How the Raptors Can Survive Without Kyle Lowry

The Toronto Raptors won their fourth consecutive game on Monday night, improving to 4-0 without injured All-Star point guard Kyle Lowry. Staying afloat without Lowry is not only unexpected but now absolutely necessary—he was slated to undergo surgery Tuesday, an operation that will keep him out at least four-to-five weeks, with the hope being that he can return a little ahead of the postseason, allowing him to get a few games in under his belt.

Losing one of the team's stars and leaders is a huge blow, and the Raptors will be in tough regardless of what the early returns suggest. In three games since the All-Star break, each without Lowry, the Raptors have spent roughly half the time looking overmatched and incapable of creating offense. Still, they've managed a double-digit comeback in each, and in doing so they've provided a bit of a formula for how surviving without Lowry might be possible.

What stands out most about the Lowry-less victories is the degree to which DeMar DeRozan has had to take it upon himself to carry the offense. Already an exceptionally high-usage player, DeRozan's now being asked for even more, and he's delivering against even greater attention. Without the threat of Lowry to swing the ball to or to kick it out to, DeRozan's job is infinitely harder when working solo. The Raptors are criminally tight on spacing and short on players who can create for themselves, which allows opposing defenses to load up on DeRozan and try to force the ball out of his hands—the Knicks were hard-doubling DeRozan right over halfcourt in the fourth quarter on Monday, for example, and a Bucks team that aggressively traps will surely ratchet up the blitzing on Saturday.

It hasn't mattered so far. DeRozan's scored 43, 33, and 37 points in three games, shooting 53.6 percent and taking 41 free throws. He's been magnificent, and if his red-hot start to the season didn't do it, this latest stretch serves as a reminder of just how far his offensive game has come. The Raptors have posted the No. 6 offensive rating since the break despite hitting just 19 threes on 31.1 percent in those games, and the bulk of that success has come from DeRozan.

As great as he is, though, this is probably not a wholly sustainable pillar of success. DeRozan needs help, and it will start with shooters around him knocking down shots. The importance of DeMarre Carroll, Patrick Patterson, and Serge Ibaka as shooters is now magnified, and Cory Joseph needs to let open looks fly more freely to help punish teams for the extra attention paid to DeRozan. Beyond catch-and-shoot success, DeRozan will need help with shot creation, too, and Sunday's victory over Portland was instructive as to the role Ibaka might be able to play as a second option.

The Raptors have another familiar, high-efficiency, lower-usage option, too: Jonas Valanciunas. The presence of Ibaka threatens to fundamentally change Valanciunas' role, and he hasn't topped 22 minutes over the last three games. The days of Valanciunas closing games—or fans arguing about whether or not he should—appear to be over, with the Raptors at their best defensively with Ibaka at center. But Valanciunas can be an important piece, and Dwane Casey experimented with something Monday that has long made sense for this team, putting Valanciunas back into the game shortly after his first breather to help prop up the second unit.

Getting Valanciunas more minutes early in the game against opposing benches could keep his workload up even without playing him late, and it lets him go to work against inferior opposing centers while helping bench groups short on offense. It didn't work perfectly Monday, with the lack of spacing allowing the Knicks to collapse on the paint and Valanciunas playing shaky defense that landed him in foul trouble quickly, but it's an experiment worth playing around with more moving forward. In three Lowry-less games, Valanciunas has scored 32 points on 16 shots in just 59 minutes, and when things get sticky, he can help on that end.

It's the other end of the floor where things may change most dramatically for Toronto. This is not to say Lowry is a bad defender, because he's not. When engaged, he's one of the most frustrating defensive point guards for opponents in the league, and the Raptors have consistently been better with Lowry on the floor than without him on defense. It's part of why advanced metrics like Win Shares or Real Plus-Minus rank Lowry among the top-10 players in the NBA over the last season-and-a-half.

The difference, though, is that the Raptors picked up a pair of quality defenders in Ibaka and P.J. Tucker at the trade deadline. They haven't seen what they'll look like with Lowry alongside those two, but the additions have breathed new life, communication, and flexibility into the Raptors. Since the break, the Raptors rank 12th in defensive efficiency, and they've held opponents to 36-percent shooting in fourth quarters. Their upside on that end of the floor is much higher now, and as they discover some chemistry in the coming games, it could be the Raptors' defense that rises up to meet what's likely to be a declining (at least a little) offense. The Raptors can win at two ends now, and Casey's new closing lineup has done a great job locking things up after weird, five-names-out-of-a-dad-hat lineups have helped spark comebacks.

This is all a somewhat tenuous formula for winning, though. The Raptors will need DeRozan to be otherworldly, they'll need major contributions from a few different role players night-to-night, and they'll need to find a new level at the defensive end. This is perhaps burying the lede, but even with the last few games accounted for, the Raptors have been 12.7 points per-100 possessions better with Lowry on the floor than off this year. That number was 7.3 a year ago, 0.9 the year before that, 4.2 in 2013-14, and 4.5 in 2012-13. Basically, since the minute he arrived, the Raptors have been substantially better off with Lowry out there, and over those five seasons, they've been outscored by 199 points when he sits despite a 223-165 record overall. Life without Lowry is going to be difficult no matter how incredible a show DeRozan puts on.

That there is hope to stay afloat without him is important, though. In railing off three wins in a row, including one against the Celtics, the Raptors have trimmed their Atlantic Division deficit to two games. The No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, the team's preferred landing spot, is still mathematically on the table, if a bit unlikely. They've also moved ahead of the Washington Wizards for the No. 3 seed and can lock up the season tiebreaker by winning one of their two meetings against them this week. After that Washington series, the Raptors only play one top-10 offense the rest of the way, and after their upcoming road trip, they'll play nine of their final 16 at home. They don't visit the West Coast again this year. In other words, they don't have the easiest schedule remaining, but it's not particularly arduous.

That's fortunate, because Toronto's disaster scenario is still as much in play as their best-case of catching the two-seed—they're also only 2.5 games up on No. 5 Atlanta. Falling to No. 5 is probably a worst-case scenario for the Raptors, losing home-court advantage in the first round—Masai Ujiri mentioned holding on to home court as a goal on a conference call Monday—and drawing into Cleveland's side of a playoff bracket (assuming Boston can't close the four-game gap for the top seed, which it probably can't). That would also mean drawing Washington or Atlanta in the first round rather than Indiana, Chicago, or a lower-end East team, and as much as Raptor fans are rightfully terrified of the witchcraft the Bulls hold over them, the Wizards and Hawks are simply better teams.

As it stands, the Raptors project to finish with 46 or 47 wins, based on estimates from Kevin Pelton of ESPN. Given those projections came out before Monday's win, say 47. That's only .500 ball from here. That's not great, but there's also a chance they beat that projection, for all the reasons explained, and even staying .500 without Lowry would be considered a win. It would probably be enough to stave off Atlanta and ensure home court in the first round, but they'll need to push to a new level—or maintain this impossible trend of double-digit comebacks every night—to fight in earnest for the more preferable second and third seeds.

The Raptors aren't doomed without Lowry. Everything becomes much, much harder, though, and that includes the path back to the Eastern Conference finals if DeRozan and company can't keep things afloat. Luckily, there's some early evidence that they might be able to.