Serge “Ibaka Gaijin” Ibaka was literally the only Raptor aside from Kawhi Leonard to show up on offense this game. Kawhi had 41 points, including the game-winner as time elapsed, but he had to take 39 shots because his teammates were being useless bumnuggets. Ibaka had a good game, scoring 17 on ten attempts, but he’s not a high-volume player unless he’s spamming open midrange jumpshots, so he only marginally lightened Kawhi’s load.
Now the Raptors will have to face the Bucks in the ECF Conference Finals. I won’t pretend to be knowledgeable enough to dive into the X’s and O’s of the specific matchups we’re likely to see, but I will pretend to be knowledgeable enough to assert that the Raptors collectively had better start trying to remember how to score. Shooting sub-40% like they did in this game is not going to work against the Bucks. I’m not just staying that because I’m a Bucks fan. I’m saying that because the Bucks won sixty games. Kyle Lowry playing like a rutabaga and Pascal Siakam playing like a fart are not winning strategies against sixty-win teams.
Another interesting tidbit from this game is that Ibaka was one of only two players to come off the bench for the Raptors. Fred “I Suck Now” VanVleet was the other. I don’t feel like looking up Nick Nurse’s playoff rotations, but having only seven players play seems unnecessarily tight when you might be able to get some use out of Norman Powell and Patrick McCaw. I’m not going to debate this point too much because you can’t argue with success, but doesn’t Jeremy Lin seem awfully appealing when FVV is bumming it up for the tenth straight game? And I totally bet that Eric Moreland could be Serge Ibaka 0.5 if Nurse actually let him shoot jumpshots.