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The Golden State Warriors have by far been the best team in the league this season. Last night they faced off against a Toronto Raptors squad which has aspirations of claiming the top spot in the Eastern Conference. After winning their first 5 games to begin the season, including an impressive win over the Thunder in Oklahoma City, the Raptors have sputtered, losing 4 of their next 6 games.

In a close contest, the Warriors ended up coming out victorious with a 110-105 victory in Oakland to run their record to 12-0 (the 3rd best start in NBA history). Here are 5 thoughts I came away with from the game.

1. The addition of Cory Joseph

Toronto added Cory Joseph to their roster this offseason when they signed him to a 4 year deal worth close to $30 million dollars. So far this season, Joseph has served as a valuable addition as a backup guard to Kyle Lowry providing an offensive spark to the second unit. Through 12 games, Joseph has averaged 9.8 points (57.7% shooting), 2.8 rebounds and 3.3 assists, while only turning the ball over a total of 13 times in over 300 minutes of time spent on the court.

Last night Joseph was again a key contributor for the Raptors off the bench. He led the second unit to start the second quarter with 6 points to silence the crowd and erase the Warriors momentum which they captured by closing out the first quarter on a 9-2 run.

He was also a pest on the defensive end, exerting a lot of energy to work through screens as he tried to keep up against the Splash Brothers.

In second half Joseph was on the court for 18 of the 24 minutes, including the entire forth quarter where he played alongside Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan in a 3 guard lineup. With this look, Toronto became an even more deadly offensive team. With Joseph becoming the primary ball handler this allowed Lowry to play off the ball more and become a bigger scoring threat. Like Lowry, Joseph demonstrates a knack for creating opportunities for his teammates whilst also taking care of the basketball – as demonstrated by his 6 assists and 0 turnovers against the Warriors. Last night, the Raptors were +4 when Joseph, Lowry and DeRozan were on the court together and for the season, this trio have produced an offensive rating of 113.4 points per 100 possessions when they are on the court[1].

2. Dwane Casey ruined DeMarre Carroll’s night

The Raptors started the second half trailing 63-47 and were in need of someone to step up and lead them to a comeback against a high-powered team. Enter DeMarre Carroll.

Carroll sparked the Raptors third quarter comeback as he scored 10 points quick points in the first 6 minutes of the second half (along with 2 steals and 1 assist) to cut a 16 point deficit to 6 – forcing Luke Walton to call a timeout. Coming out of that timeout for some peculiar reason, Toronto head coach Dwane Casey decided to bench Carroll for the rest of the quarter. When he returned onto the court in the final quarter the hot streak was extinguished (Carroll went scoreless for the rest of the game) – he turned the ball over on his first touch and then failed to convert on a breakaway layup following a steal on the defensive end – allowing Andre Igoudala to chase him down and knock the ball away to prevent what looked like an easy layup.

There is no obvious reason as to why Carroll was yanked from the lineup during the third quarter when he was riding a hot hand. It was his third game back after missing 3 games with an injury and he had played at least 30 minutes since returning to action, showing no signs of requiring a minutes restriction. Whilst the Raptors kept the game close with Carroll on the bench[2], the obvious question has to asked as to whether Toronto would have been able to cut further into the deficit had the streaking Carroll remained in the game. Toronto allowed 17 points in the final 6 minutes of the third quarter with Carroll on the bench after they held to Warriors to only 10 points to begin to second half when Carroll went through his heat check moment. So he was having a positive impact on the defensive end as well!

3. The massive free throw discrepancy kept this game close

Toronto attempted 39 free throws against the 27 free throws attempted by the Warriors. And that discrepancy would have been even greater had it not been for the “Hack-a-Bogut” gameplan the Raptors resorted to during the forth quarter. The Raptors were able to keep the game close down the stretch by getting to the foul line 20 times in the final quarter, this was helped out by Golden State picking up silly fouls early in the final quarter causing them to enter the penalty with 7:10 to play. The Raptors scored 15 of their 27 points from the free throw line in a fourth quarter which saw them shoot less than 30% from the field and make only 5 field goals.

