The most impressive aspect of the best regular season in Toronto Raptors history is that it was basically achieved without DeMarre Carroll.
Masai Ujiri’s biggest summer prize was limited to 26 games in his first year north of the border by a mysterious knee injury that kept him off the floor from early December to the last week of the regular season. Carroll briefly returned to the lineup for several games bookending the New Year, but was shelved again shortly thereafter due to lingering pain and swelling that finally prompted arthroscopic surgery. He didn’t play at all from January 3 to April 5 and Toronto mostly stayed mum on his status, leading to a widespread consensus that Carroll would be sidelined for the season’s remainder – or at best, be a shell of his normal self if he actually made it back for the Raptors’ playoff run.
The 28 year old played his first game since January on April 7 and appeared in two of Toronto’s final three regular season games. Was it a sign he’d be more ready for the postseason than anyone anticipated? Maybe.
But when the Raptors opened their first-round playoff series against the Indiana Pacers last weekend, Carroll played exactly like you’d expect a guy who hadn’t notched meaningful minutes in over four months. He saw the floor for 19 minutes in Toronto’s Game 1 loss at Air Canada Centre, a wholly dispiriting contest for the favorites marked by the Raptors’ inability to slow Paul George as much as anything else. And though Carroll played 20 minutes and was reinserted into the starting lineup for Game 2, he was still clearly limited by a lack of conditioning and overall comfort – whether the latter was related to physical pain or mental adjustments gleaned from so much time away from the game.
That’s what made his performance three days later so shocking. Based on the Raptors’ first two playoff games, there was no reason to expect Carroll might suddenly regain the form that made him one of the most sought-after wings on last July’s free agent market – not against the Pacers or in any future postseason matchups to come.
But there he was at Bankers Life Fieldhouse nonetheless, helping Toronto to a crucial 101-85 victory in Game 3 with the type of immense two-way impact he made on a nightly basis for the Atlanta Hawks last season.
The box score numbers are nice. Carroll scored 17 points and grabbed five rebounds in 35 minutes Thursday night. And despite George scoring 25 points and handing out six assists for the Pacers, he also shot just 6-of-19 from the field and committed four turnovers, struggles most directly accounted for by the rejuvenation of his primary defender.
The Pacers’ opening possession of Game 3 was a harbinger of things to come for both Carroll and George over the next 48 minutes. Toronto’s would-be stopper was anything but at Air Canada Centre, his movement sapped by all the complications that inevitably follow knee surgery. On Thursday, however, it was clear from the opening tip that Carroll had enough juice in his legs and air in his lungs to make life hell for Indiana’s only reliable source of offense.
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Even when Carroll got hung up on screens off the ball, he was consistently able to recover in time to get an effective contest on George’s shots.
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Carroll’s defensive performance was not without its hiccups. He was screened a bit more easily than normally accustomed, and beaten backdoor on more than one occasion while caught watching the ball. But for the most part in Game 3, Carroll lived up to his reputation as one of the most physical, relentless, and altogether disruptive wing defenders in basketball.
The former journeyman earned his money last July as a prototype ‘3-and-D’ small forward with enough versatility to masquerade as a small-ball 4. Yet focusing on what Carroll does best obscures the scope of his overall value, especially for a team — like the Raptors — light on wings who bring more than one skill to the table possession by possession.
Carroll took a whopping nine three-pointers on Thursday and connected on just three of them. Terrence Ross could certainly manage that substandard accuracy, and rookie Norman Powell – who played just three minutes on Thursday, his lowest total since mid March – finished the regular season on a tear from beyond the arc.
Streaky three-point threats who open the floor for Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan aren’t what Toronto lacked offensively for the majority of the regular season. What the Raptors didn’t have without Carroll and still missed in the first two games of this series was an ancillary player with the ability to attack and exploit mismatches as the Pacers’ long-limbed defense scrambled to recover.
Attacking close-outs isn’t something the short-armed, notoriously under-aggressive Ross does with any regularity.
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The ever-excitable Powell might take a contested triple over George as opposed to swinging the ball to DeRozan and letting him go to work on an overmatched defender.
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And neither Toronto reserve has both the multiple-effort mindset and package of physical attributes to pull off a sequence like this one.
After the game, Carroll pointed to preexisting knowledge of extended playing time as the biggest cause of his throwback, breakout performance.
“Coach told me he was gonna lift the minute restriction,” he explained to reporters, “so it kind of helped me [feel] relief a little bit mentally knowing that I’m not on a minute restriction so I can play as hard as I can for as long as I can.”
But emotional ease only matters so much; it would be nothing for a player like Carroll if the body failed to cooperate. That wasn’t an issue in Game 3, fortunately, and might not be going forward.
“It’s been a long time since I played that long. It was great. It was a great feeling. So I just gotta try to build off it,” Carroll said. “That’s probably the best I’ve felt [since coming back].”
Clearly. And as a result, the Raptors should be feeling better than ever about their chances of playing deep into spring and early summer – not to mention finally advancing past the first round.
