’s get to the Celtics since we have a date with them in the second round. I think we actually match-up with them very well. Gasol on Theis. OG on Tatum. Siakam on Brown. Lowry on Kemba. FVV on Smart. That seems pretty ideal to me.

Now, this is where the Hayward injury comes into play as he was a key cog in their small-ball line-up (Kemba, Smart, Brown, Hayward, Tatum). They don’t have that line-up now.

But let’s just pretend that they did have this line-up at their disposal. Remember that small-ball line-up Nurse threw out there at the end of Game 2 vs. the Nets? You know the one: Lowry, FVV, Powell, OG, and Siakam. Hmmm, now that seems like a five-some that can go toe-to-toe with the Celtics’ small-ball crew. But the Celtics won’t have that line-up anymore while we’ll still have ours. Very interesting!

Alex, I don’t think you and I are going to find common ground on this Miami-Boston blood-feud of ours, so let’s agree to disagree (whispers: I’m right ). In the meantime, we do have the much anticipated Boston-Toronto match-up happening in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals, so perhaps you can share with us your prediction for this upcoming clash.

Alex Dzintars

You might be right Peter about a lack of middle ground. But even though I have my concerns with Boston, you might be surprised: I think I’d still have to go with the hometown favourites. Toronto in 6. Hard fought, but that Hayward injury does Boston in. What say you?

Peter Kaye

I know I said earlier that this Boston-Toronto series will go the distance. I lied. Raps in 5.

Until next time…

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