Transcription
[music] >> What's up, basketball fans, and welcome to the Rap Report. It is time to talk about the Toronto Raptors because the Raptors will now be facing the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round, thanks to the Orlando Magic, who absolutely blew that game versus the Boston Celtics. So, for today's video, I'm going to be taking a look at five factors which will determine whether or not the Raptors succeed in beating the Cleveland Cavaliers in this playoff series.
So, the first factor here is going to be crashing the boards. Out of the 36 losses the Raptors have had this season, the Raptors were out-rebounded in 25 of them. And, you know, given the team that they're playing, injured Allen, Evan Mobley, you have two guys that are absolutely going to be crashing the boards, and it is very key for the Toronto Raptors to not only keep them off the board, but just really make sure you box out. And this has to be a team effort. I know that Jakob Poeltl has had his struggles, and that is not to say that Jakob shouldn't play better, but it has to be a collective effort from the team. Rebounding always comes down to effort, and even when you look at someone like Brandon Ingram, I've said this, you know, many months ago, where you can't be 6'8 and averaging five rebounds a game. We're going to definitely need him to crash the boards a lot more as well. So, it's going to have to be a collective effort from the Toronto Raptors as a team.
And in comparing the two teams in rebounds per game, the Cavaliers average 44.4 rebounds per game, whereas the Raptors average 42.1 rebounds per game. However, the Toronto Raptors rank 23rd in defensive rebounds per game. And how many games have we seen the Toronto Raptors, you know, play great defense for 19 seconds, 20 seconds, and the other team shoots the ball, and the Raptors do a great job? However, they just cannot secure that defensive rebound, and, you, know, the other team on ends up getting many second-chance points due to that. And even, you know, a game like the Brooklyn Nets: at one point in the game, I believe it was in the second quarter or the first half, the Toronto Raptors gave up 10 offensive rebounds to the Brooklyn Nets and only had one themselves. So, for the Raptors to really help them, this is going to be a key factor in ensuring that they really just box out and ensure that they're not giving up too many offensive rebounds.
Now, the second factor here is going to be containing James Harden, and I'm not talking about his scoring because we've seen James Harden have his scoring slumps in the playoffs. We've seen him choke, but he's something that he does really well is facilitate and get his teammates involved. And there has been one teammate of his that has arguably benefited the most from Cleveland, you know, having James Harden on the roster, and that is no other than Jared Allen. You know, when you look at the stats for Jared Allen since the James Harden trade, he's averaging 18.3 points per game, which is four better than prior to James Harden. 9.4 rebounds, which is a rebound better, but most importantly here, most importantly, he's shooting 70.5% from the field, which is 9% better than he did prior to James Harden being on that roster, which just goes to show that James Harden just makes life so much easier. You know, you always see that with big men, but you also see it in pick-and-roll situations as well, and we might just see a lot of it with Evan Mobley.
So, that's what I talk about when we talk about containing James Harden because, as opposed to someone like Donovan Mitchell, people may ask, "Why not contain Donovan Mitchell?" He is, you know, the best scorer on that team, but I want to talk about Donovan Mitchell real quick here. And the reason I think it's going to be not only harder to contain someone like Donovan Mitchell, but also more less important, if you want to say, containing someone like Donovan Mitchell, is for the simple fact that the Raptors simply don't have one player that can stop Donovan Mitchell. He is good as Scotty Barnes has been this season, he's not someone that can keep up with a shifty guard like Donovan Mitchell, right? There's few possessions where, for sure, he'll slow him down and make life more difficult, but you don't ideally want to put someone like Scotty Barnes on Donovan Mitchell the entire game. It's just going to exhaust him as well. It's just not a great matchup, if we're being completely honest.
