How the Cavs Will Try to Contain Raptors' DeRozan

The Toronto Raptors are built around their two All-Stars. This is not new, or groundbreaking. With a pair of the best handful of offensive guards in basketball, the Raptors have designed an offense around the singular driving abilities and pick-and-roll mastery of DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry.

Defenses know this, too, and consistently elite regular-season offenses have devolved into mediocrity in the postseason. Annually, this is among the biggest questions facing the Raptors as they enter the playoffs: Can a terrific offense that leans on one-on-one attacking, that relies on free-throws and difficult shot-making, that can theoretically be game-planned for in straightforward fashion, score enough when the game changes in the playoffs?

The answer, over the past few seasons, has been discouraging. The Raptors have grown and experienced playoff success, but they've done so at times in spite of their offense. Lowry and DeRozan have continued to face questions. DeRozan has the lowest postseason effective field-goal percentage of any active player; Lowry has the 10th-worst eFG% and the second-worst field-goal percentage. These questions persist because they are reasonable ones.

Lowry is still navigating his way through those troubles. He hardly shot the lights out in the first round despite a strong impact in terms of on-off numbers, but he's shown he can be a productive and impactful contributor even when his shot isn't dropping. Weeks removed from a return from wrist surgery and up against Kyrie Irving, Lowry will be under the microscope when the Raptors tip off against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday night.

DeRozan, though, has already begun filling in the metaphorical scantron in response to the unrelenting questions.

It's fitting, perhaps, that DeRozan's shoe, the Nike Kobe AD Compton, came out just before the playoffs began. The DeRozan-designed PE was inspired by Kobe Bryant's famous "Air-Ball Game," in which he crashed spectacularly against the Utah Jazz, a game that Bryant and those who followed in his footsteps hold up as a totem of resiliency. In Game 3 against the Milwaukee Bucks, DeRozan turned in his own version of Bryant's historic stinker, posting his first career postseason line that didn't include a field goal, an eight-point disaster that put the Raptors against the ropes.

"That was embarrassing," DeRozan said later in the series. "Looking up at that score, losing the way we did, embarrassing. It's a feeling you can't get over… To have that bad taste still in our mouth, it won't do nothing until we do what we're supposed to do."

In that instance, DeRozan was referring to defeating the Bucks. He shook off the 0-for-8 outing in a serious way, scoring 83 points over the final three games of the series, all Raptor victories. With a renewed focus on moving the ball to help bust the Bucks' traps, DeRozan was masterful, not only dishing 14 assists but shooting 51.7 percent, grabbing 16 rebounds, and nabbing 10 steals.

It was among the best three-game stretches of DeRozan's career. That it happened against the Bucks, a defense seemingly custom-built to frustrate him and get the ball out of his hands, is encouraging, albeit not all that surprising given the number of challenges and would-be weaknesses DeRozan continues to overcome.

Also encouraging is the fact that despite his earlier playoff reputation, DeRozan was pretty effective against the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference final a year ago. In that six-game series, DeRozan shot 50 percent, averaging 23 points and 3.5 assists, and the Raptors were a plus-18 in their two victories with him on the court. Red shoelace behind him, DeRozan showed he can score against the defense that now sits opposite him again, one that hasn't added any defensive stoppers on the wing and really hasn't been locked in defensively.

That doesn't mean the matchup will be easy, though, and it stands as yet another proving ground for a player who has thrived trying to betray the common rhetoric about his game. He'll need to be as on as he was over the last three Milwaukee games to do that here.

The Cavaliers will start out with J.R. Smith defending DeRozan, and despite Smith's own reputational shortcomings, Pipe has actually become a pretty stout wing defender over time. Historically, Smith's been Cleveland's best bet on DeRozan, but he's yet to fully rediscover his defensive form following a long layoff due to a thumb injury (he also dealt with a hamstring issue in the first round). Iman Shumpert will provide support in bench units, but DeRozan's scored more easily against Shumpert—and required more help—in the past (note that the 2015-16 regular-season sample below occurred over just 25 minutes, and that there is some overlap with Smith-Shumpert pairings).

DeRozan, though, will require additional help, and the Cavs were surely studying film of how he responded to Milwaukee's hyper-aggressive trapping. Cleveland won't get quite that bold guarding the pick-and-roll—it doesn't have the length or speed to scramble all over the court like the Bucks—but the Cavs will have Tristan Thompson blitz Lowry and DeRozan plenty.

"I expect them to do it at some point with a lot of ferocity, physicality, toughness," head coach Dwane Casey said Sunday. "They're very capable of doing that. Have they done it a lot in the past? No. But anytime you have James or even Tristan, Tristan's a very good trap guy. We're expecting it. Ball movement is going to be huge."

Thompson is elite in that regard, and while there's a trade-off of taking their lone rim-protecting big out of the paint, LeBron James looms as a helping "free safety," ready to storm off of non-shooters in the corner to provide last-ditch support at the basket.

"You have to look out for it no matter what you are doing, even if you are not going to the rim, passing lanes anywhere," DeRozan said. "His awareness on the floor is amazing with his speed and his quickness, get on the ball to recover. You just have to be conscious of him all the time. Something may look good for a split second but you have to understand he's watching as well."

The Cavaliers will try to avoid putting James onto DeRozan one-on-one, at least until key possessions or if other efforts fail. James has immense value in that roaming helper role, and allowing him to conserve some energy on occasional possessions only makes sense. That's there as an option, though, and when the Raptors downsize (particularly against Cleveland bench units), the Cavaliers could stick James on Serge Ibaka or Patrick Patterson so that he, too, can pressure the pick-and-roll ball-handlers.

Outside of Thompson and James, Kevin Love is solid in that scheme, too, though the Cavs will probably play more conservatively with him in that role. The Raptors would probably try to attack him on consecutive possessions to wear him down, similar to how they treated Greg Monroe last round, and it's difficult to maintain that level of defense play after play.

The other thing the Raptors will try to do with DeRozan in the pick-and-roll is get him switched on to Kyrie Irving by using Lowry as a screener, something the Raptors have done successfully in previous meetings and against other opponents (most notably the Boston Celtics). The Cavaliers will do what they can to avoid switching those actions, and if DeRozan gets Irving into the post, help will be coming. DeRozan has shown all year that he's much better reading that pressure, and his improvements throwing skip passes to a zoned-up weak-side has helped Toronto's shooters (Raptors shot 41.7 percent on threes following a DeRozan pass last series, and he led the first round in secondary assists).

Cleveland presents tough challenges, the type DeRozan has been embracing year after year. Even with his successes and annual growth, there remains the perception that DeRozan's game isn't particularly effective in the postseason, something the numbers bear out on the whole. Game 3 against Milwaukee certainly didn't help. But DeRozan bounced back, and a rematch against Cleveland is a brand new opportunity for him to continue abating his detractors.