The Raptors learned a valuable lesson against Orlando's big men in Game 1. (via ArdenZwelling)
. A million little micro decisions — to shoot this, to pass that, to help off him, to run under the screen, to go after that board, to leave your feet on the jumper — that all combined to make up the macro result: a loss. No one misplay matters more than another. But it sure does stand out when it happens with four seconds remaining.
That left Augustin unguarded at the very top of the arc and, boy, he couldn’t have drilled that three much more crisply. The net barely moved. Orlando’s bench erupted, Toronto’s deflated, and in front of the Raptors basket, both Gasol and Leonard stood there stunned, looking at each other with arms out wide.
There wasn’t a right and wrong play to make, per se. It’s up to Gasol and Leonard to know how each other are going to react and make a coordinated decision on which player to stick with. Ultimately, they each believed the other had Augustin. Just one of those million little things. “They obviously made quite a few shots. Some of them were contested. Some of them we kind of got lost in rotations and stuff. And they got a couple offensive rebounds early in the game. We’ve got to be better,” Gasol said. “Our offence got a little stagnant at times. We played a lot of one-on-one. We’ve got to keep the ball moving. Obviously, they’re pretty long and athletic. Making it simple for them and not shifting their feet and stuff is kind of what they want.
“We understood that coming into the game,” said Pascal Siakam, Toronto’s best player on the night. “We missed a lot of open shots, a lot of them went in and out. We wish we had a couple of those. But that’s the game. We understand that. We’ve just got to do a better job. “
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