And I also do want to mention the fact that when you look at someone like Donovan Mitchell, he's going to get his points. You know, in the last year's playoff series versus the Indiana Pacers, he averaged 35 points. However, the Indiana Pacers won that series in five games. Now, why is that? Because the style of play that Donovan Mitchell has is great. He'll get his points; however, when you're not involving teammates, you know, they're essentially just going to be cold turkey out there because they haven't touched the ball in seven minutes, in five minutes, because you see Donovan Mitchell possession after possession just getting his own basket. So why, that's why I think it's more important to contain someone like James Harden because when you have players that can facilitate, that can pass the ball, and can get their teammates going and get them easy baskets, those are the players that, ideally, you want to fear the most and probably the ones you want to contain the most.
Now, the third factor here is going to be Brandon Ingram, because which version of Brandon Ingram are we going to get? His last playoff series versus the Oklahoma City Thunder was disastrous, and I don't blame him. I mean, it's the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are a very good defensive team. However, prior to that, a few seasons prior to that, he faced the Phoenix Suns in the playoffs where he absolutely went off, but it is most important for Brandon Ingram to perform well in the playoffs because the Raptors need every bit of his scoring.
And taking a look at his stats here, he's so far, you know, combined the one good playoff run he had with the one bad one. He's averaging 20.6 points per game in the playoffs, 4.7 assists per game, 5.3 rebounds. However, he's shooting 41% from the field, and again, a large portion of that could be contributed to the fact that he had a horrible series versus the Oklahoma City Thunder. He also shot the ball 32.5% from the, you know, three-point line overall in his playoff career, and his turnovers is something that he's going to have to limit because he has averaged three turnovers per game.
And the reason I believe Brandon Ingram is going to be so crucial for a Toronto Raptors team is because of his ability to create shots in the half-court offense, and you're going to need a lot of that because that's what playoff basketball essentially comes down to, right? Do you have a guys, or do you have a few players that have the ability to create shots in half-court offense? And the Raptors, outside of, you know, Brandon Ingram, don't really have someone like that. Let's be honest. There is no one, yeah, RJ can drive down to the basket. Scotty can have his moments, but Scotty's just not been a great scorer this season overall. And Brandon Ingram, you know, what the Raptors offense is, good as Brandon Ingram goes. So, if Brandon Ingram is averaging, you know, 15 points, 18 points, that's simply not good enough because the Raptors don't have a lot of great scorers as it is, and they have trouble scoring in general. And on top of that, you're going to be facing a pretty good defensive team in the Cleveland Cavaliers as well. So, we're going to need every one of Brandon Ingram's points, and also, you need him to play really well in the playoffs.
Now, the fourth factor I will be discussing is shooting and scoring for the Toronto Raptors because these are going to be the two key, key elements in terms of their ability to score and their ability to, you know, essentially just figure out defenses. But also, when we talk about if, you know, a Cleveland Cavaliers team plays zone defense, you need your three-point shooting essentially.
You know, the Raptors rank 30th in the NBA in bench scoring as well. It doesn't just come down to shooting. You also need those key bench players to provide some sort of relief for your starters in terms of scoring. And they haven't been great, and it's kind of crazy to think that the Raptors rank 30th in the NBA in bench scoring because Mamadi Camara has been absolutely excellent. So, I mean, despite Mamadi being so, you know, good off the bench in terms of scoring, in terms of shooting for the Toronto Raptors, the Raptors still rank dead last in the NBA. So, what does that tell you about the Raptors' overall bench? That's going to be a key concern, and, you know, we'll see who Darko plays, but Jamal Shead isn't going to be someone you can rely on. You know, Dean and Diallo to get you. I mean, with respect to Jamal, not even 10 points a game. You know, it's going to be hard for him to generate a lot of points because he's not a great shooter. And then you have obviously other guys who haven't had good seasons, who are supposed to be key bench players, like Gradey Dick as well. So, Jacobi Walker, of course, has been a, you know, very impressive player for the Toronto Raptors this season. You can look at someone like Colin Murray Boyle as well, but he doesn't shoot the, he doesn't shoot the ball very well. But how many points is he going to get? He's going to be a very important player for the Toronto Raptors as well.
