Toronto Raptors: New Year, Same Start In Playoff Opener

Franchise record in wins. Home court advantage. Opening game playoff loss. Sound familiar?

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Everyone around the team will tell you the same things:

It’s one game.
This team is different.
Kyle and DeMar aren’t going to struggle that much all series.
We played that bad and still only lost by 10.

They’re all valid points, but at the end of the day, for the third straight year, the Raptors set a franchise-record for wins in a season and entered the playoffs with home court advantage, only to cough it up right away, as the Indiana Pacers rolled into the ACC to collect a 100-90 win in the opener.

DeRozan and Lowry definitely struggled, shooting a combined 8-for-32 from the field and the team went 26-for-38 from the charity stripe. On top of that, starting shooting guard Norman Powell, who was great down the stretch, played just 16 minutes, which seems like a poor coaching decision, but even with that, this still felt like more than just a “we had a bad night” kind of game.

Paul George took over in the second half and showed the difference between All-Stars and legitimate MVP candidates. While Toronto’s starting backcourt are very good, George is one of the 10 best players in the NBA and has that superstar trait where they can sense the need to take over and actually make it happen, which is what happened on Saturday.

Basketball is the lone sport where one guy on a mission that is markedly better than everyone else can single-handedly win a series and George has that potential. Game One was just a taste, as the Fresno State product grabbed control of the game when it was close and carried Indiana into the lead, hitting clutch shots and making quality plays throughout the fourth quarter as the Pacers pulled away.

The most telling difference between Toronto’s all-stars and Indiana’s MVP candidate is that after shooting 2-for-9 in the first half – on par with the poor performance from Lowry and DeRozan – George went 10-for-13 in the second half; Lowry and DeRozan did not.

It’s great for Dwane Casey to say “I don’t think they’re going to shoot like that again,” as he did following Saturday’s game, but they might not get 44 points from the bench all series either and if Powell is down, that changes the rotation and means Toronto needs to either up the minutes for the back, but not 100 percent DeMarre Carroll or turn to Terrence Ross, neither of which are great options.

Maybe it’s the Ghosts of Playoffs Past that have people spooked right now, but honestly, can you blame them? Regular season success hasn’t translated into anything the last two seasons and the two guys that have to show up on a nightly basis in order for the Raptors to exorcise those demons were both clanking jumpers all afternoon, with Jonas Valanciunas posting a 4-for-14 line while fouling out too for good measure.

Are Lowry and DeRozan going to shoot 25 percent all series? Of course not, but George might just decide his team isn’t losing this series and Toronto doesn’t have anyone that can match that, which could be their doom.

But hey – it’s just one game, right?  

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