Overreaction: Game 15/82 - Disturbing Trends

Dwane Casey and the Pistons came to town and kicked the Raptors' behind.

Quite a few disturbing trends that have been going on the past few games:

• Inconsistent perimeter shooting leading to empty possessions. Under 29% versus the Pelicans on Monday, and this time, 20% against the Pistons. Worse, the 20 attempts tonight might be the lowest this season.
• Passive Kyle Lowry. Kyle Lowry is too good to take a backseat and defer too much of the offence to Kawhi. It's understandable that Kawhi is the alpha male of the team, but Lowry needs to be a threat to create more space for Kawhi and everybody else when Lowry's playing off the ball.
• Too much Kawhi ISO-ball. I mentioned this on my last blog, but Nurse and Kawhi need to talk about incorporating him more and more to the offence, rather than relying on getting him ISO possessions. At times it slows the pace down, and that's not the ideal situation for the Raptors.
• (Too much) Pound The Rock. I know this is coach Casey's mantra, but  Delon/FVV and even Lowry at times are pounding the ball for too long when the shot or mismatch is already there.
• Bounce pass in traffic to the Cs. A hard bounce pass in traffic to either Ibaka (stone hands), JV (too slow), Moose (can't bend, too slow) is a turnover waiting to happen. This is only effective when the ball does not get deflected and it bounces directly to their "pocket." Tonight, JV and Moose combined for 6 turnovers. Majority of them were from those bounce passes.
• Forgot about Skills. This dude is making a killing. Siakam needs to have an opportunity to create every now and then in crunch time situations to get him reps and to make the offence less predictable.
• Centers sagging to the middle of nowhere. I guess this is where we miss Serge Ibaka. JV and Moose are both sagging to the middle of nowhere leaving their teammate getting caught in between switching or sticking to their man.
• Kawhi's Perimeter Funk. Don't look now, but Kawhi's shooting 1/10 from deep for the past 3 games.
• Lowry's Perimeter Funk. Remember when Lowry was shooting the lights out from the perimeter? It feels like a long time ago. For the past 4 games, he's shooting a meagre 4/21.

Tidbits:

• It's good to see Nurse take VanVleet out in crunch time as last year, Casey would have kept him in there till the end
• The BLOB play that Casey almost pulled off looks so similar to the Miami Heat's game-winner against the Raptors last year.