KenoP13 wrote:
Lowry played awful in three of those games. Including the one that went to OT.
Here are their core statistics for the series:
Lowry PPG 23.4 (fg 38.1%) Reb 5.4 Assist 5.9
Derozan PPG 22.1 (fg 38.1%) Reb 5.6 Assists 2.1
Quick note. Lowry's FG% was 40.1% in the 2016 Miami series; it was his 3P% that was 38.8% in the series against the Heat. He was taking 7 3PA/g and 19.6 FGA/g in that series, so of course his raw FG% was going to be pretty low. He also averaged 6.29 FTA/g at 79.5%. His eFG% was 47.1% and his TS% was 52.4%. A rough series, to be sure; a classic example of what happens when you rely heavily on volume 3pt shooting and aren't particularly remarkable beneath the arc.
By contrast, however, Demar was taking 21.7 FGA/g at 39.1% and 44.4% TS (7.29 FTA/g at 70.6%). If you're chasing scoring efficiency, there was a large gap between the two because Demar was incompetent from the field (in that specific series) and shooting far worse than usual at the foul line. That's not the series to really go after Lowry. Kyle had a rough series, but in the close-out game, he was also the one who went 11-20 from the field, 5/7 from 3 and 8/11 from the line while Demar went 12/29 and 4/7. And we still blew them out of the water as a result of the 4th quarter, during which Demar's sole contribution was hitting one jumper, and in which Lowry had 7 points, an assist and two rebounds. Food for thought.
Lowry definitely shoulders some blame for shooting poorly through much of the series, but he closed out Miami, was about as effective as usual as our playmaker and was a viable threat from 3 across the breadth of the series. Derozan was basically useless apart from game 5.
Baski wrote:True. I really liked what I saw from the Bulls in game 1 and admittedly the difference between a win and a loss was Demar's performance. But then again they're playing the defending champs who have spent years perfecting their defensive system with a relatively consistent core. My thinking is that Demar, and the entire Bulls team was hit hard with how "real" PO defense is compared to RS (Yes Demar should be used to it by now, but he doesn't seem to have the instinctual ability to switch to PO mode that other players have). It was ugly for both teams so it very well could be first game jitters. Pretty reasonable to expect better shooting from both sides over the course of the series.
Yes, it's not like they were playing a scrub team, for sure. They were actually +6 on the Bucks after the first quarter, they just dug themselves a huge hole in the opening quarter and couldn't climb out of it. After digging a 13-point hole in the first, that this ended as a 3-possession game is kind of impressive. If Lavine OR Derozan had played just a little better, this one was within reach. Or had anyone on the team been able to hit a damned 3. Also, someone should probably bagtag Vucevic for taking 10 3s, because he also shot a ton and sucked ass at it. But yeah. This one wasn't as brutal a destruction as everyone seems to be implying. This was a winnable game. Now, surely, if Chicago can hit their stride, so too can Milwaukee, so we shall see what happens, but there's no sense writing them off yet.