Attempting to win a game from the free throw line is nothing new for the Raptors. Furthermore, it is not surprising – when you are a great free throw shooting team then focussing on drawing fouls and getting to the penalty as soon as possible in every quarter makes for a good strategy which will score you a lot of points. Last season, Toronto was 7th in the league in free throw attempts (24.6 attempts per game) and 2nd in free throw percentage (78.7%). This year they are getting to the line even more frequently – averaging 30.0 attempts from the charity strike (2nd best in the league) and they are continuing to convert at a high clip of 79.4% (6th best in the league).

4. Toronto relies too much on 1-on-1 basketball

Too many of Toronto’s possessions last night featured players dribbling out the shot clock as they went one-on-one against their defender in the hopes of creating a good look for themselves – something which is notoriously difficult to do against a great defensive team in Golden State. Last night Toronto record only 18 assists on 37 made field goals versus the Warriors who assisted on 31 of their 43 made field goals. This type of “hero” play is not going to win you many games – especially in the playoffs when team basketball becomes even more important. Last season Toronto was third worst in the league in assist percentage (54.7%) and this year, despite the addition of players such as Carroll and Joseph who came from teams that emphasised the importance of team basketball[3], Toronto remains towards the bottom of the league with an even poorer assist percentage compared to last season (52.6%, 26th in the league).

You could place a lot of that one-on-one blame yesterday on DeMar DeRozan who seemingly appeared to want to take his defender on every time he touched the ball – especially in the forth quarter when the outcome was far from decided. DeRozan missed 3 of his 4 attempts in the final quarter and when you take a closer look at these misses you find they all came off plays that featured him dribbling away most of the shot clock before chucking up a difficult, contested shot or turning the ball over.

5. Too many Raptor miscues down the stretch

Despite the one-on-one possessions in the fourth quarter, Toronto still found themselves with a good chance to win this game. However several miscues down the stretch in the fourth quarter preventing them from handing the Warriors their first lost of the season.

9:46, Warriors by 5– 6’3” Ian Clark switches onto 6’9” Luis Scola following a pick and roll at the top of the key. The Raptors identify this mismatch but when they enter the ball into the Argentinian big man in the post he fails to take advantage. Instead of backing down the smaller defender, Scola wastes too much time, allowing the double team to arrive and forcing him to kick the ball back out to the perimeter. To make matters worse, Toronto ends up turning the ball over and allowing a breakaway layup for Barbosa on the other end. Gifted with a great opportunity to make it a 1 possession game, Toronto instead find themselves down by 7.

5:54, Warriors by 2 – After a made free throw, Toronto double-teams Steph Curry on the inbound pass which allows the Warriors to streak out into a fastbreak and an easy Andrew Bogut dunk. This was off a made free throw when you can supposedly set up your defense, and yet Toronto ends up allowing a fastbreak dunk.

What’s worse is that Toronto had made this same mistake earlier in the game at the end of the third quarter in a similar play after a made free throw which resulted in another easy basket for Golden State.

1:28, Warriors by 5 – Coming off a timeout, Toronto is unable to inbound the basketball resulting in them having to use up their final timeout with 1:28 left in the game. Being without a timeout for the final 88 seconds prevented Toronto from advancing to ball to midcourt to save precious time. More importantly, it meant Casey was unable to set up his offense for a play with 12 seconds left when they were trailing by 3 points and found themselves with a chance to force overtime. Instead Lowry ended up driving to the hoop and losing the basketball to pretty much put the nail in the coffin for the Raptors. NM.

[1] Almost 10 points higher than Toronto’s overall offensive rating of 103.6.

[2] Toronto trailed 90-83 heading into the final quarter when Carroll re-entered the lineup.

[3] Carroll came from Atlanta who led the league in assists percentage in 2014-15 and Joseph spent his first 4 season in San Antonio.