Welcome to Game 1 of 2021, let's hope it goes well.
Coming in, we are 3-2 after already playing some tough teams: Miami and Toronto were both elite teams last year, and Phoenix has come out of the gate 4-1, looking to carry on their success from the bubble. To be above .500 despite that, as well as the fact that 4 of our 5 games have been on the road, I think is pretty good. This is especially the case when you consider the struggles we've had offensively thus far: of course, it's still incredibly early, but we're a bottom 10 offense right now and one of the worst shooting teams in the NBA.
Tonight, we take on the Raptors again, but this time we're at home and they're on the road. Raptors are currently 0-2 on the road, and only 1-3 on the season so far. With any luck, we'll be able to take advantage of their early season struggles (which are also, coincidentally, largely offensive) and add another win to our tally. So far this year the Raptors have had one defining problem: what to do when Lowry sits? When he's on the floor, they're a good offensive team; when he's sitting, they are excruciatingly poor. As in, his on/off so far is +33.1; Toronto has a 73.9 ORtg when Lowry is on the bench. Now of course, we're still talking very small sample sizes at this point so it's probably not actually quite that bad, but they have struggled.
We had a small resurgence last game with our own offense, shooting relatively well from outside (about 36%, which is a bright light compared to the prior three games) and some life being shown by both Bledsoe and Ball when it comes to halfcourt offense, so fingers crossed that this continues and we see our offense start to match up to our defense.
Happy New Year; let's get a win for it.