For a while there during Thursday night’s Bulls-Raptors tilt, Jonas Valanciunas looked poised for the monster game we’ve been waiting for all season.
In the opening minute of the Raptors’ biggest game thus far, the starting centre corralled an offensive rebound from a Kyle Lowry miss and flushed the ball home over Chicago’s Pau Gasol. Aggressive yet under control, Valanciunas earned a team-high 11:25 minutes in the first quarter, and walked into the locker room at half-time with eight points and eight rebounds—half of which came on the offensive glass—as the Raptors held a seven-point lead over a very potent Bulls team.
That’s the JV we all want to see, the one that’s dominated for long stretches throughout his three-year career, a low-post force on both ends of the floor.
So why does it feel like we’re not seeing that Valanciunas enough?
During the first two weeks of the Raptors’ season, Valanciunas’s numbers are down across the board compared to 2013-14—especially his minutes, which are headed in entirely the wrong direction.
For many players, the third season is the one in which their game starts coming together, and after Valanciunas spent the summer adding muscle and dominating against international competition while starring for Lithuania at the FIBA World Championships in Spain, expectations for the Raptors’ budding star couldn’t have been higher. In Spain, he led Lithuania at 14.4 points per game on an absurd 69.6 percent shooting from the field to go with 8.4 rebounds per.
In the NBA, however, he’s (understandably) lower on the food chain. And while that’s not an excuse for Valanciunas’s early struggles, it does help explain his difficulty finding his rhythm so far.
“It’s an adjustment,” says Pau Gasol, who has also experienced shifting roles between his international team and the NBA—though, admittedly, to a lesser degree than JV. “When I was in Memphis, I didn’t realize it as much because I was the No. 1 option there, which is the role I had been used to playing for Spain in the summers. But when I was with the Lakers, I found my job changing from what it had been with Spain because I was suddenly playing with someone like Kobe.”
Likewise, in Toronto Valanciunas is forced to take a sizeable backseat offensively to Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, who initiate the Raptors offence and have combined for 114 shots thus far (Valanciunas has put up 26).
“There’s no question he can’t get into a rhythym like he did in the summer with his international team,” Gasol notes. “There, with Lithuania, the ball goes through his hands on nearly every possession. And for players like us that’s how you get into rhythm and can be more effective in games. But here [with the Raptors]? Not so much.”
While it’s true that on Dwane Casey’s club Valanciunas is hardly the offensive centrepiece he plays for the Lithuanian team, he’s also had a hard time finishing gimmes near the hoop, and is shooting below 50 percent for the first time in his career.
That’s likely a big part of why he’s also seeing the floor less than ever, as Casey favours a situational lineup with minutes distributed more evenly across all his bigs—Valanciunas, Amir Johnson, Patrick Patterson and Tyler Hansbrough. That strategy has been effective thus far, and the versatility of the front court as a whole is a big part of the Raptors’ success. But you can’t help but wonder whether this was the plan all along, or whether Valanciunas is already losing the trust of his coaches.
His minutes over the last three games: 23:01, 20:27, 22:59.
Valanciunas was drafted fifth overall with the hopes that he’d develop into a true franchise-calibre centre, a rarity these days. Hell, for a while there last season in the playoffs against the Brooklyn Nets, averaging 14 and 14 over the first three games of the series, he looked like he already was that player.
But as we’ve seen early in this campaign, the 22-year-old is still a work in progress. If this were a Raptors team that didn’t have a whole lot to play for in terms of playoff positioning, then Casey could comfortably leave Valanciunas on the floor and play through any lapses. But this season, on a club with its sights set on a spot in the conference finals, sacrificing for the sake of the big man’s development is a luxury the Raptors just don’t have.
And so, as the Chicago Bulls stepped on the throats of the Raptors during the second half last night and reminded us all of the current pecking order in the East, Valanciunas watched from the bench. After logging more than 18 minutes in the first half, he saw just four in the second.
Meanwhile, Gasol went to work on the Raptors, showing he’s still every bit the offensive force he’s been throughout his NBA career and with Spain.
Still, like most of us, Gasol sees the potential in Valanciunas.
“When you watch him play, he shows that he has room to grow,” the Spaniard says. “And he’s got all the tools to be a really good interior player in this league: He has the body, the skill, the footwork, coordination.”
So, Pau, if Valanciunas were here right now, what would your advice be for him?
“Continue to work, and develop your NBA game during practices. Make sure your teammates and coaches see what you’re capable of doing and, eventually, it will translate to the games. Your teammates will be more comfortable with you, they will find comfort in knowing what you will do with the ball once you get it; that you will be successful with it and make something positive happen for your team.
“That’s my advice.”