After a sweep at the hands of the Wizards in last year’s playoffs, most Raptor fans are choosing to ignore the regular season as a way to predict playoff success. While the number of raw wins and losses may be unimportant as a predictor of playoff outcomes, there are in-game clues as to what the series could boil down to.

Raptors Defense

The Pacers offense, in ways that are similar to the Raptors, is heavily influenced by their guards and primary ball handlers. Starting with Paul George and moving downwards in effectiveness towards George Hill and Monta Ellis, the Pacers heavily rely on those three to “stir the pot” offensively. Another way to look at that would be to acknowledge that the Pacers’ big men, whether it be Ian Mahinmi, Myles Turner, Lavoy Allen or Jordan Hill, are far less comfortable and effective than their smaller counterparts that control the flow of the offense.

In their encounters with the Pacers this season, the Raptors have emphasized getting the ball out of the hands of effective decision makers, such as Paul George, and attempted to force the ball into the hands of Pacers big men. To execute such a plan, the Raptors would generally overplay the scoring ball handler when they came off screens by having the guard trail behind the ball handler while the big man defender “showed” and formed a pseudo-trap on ball. This forced the Pacers primary ball handlers to over-dribble, take poor shots and turn the ball over.

To combat this, the Pacers’ ball handlers were forced into deferring to their big men. The Raptors’ defensive game plan did not end there, as they understood once the ball was released from Paul George’s hands that there were not many long range scoring threats left on the floor. Off-ball defensive players such as Norman Powell were encouraged to sag off their poor long-range shooting assignments, such as Monta Ellis and Rodney Stuckey, and dig into the big man’s catching pocket, forcing an extra pass to a poor shooter. This defensive execution stagnated the Pacers’ offensive flow and at the very least forced them into resetting their offense while deep in the shot clock.

Understanding that players such as Monta Ellis, while they may have aura’s of top tier scorers, cannot sustainably and effectively play off ball, is what allowed this defensive technique to work. Per NBA.com, Ellis is shooting 32.4% on catch and shoot three pointers this season for an eFG% of 47.1%. If Ellis is willing to fire away from deep on that level of efficiency, the Raptors have to view that as a win defensively, especially when the alternative is a Paul George-centric offense. To the Raptors credit, overplaying George as he has come off of screens has lowered his efficiency as well, as he is registered 16 points per game on a True Shooting Percentage of 43.3%

Pacers Defense

The Pacers used a similar defensive technique to defend the Raptors, as is common amongst most teams in the NBA, but took a less aggressive stance on sending weak side help over to “dig” into the Raptors’ big men. Another important difference to note is that the Raptors also posses different personnel than the Pacers, a play-style which is more adept to beating a pseudo-trap, ball handler oriented defense. Players like Corey Joseph, who will likely be matched up with a weaker defender such as Monta Ellis because other perimeter threats in Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, can attack flat-footed big men that show too high up in the pick and roll. Giving him too much space to come back towards the middle of the floor is certain death, as he is tremendous at keeping his defender on his hip and floating up tight shots.

Another important facet of attacking this defensive style from the Raptors’ perspective is to make sure that attacking ball handlers, such as DeRozan, work towards the middle of the floor when they are drawing two-on-ones. This is because screen setters, such as Scola, Thompson and Patterson, will need an empty wing of the court to finish a dump off, rather than the middle where help can come from all sides while they clumsily attempt to finish over the trees that are the Pacers’ big men.

The contrast in effectiveness when the court is aligned in a preferential way is easily visible here, where Scola has difficulty finishing against a retreating big towards the middle of the floor versus his ability to finish once DeRozan penetrates middle and dumps off to the side. The threat of DeRozan finishing inside makes the retreating big man’s job much more difficult when getting back to Scola, allowing for easier dump off buckets.

It’s an incredibly intuitive way to attack a defense, as getting to the middle of the floor on penetration is the desired way of operating for most teams. The Pacers will try their damndest to deny the use of screens towards the middle of the floor but the Raptors must emphasize middle penetration when squaring off against a top-five defense.

Offensive Similarities

As mentioned before, the Pacers offense is somewhat similar to the Raptors in distribution of shots and how those shots are created. Head Coach Dwane Casey seems to agree as well, referring to the Pacers as a mirror image of sorts when comparing the two teams.

Casey says Raptors and Pacers are very similar teams. “When we look in the mirror we see the Indiana Pacers. It’s a good match-up for us.” — Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) April 14, 2016

The similarities even extend into common set plays that both teams utilize.

