The Raptors Have To Find A Way To Help Kawhi Leonard

The good news for the Toronto Raptors during the 2018-19 postseason has been that Kawhi Leonard has been worth the price of admission. The bad news is that if the rest of the roster doesn’t get their act together, that will not matter, because they’re going to get bounced in the Eastern Conference Semifinals by the Philadelphia 76ers.

Leonard did everything he needed to do in Thursday night’s Game 3 loss to Philly. He dropped 33 points on 13-for-22 shooting, carving up Philadelphia from the mid-range and playing his usually stout defense. In fact, Leonard was so good that Maverick Carter tweeted this during the game, and it completely made sense.

He’s been an assassin all postseason, getting to his spots and hitting shots at will while mixing in the best perimeter defense you’ll see. But in a 5-on-5 game, this doesn’t matter if the other four dudes can’t stay afloat, which has generally been the case against the Sixers. There’s a chance you saw these tweets in the aftermath of the game, but basically, when Leonard is on the floor in the three games against Philadelphia, good things happen. When he goes to the bench to get some rest, Toronto responds by melting into a gigantic puddle.

Now! You do not need me to tell you this is bad, because you read those numbers and went “that’s bad.” Leonard has played 117 of a potential 144 minute in this series, but the biggest impact on who wins and who loses so far has come in a span of 27 minutes. It’s similar to the Oklahoma City Thunder during the 2017 playoffs — in Games 2, 4, and 5, Russell Westbrook played 41, 39, and 42 minutes. The Thunder were +11, +14, and +12 when he was on the floor and lost the games by four, four, and six points, respectively, because they just could not do anything when the MVP was on the bench.

The difference between that Thunder team and this Raptors team, though, is Toronto’s roster was built to be able to withstand Leonard getting a breather. Pascal Siakam, to his credit, has been very solid, even if he took an understandable step back from a scorching 29-point outing in Game 1. Beyond him, things have been rather bleak as Philadelphia has pushed its lead to 2-1.

Before we get to the starters, over the last two games, Toronto’s bench has been a nightmare. In both games combined, it has scored 20 points. Four of those points came on a pair of garbage time buckets in Game 3 by Jodie Meeks. It’s not like Philly’s bench has been a group of world-beaters, although James Ennis and Greg Monroe — hilarious missed Game 3 layup aside — have been useful pieces, and Mike Scott is now healthy. The big issue, though, is how the Sixers’ starters have eaten the Raptors’ starters’ lunch.

Here is an important thing to distinguish: Philly has four of the five or six best players in this series. The top-2 is some combination of Leonard and Joel Embiid, then it’s however you want to order Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris, Kyle Lowry, and Ben Simmons, with Siakam right there, too. The Sixers haven’t had a ton of time to get that group all on the same page, but if you believe talent ultimately wins out, their numbers with those four dudes on the court per Cleaning the Glass back you up.

You are not getting better than those four Sixers players and J.J. Redick this postseason. You need your players to play up to their ability to match that group. The Raptors have not done this.

Danny Green’s path to providing support is easy: He has to start making threes. The marksman is hitting 31.3 percent of his triples against Philadelphia, which includes a 3-for-6 outing in Game 3, although all of those three makes came in the first quarter. Toronto, as a team, is hitting 28.6 percent of its threes in this series. While everyone has to be better, Green has been the Raptors’ best shooter this season, and this just won’t get it done. But relying on a player like Green to give Leonard the help he needs is a bit much. It’s more likely that he, like Leonard, benefits from other players stepping up. We have now reached the portion of the article where we talk about Marc Gasol and, more prominently, Lowry.

Starting with Gasol, the Raptors acquired him to match up with Embiid. That has not totally worked — the Sixers center did get bottled up pretty well before his dominant Game 3 performance, but when Toronto has had the ball, Gasol hasn’t done all that much. He’s averaging 6.7 points and 3.7 assists on 30 percent shooting from the field. While Gasol has undoubtedly lost a step and hasn’t been an All-Star caliber player in 2018-19, he needs to give them something on that end of the floor, whether he’s scoring or using his ability as a distributor while his teammates are whizzing around. It also doesn’t help that his backup, Serge Ibaka, has ran into even more issues, to the tune of 4.3 points and four rebounds in 16.2 minutes a night.

Lowry, meanwhile, has found it hard to shake his reputation for struggling in the playoffs. His series has been awfully odd, as he was plus-25 despite scoring nine points in Game 1, went for 20-5-5 in the Game 2 loss, and was a complete non-factor in Game 3. It doesn’t help that this is a tough matchup for Lowry on both ends of the floor — there’s really no good place to put him on defense because he’s either giving up a major size disadvantage or getting run off of a million screens for Redick, and on offense, he’s primarily getting checked by a former second-team All-Defense selection in Butler or someone with All-Defense potential in Simmons.

Whether it’s on Nick Nurse to find ways to get Lowry into the flow of a game or on Lowry to be an All-Star and make his impact felt, Toronto needs its point guard to play up to his ability. Defenses have to respect how Lowry opens things up for everyone else, but that’s not going to happen when he’s connecting on 35.1 percent of his shots and a paltry 14.3 percent of his threes in the series. All-Stars need to be All-Stars, and those are not numbers conducive to being an All-Star. For example, this sort of stuff cannot happen.

Philadelphia deserves a ton of credit for how its defense has performed all postseason long, especially against Toronto, because it’s exceedingly rare that an opponent can match the physicality of a team that has an eight-man rotation with one player shorter than 6’7. But the playoffs are about adjustments, and right now, the Raptors need to figure out how to respond, or else they will get bounced despite Leonard’s convincing Jordan impression, which will lead to questions about whether he’ll end up being anything more than a rental north of the border.