The Raptors must overcome their toughest opponent: Themselves

TORONTO — C.J. Miles’ locker is a glimpse into the curated life of a shooting specialist.

The Toronto Raptors wing shakes one of two green smoothies while a tray of bananas sits on the floor, ready to sate the appetite of a man who usually eats seven hours prior to game-time. Then, he mimics game-like scenarios: halfcourt spot-ups, transition spot-ups, curls, pump-fakes. Five shots from five different spots on the floor, the same strict ritual that, over a 12-year career, has increased Miles’ three-point accuracy from 25 percent as a rookie to consistently approaching 40 percent.

Shooters are famously ritualistic, attempting to simulate control in a job that is irrevocably subject to variance. Particularly bad slumps can jolt the players’ psyche and reverberate throughout an entire organization.

Miles remembers his worst cold streak well. He made just 11 shots over the first 13 games of the 2012-2013 season that kicked off his tenure in Cleveland.

“Nothing was working,” he recalled. “I remember just hitting like, it affected everything, just hitting the bottom. You don’t wanna show your face nowhere. You don’t wanna talk to nobody, because you know it’s eventually gonna lead to that conversation.”

He wasn’t talking then about the Raptors’ Game 5 predicament — tied at 2-2 with a No. 8 seed, with so much of their reputation coming down to the next two or three games — but the feeling is surely mutual.

When Toronto lost Games 3 and 4 against the Wizards, Miles shot 1-for-8 from three. He wasn’t the only one. Shots stopped falling, and a pall of indecisiveness struck the team. Shooters passed up open shots. Turnovers piled up. The ball stopped. The much-publicized modernized offense disappeared, allowing Washington to claw back into a series that seemed over. DeMar DeRozan misfired on six of his final eight shots in Game 4, each one channeling fresh fear of a psychological collapse.

“When he doesn’t see the shot go in or guys making the right read, then it’s ‘OK, I’ve gotta do it’ He doesn’t have to do that,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. “That’s why we changed what we do. That’s why we changed our offense.”

DeRozan fessed up to his crimes, poured over tape, and plans to enter Game 5 with a renewed approach. Wright, a superior playmaker, will initiate more offense when Kyle Lowry sits, and they’ll tinker with spacing.

If the Raptors’ problems are indeed merely tactical, that’d be a relief.

Separating Toronto’s tactical missteps from their psychological woes is a fool’s errand. Washington didn’t even bother in the first two games, putting more credence in inborn instinct than scheme. Hoping heavy ball pressure would trigger a collapse, they trapped DeRozan and Lowry, which only helped simplify their decision-making. When it wasn’t the roll-man eating, the Raptors played a ton of four-on-three.

In Game 4, Washington switched it up, checking Lowry and DeMar one-on-one with a bevy of long, athletic defenders that switched liberally, encouraging isolation ball. It worked. Come crunch time, the Wizards pulled the rug, ignoring Jakob Poeltl and Pascal Siakam while sagging off Wright. They collapsed inside the paint while Lowry and DeRozan lined up for multiple contested shots.

Game 4 was a bad loss for Toronto. And this season, every bad loss becomes a referendum on their viability as a contender. Are the Raptors in a reasonable predicament, tied against a historically overachieving Wizards team that’s better than its record? Or, are the Raptors just psychologically weak?

Is the new-look system their salvation, or will opponents just find different ways to rattle them again?

Did they stiffen up because shots stopped falling, or did shots stopped falling because they were stiff?

The very point of Toronto’s season-long quest for self-improvement — every practice, game, and extra step beyond the arc, all of the adjustments Casey made to an 11-man rotation that birthed the NBA’s best bench, each drip of sweat and extra pass — hinges on the answers.

When players worked on expanding their range this season, Miles’ presence alone fostered encouragement. Miles is an operatic, self-correcting shooting machine that spits out his own imbalances — “Feet!”, “Bundle!”, he screams after misses — and has done his 10,000 hours. If Miles could build his stroke from dud to deadly, why couldn’t DeRozan? Or Wright? Or Jonas Valanciunas?

To improve as an outside shooter is to face a unique challenge: toiling endlessly before even hoping to enter a positive feedback loop. The benefits of ball-handling drills, for example, manifest day by day. The arc of a jumper can improve over time, but it either goes in or it doesn’t.

A marksman like Miles knows his lost stroke will return, but his teammates, still new to this psychological challenge of reinventing themselves, can’t say the same. They’re stuck confronting the intricacies of their flawed forms while onlookers wait, hoping the culture change that was spoken in such glowing terms this season won’t all be a fluke in the end.

How can Toronto overcome its past in the next two or three games, in the next series and beyond? The best advice Miles can give them is to listen to their anxiety. To work.

“If I was thinking about it that much, if I was really in a place?” Miles said. “Then I’d hit the gym.”

The Raptors, converting nervousness into positive energy? Now, there’s an idea.