The first common play that both teams run is generally referred to as “Horns Triple”. As you will see, it is essentially a combination of on ball screens and a DHO (dribble hand-off) to create space for the ball handler who explodes from the weak side corner into the middle of the floor where many opportunities will be presented as the defense makes decisions and collapses.

Here’s the Raptors’ compilation:

Here’s the Pacers’ compilation:

The next set, while not identical, is similar in that it involves the same base action. The Raptors run a slightly more simplistic version of the “AI Series” which involves an AI Cut, typically by DeMar DeRozan. AI (referring to Allen Iverson) series has a player go from one side of the court, cross the free throw line while running across two off ball screens, and catching the ball on the other side with momentum working in their favour. DeRozan is great at leveraging this advantage by identifying if his defender trails on his hip, versus cheating under the screens.

The Pacers do not run the play identically, instead they run an “Over Under” variation where they have one off-ball wing player use the under side of the screen while the other off-ball wing uses the traditional route to exchange sides of the court.

Valanciunas’ Effectiveness in the Post

From viewing the limited tape on Valanciunas against the Pacers’ big men this season, it doesn’t appear as though he is able to efficiently post up against the plethora of Pacers big men. Mahinmi, Allen and Jordan Hill are all similar in weight and height to Jonas while not really giving up too much quickness to the Lithuanian seven-footer. Vanilla post ups where Valanciunas is expected to make his way into the restricted area after the catch just won’t cut it in this series, as the lower-body strength of big men such as Allen is just too much for Valanciunas to shove under the rim. As a result, he ends up settling for out-of-rhythm mid range jump shots.

To counter this, the Raptors should look to get Valanciunas post-position after he rolls hard to the rim, as it is much easier to catch opposing big men out of position this way. Here, Valanciunas is able to draw a foul as a result.

Valanciunas post ups aren’t where the Raptors usually turn to when the going gets tough, but it will be interesting to see how scarcely they do go to him down low. Obviously, his ability to catch and finish in one swift motion in a pick and roll scenario is far more important, but this is an interesting aspect of the series to look out for. If the Pacers ever go ultra-small and use Turner at the 5 to try and force Casey’s hand to take out Valanciunas, I don’t have a doubt in my mind that the Raptors’ starting 5 can push him into the goal. There is definitely potential for both coaches to “play chicken” with one another, especially when toying with going small.

X-Factor Fours

Both Indiana and Toronto possess agile power forwards that do not regularly start for their respective teams, yet they both have incredibly positive impacts when on the floor. Both Solomon Hill and Patrick Patterson have the ability to shoot from long range, (in Hill’s case, his effectiveness resides in the corner three while Patterson’s range extends to all areas behind the line) while also possessing elite lateral quickness to make an impact defensively. This is evident when looking at lineup data between the two players, as Hill’s most common 5-man lineup has a Net RTG of 24.4 Points Per 100 possessions and Patterson’s (substantially more frequently) used 5-man grouping possesses an impressive 16.4 points per 100 possessions in its own right.

The difference these players can make in the series might just come down to one incredibly useful skill, that being their ability to switch pick and rolls.

While Hill was unable to force a miss, he did influence DeRozan’s decision making and forced an incredibly difficult shot which will not be a sustainable source of scoring during the series.

It’s unfortunate that Patterson’s defensive versatility wasn’t fully utilized throughout the season, as the Raptors chose to hedge and ICE with him in a far more frequent manner than they chose to switch, but Patterson is fully capable and can hold his own one-on-one against the Pacers’ speedy guards.

I fully anticipate both teams to switch every pick and roll involving these two players on both sides of the court. An interesting tally to keep track of is who succeeds more defensively when their agile power forward is switched onto a guard.

Closing Thoughts

It’s important to note that when these two teams squared off against each other in the regular season, there was never a time where both teams had full lineups at their disposal after the initial meeting in the first game of the season. Both teams went through tremendous roster transformations throughout the previous offseason and it would be unfair to draw conclusions only from that game. A myriad of factors affected the remaining three games, such as absences from Valanciunas, Carroll, Mahinmi and then intentional rest from the Raptors in the final meeting. It’s a shame that impact players that were previously mentioned couldn’t be seen before the playoffs in this particular matchup, but that’s part of why this series has potential to be so intriguing, as their are so many unknowns. What I would be willing to venture as a known fact is that the defensive style both teams have shown should make this an ugly series. The Raptors should be able to out-ugly the Pacers, but when its the Raptors in the playoffs, nothing will surprise me.