The Toronto Raptors will have to battle for seeding in the Eastern Conference playoffs without All-Star point guard Kyle Lowry. The Raptors announced Monday morning that Lowry will undergo surgery to remove loose bodies from his right (shooting) wrist; the injury has sidelined him for the two games since the All-Star break.
The news release from the Raptors indicated that Lowry underwent surgery now so as to be ready for the postseason. While subsequent reports have offered a more optimistic timeline, will the Raptors maintain home-court advantage in the first round if Lowry doesn't play again in the regular season? And what would that mean to their playoff hopes? Let's take a look.
Projecting Toronto without Lowry
Throughout the last two seasons, the Raptors have struggled without their floor general on the court. They've been outscored by 3.5 points per 100 possessions when Lowry rests this season, per NBA.com/Stats, and were dead even with Lowry on the bench during 2015-16.
Lowry's sizable impact on the team's bottom line explains why ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) rates his impact (plus-6.4 points per 100 possessions) fourth in the NBA this season. (He finished seventh in RPM in 2015-16.) So it's no surprise that Toronto's projected record using the multiyear, predictive version of RPM takes a tumble without Lowry. RPM suggests the Raptors can expect to be about league average at both ends of the court during his absence, producing a team right around .500.
Running that projection through a randomized simulation of Toronto's remaining schedule shows the team finishing with between 46 and 47 wins on average if Lowry misses the balance of the regular season.
Why the Raptors might beat their projection
Toronto can be encouraged by back-to-back wins without Lowry coming out of the All-Star break, beating the rival Boston Celtics and the Portland Trail Blazers at home. In fact, the Raptors are 3-0 this season when Lowry sits, though the other win came against the lowly Nets in Brooklyn.
Those two recent games saw Toronto scarcely skip a beat on offense, putting up 115.5 points per 100 possessions, better than the team's season-long 111.0 offensive rating. Playing two below-average defensive teams helps, but the Raptors also benefited from the improved spacing provided by small lineups with newcomers P.J. Tucker and Serge Ibaka manning power forward and center at times, respectively, to give Toronto five shooters on the court.
The Raptors will also benefit now from their depth at point guard. Because he typically played with Lowry on dominating bench units, backup Cory Joseph is a far bigger part of Toronto's rotation than the typical backup to an All-Star point guard. In his three starts this season, Joseph has provided a credible Lowry impersonation, averaging 19.3 points and 5.3 assists on .604 true shooting.
Third point guard Delon Wright has played sparingly during his first two NBA seasons because of the Raptors' depth at the position and a shoulder injury that sidelined him the first two months of 2016-17, but he's a former first-round pick who projected as one of the most NBA-ready players in the 2015 draft. So Toronto is well-covered at the position.
Still, the Raptors' ability to outperform their projection will probably depend largely on their other All-Star guard, DeMar DeRozan. Nobody has benefited more from Toronto's improved floor spacing than DeRozan, who has found clearer driving lanes to the basket the last two games. He has scored 76 points on 57 shooting possessions, equivalent to a .667 true shooting percentage, largely by virtue of drawing even more fouls than usual. DeRozan has shot 28 free throws in the two games.
If DeRozan can continue playing above his season-long performance, the Raptors may be OK without Lowry. If such performance is unsustainable, Toronto could struggle.
Impact on the playoffs
Even if Lowry misses the remainder of the regular season and the Raptors play like a .500 team without him -- not quite a worst-case scenario because of the possibility of further injuries, but certainly a pessimistic one -- they should still maintain home-court advantage in the opening round.
At 32-26, 2.5 games back in the standings, the Atlanta Hawks are the only team with a realistic chance of catching Toronto for the fourth seed. And since Atlanta has a negative point differential on the season (minus-1.1 points per game), the Hawks' projection is actually worse than the Raptors without Lowry. They average just 43 wins in the simulations and pass Toronto in less than 20 percent of them.
Instead, the bigger impact for the Raptors is on their race with the Washington Wizards for the third seed. Toronto has already pulled even in the standings, though the Wizards have the edge with one fewer win and one fewer loss.
Since Washington is projected to finish between 47 and 48 wins on average, the Raptors were heavy favorites to pass the Wizards with a healthy Lowry. That becomes much less likely -- though not impossible -- if Lowry misses the remainder of the season. (That the two teams finish their season series with home-and-home games this week doesn't help, as Danny Leroux noted on Twitter.) The simulation still shows Toronto finishing third about 30 percent of the time, and catching Boston for second a handful of the time.
The distinction between third and fourth is particularly meaningful if the Cleveland Cavaliers maintain first in the East (as happens in about 70 percent of the simulations). In that case, finishing third would mean deferring a potential matchup with the defending champs until the conference finals in favor of what's likely to be an easier conference semifinal matchup with the Celtics.
If the Raptors can finish third and get Lowry back at full health in time for the playoffs, his surgery may prove nothing but a footnote to their season. But if Toronto stays in fourth, the team's chances at a deep playoff run after loading up at the deadline will take a serious hit.