In terms of their shooting percentages, Raptors rank 21st in the NBA in three-point shooting percentage, and they rank 21st in the NBA in scoring. So, again, playoff scoring is so important. Despite the fact that the Raptors are a really good defensive team, scoring is going to be essentially their Achilles if they want to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers.
And our last factor here is going to be coaching, and the one thing I do, there's a few key points I wanted to talk about with coaching, especially with Darko, is: will he bench Jakob? Because, you know, we know the Raptors are going to have to play Jakob a lot. Jared Allen is a large center. He's 7 foot, 7 foot 1, and we don't have any other center, legitimate, you know, 7-foot centers outside of Jakob. So, Jakob has struggled quite a bit the last few games, but Darko will have to keep his leash short despite the fact that, you know, we need him out there because we know how bad he can play in certain situations. We know how bad he looks out there sometimes. We saw it versus the Knicks. We saw it even worse versus the Brooklyn Nets team, and Brooklyn Nets were essentially playing G League players and, you know, 10th, 11th men off the bench who were just cooking Jakob Poeltl. So, Darko is going to have to make these tough decisions, and we'll see how he manages this.
And this essentially ties into our second point here, which is, you know, timely lineup changes. Is he going to put Mamadi in for Jakob? Is he going to put CMB in? And where is he going to play him as well? That's going to be very important. And, you know, like I talked about, you're going to have to game plan for someone like James Harden. How is he going to game plan with, you know, some of the star players? Not only just James Harden as well. How's he going to game plan for Donovan Mitchell? The different matchups he'll have out there as well. It'll be very important to see how Darko essentially, you know, this is his first playoff series as a head coach. It'll be very important to see how he's making these decisions. Is he going to be Nick Nurse out there? Is he going to be doing Casey? You know, because we saw what Nick Nurse did with star players. Double them, triple them if you have to. Make the other scorer let, you know, the superstar go cold turkey out there. And we've seen what he does against, you know, some of the star players. We're talking about Nick Nurse. Let's see how Darko approaches and how he's going to be managing against the Cleveland Cavaliers team.
And the final key point under the coaching I want to discuss is where will he put Scotty? Because there's a lot of different lineups you can essentially go with. You know, when we talk about Scotty, he is so important to the Toronto Raptors defense. So, is he going to essentially, you know, have Scotty guarding Jarrett Allen at times? We know that kind of does take a toll on Scotty because we never see him have great offensive games when he's forced to guard some of the bigger centers out there, right? So, I mean, if, like I said, if Jakob is struggling out there, do you essentially put Scotty on someone like Jarrett Allen and then bring in someone like Koloko Birch to guard someone like CMB, or excuse me, Koloko Birch to essentially guard someone like Evan Mobley out there? Or do you have, do you have, you know, Scotty Barnes guarding maybe James Harden? You know, maybe make life more difficult so the facilitating goes down a little bit for the Cleveland Cavaliers team. There's a lot of different avenues you could go with where you're going to put Scotty. So, it's going to be very interesting as to how Darko uses him and the different matchups where he's going to have him play defensively, how he's going to use him offensively as well. So, it's, it's going to be a huge, coaching is going to be a huge key factor to see, you know, how not only if the Raptors can beat Cleveland, but how well they're going to perform in this series.
So, what are your thoughts on these factors? What do you think is going to be the most important factor for the Toronto Raptors heading into this Cleveland Cavaliers series? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.
And as always, I do have a trivia question for you today. And the trivia question is: who led the Raptors in free throw percentage this season? Was it A, Brandon Ingram? Was it B, Immanuel Quickley? Was it C, Scotty Barnes? Or was it D, Gradey Dick? So, whoever answers this trivia question correctly first in the comment section gets a shoutout in my next video.
So, that will be it for today's video. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you have yourselves a great day.