TORONTO – You might think that this far into the season the Toronto Raptors‘ story could be told in a few essential statistical truths, other than that their wins far exceed their losses.
But no. Not that simple.
“I don’t live in the stats all that much, especially this year,” head coach Nick Nurse said before his club took the floor at Scotiabank Arena on Friday for the first time in 11 days after the NBA all-star break. “It’s like we’ve played six different rosters [due to injuries]. You look at all of them in totality and you don’t know what any of that means, depending on who is playing and all of that.”
The break was supposed to provide the opportunity for at least one of their injured players to return to the fold, with Marc Gasol widely expected to return from a hamstring problem that has cost him 20 games and counting over two stints on the sidelines.
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But the Raptors have opted to be extra cautious with the 35-year-old, who followed the team’s championship run with a full summer leading Spain to the world championships, with Nurse suggesting he could be out another month, returning only to get a 10 or 12-game tune up prior to the playoffs.
As has been the case with almost all their injured players – the Raptors were fifth in games lost to injury coming out of the break – Toronto managed just fine without them, as Norm Powell (finger) and Pat McCaw (flu) were also unavailable.
Against a talented but young Phoenix Suns team, the Raptors were able to manage while shorthanded once again as they survived seeing a 24-point halftime lead dwindle to seven with 5:29 left before halting the Suns’ rally to win, 118-101.
It helped that Pascal Siakam came back from his first all-star game appearance playing like a future MVP.
“I just liked the fact I was more engaged and kind of showed some passion,” he said. “I think it’s important and that’s something that I kind of try to make sure of – that I get engaged and not find a way to not just be out there. I think it’s easy to just relax and I think when you play with more energy and you’re more engaged, everything else kind of falls into place.”
Siakam led all scorers with 37 points and 12 rebounds. He chipped in eight points in the fourth quarter, including a pair of dunks and a crucial assist to OG Anunoby for another dunk that helped push the Raptors’ lead back to double figures. A Kyle Lowry three with 1:28 left capped a 16-6 run to put Phoenix away.
But the Suns visit and Gasol’s extended absence did raise a relevant question: how will a centre rotation that starts at Serge Ibaka and ends at six-foot-nine, 200-pound Chris Boucher manage?
The Raptors are 26th in defensive rebounding percentage, as an example.
On paper, you would expect that the Suns’ big-man duo of Deandre Ayton and Aron Baynes would be too much for the Raptors to handle. Boucher in particular, as he gives up a minimum of 50 pounds and several inches against either member of one of the more imposing big-man pairings in the NBA.
“He’s fighting in a different weight class, you know, or whatever,” Nurse said. “We’ll give him his chance and see how he goes.”
The game didn’t pivot on Boucher – although he was minus-five in his 14 minutes on the floor — but when Ibaka got into foul trouble and sat for nearly 14 minutes after picking up his fifth midway through the third quarter, the Raptors were challenged to contain Ayton in the paint as he scored 13 of his 17 in the second half, mainly when Ibaka was out.
Toronto did give up 10 offensive rebounds to the Suns, but they got seven of their own to mitigate the damage. Their main advantage came from holding the Suns to 6-of-34 from three while making 14 of their own on 37 attempts.
They used a team approach to make up for their lack of size. Toronto out-rebounded the Suns, 48-34, and it helped that Lowry and Fred VanVleet – the two shortest players on the floor – grabbed 12 rebounds between them.
“We have to help rebound a little bit more, the guards,” said Lowry, who added 13 points and 10 assists in the wake of his sixth all-star appearance. “When we’re small, everyone has to come back and rebound and OG [Anunoby] has to play a little bigger and P [Siakam] has to play a little bit bigger and everyone has to get in there and make things happen.”
The Raptors hinted at a blowout early on by building up a 67-43 lead at half, mainly by taking advantage of the inexperienced Ayton on defence. Both Ibaka (who was plus-13 in his 26 minutes while and finished with 16 points and six rebounds) and Boucher helped draw the second-year centre away from the paint and the Raptors were able to attack him off the dribble in space, force him to commit to the ball and burn the Suns on a seemingly endless stream of backdoor cuts that were finished at the rim virtually uncontested. On the occasions the Suns did collapse to the rim, the Raptors picked them apart from the perimeter with five different Raptors making threes. That Siakam made five himself on eight attempts on his way to 25 first-half points was also beneficial.
Defensively, the Raptors defended as they always do – five men moving as one, with bodies darting in the paint to thwart attempts to hit Ayton rolling to the rim and scrambling out to the edges to limit the Suns to 2-of-19 shooting from deep in the first two quarters, and 35.3 per cent shooting overall for the half.
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On paper, the combination of Ayton and Devin Booker – one of the most gifted scoring guards in basketball – would seem a nearly unsolvable problem, but the Raptors excel at those.
“We always say a mid-screen-and-roll is a five-man defence,” Nurse said. “There have got to be five guys doing their job, tagging on the weak side and being able to fire back out and try to be as deceptive back to them as they’re trying to be to you on those plays.”
Things got a little testy midway through the third quarter when Ibaka picked up a questionable fifth foul in what looked like a 50-50 wrestling match with Ayton. Nurse picked up a technical, he was so incensed. He got even madder when the Suns set up to shoot the technical before Nurse could call a timeout to initiate the replay review process.
“They saw me jump up off the bench on the call [and get the technical foul] but then they couldn’t see me call the timeout for a while,” Nurse said. “Selective vision.”
At the time the Suns had cut what had peaked at a 26-point first-half lead to 13 and their best big men was headed to the bench.
But Toronto figured things out. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson – all six-foot-seven of him — and Boucher played centre by committee and the Raptors went on an 18-6 run sparked by threes from Lowry, VanVleet and Terence Davis while limiting the Suns to a pair of field goals over a stretch of more than five minutes as Toronto took a 93-78 lead into the fourth quarter.
They were able to manage that lead the rest of the way and build on the most important statistic of all as they head into the home stretch – 41 wins against only 15 losses.
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