The Toronto Raptors are searching for something.
Chances are they – bluntly – they won’t find it.
Anyway you dissect what ails a team that is stumbling a little bit – they are 2-4 in their past six games and wobbling offensively – it comes back to them missing Pascal Siakam, Norman Powell and Marc Gasol.
For all the shining examples of the club’s ability to overcome all kinds of lineup shortfalls so far this season effort, smarts and pluck can only overcome superior talent so often in the NBA. The margins are too thin. Takeaway three of any team’s top six players and they are going to struggle.
But they don’t have the luxury of simply waiting until everyone returns to health – the timing of which remains uncertain. This isn’t the Eastern Conference of the 2010s. Stand still in the tightly-packed East for too long and you will get passed by.
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So Saturday night at Barclays Center where the Raptors play the Brooklyn Nets Toronto will try to figure out how to do more with less again.
One patchwork solution that has shown some signs of holding up in recent days has been to give Rondae Hollis-Jefferson more responsibility offensively, a development that few probably anticipated when the former Net was signed to a one-year, $2.5-million deal mostly as a depth piece in the off-season or when he was firmly on the outside of Raptors head coach Nick Nurse’s rotation in the early part of the season.
But necessity is the mother of invention and there was Nurse speaking warmly on New Year’s Eve of Hollis-Jefferson and Kyle Lowry combining on the oh-so-rare 5-1 pick-and-roll, where Lowry was the screen setter for Hollis-Jefferson as the under-sized big rumbled down the lane for lay-up in the win against Cleveland.
“You know what? It’s an interesting thing for me,” said Nurse at the time. “I think he’s a decent offensive player. I know it looks a little … what’s the word, un-smooth? Un-smooth sometimes but it’s effective.
“He’s a pretty good post player, he’s a good cutter around the basket. We ran a lot of those flip behind plays [in the pre-season] where he drives the lane hard in the pre-season for him and we just busted a little bit of that out again.”
There weren’t many encouraging signs in the Raptors low-scoring loss to the Miami Heat on Thursday night – there are only so many ways to extract the good from a 31.5 per cent shooting performance.
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But with the Heat spending most of the game playing zone defence, Hollis-Jefferson continued to show signs as a ball-moving option once defences force Raptors other than Lowry or VanVleet to make plays — which may be the element of the Heat’s unique defensive approach that other teams try to copy.
“I love doing it. Growing up in high school and college, even some in Brooklyn, just made plays with the ball whether that was bringing it up or whether that was catching it at the high post,” Hollis-Jefferson said after he finished with 13 points and seven rebounds against Miami.
He only had one assist, but that might be a misleading number given the Raptors shot 6-of-42 from three – the worst high-volume perimeter performance in club history.
“I feel like once coach gives you that confidence and that comfort [level] then it’s up to you to make the right reads. I’ve always felt I’ve been a pretty good passer and playmaker,” he said. “That’s what it comes down to at the end of the day. Making the right reads, showing a coach you can do it, him believing in you and then putting you in the situation.”
It’s not like Hollis-Jefferson is taking over from Gasol as the pass-happy fulcrum of a read-and-react offence or from Siakam as a high-octane point forward. It’s just that someone needs to be able to make a play other than the Raptors point guards and Hollis-Jefferson is likely the next best candidate. He’s had games with four and six assists since the Raptors injured three went out.
His usage rate has crept up incrementally as the season has gone along. Of the nine games Hollis-Jefferson has had a usage rate above 20 per cent this season, (in games in which he’s played at least 10 minutes) four of them have come in the Raptors last 10 games. That’s a fair number of touches for a player whose initial role called for him to defend whoever he was matched up with and storm the glass on offence.
And there is some evidence that he’s not just playing hot potato with the ball either. His most common passing targets are – not surprisingly – the Raptors trio of ball-handling guards in VanVleet, Lowry and rookie Terrence Davis.
Davis is shooting 64.3 per cent from three on passes from Hollis-Jefferson; VanVleet 57.1. The exception is Lowry, who is converting just 28.6 per cent from three on kickouts from Hollis-Jefferson, but that number is probably weighed down by Lowy not making a three with Hollis-Jefferson on the floor against the Heat.
“It’s big,” said VanVleet of the additional playmaking punch Hollis-Jefferson has provided in spurts. “We know how much Pascal brings it for us with his playmaking, bringing the ball up, changing the dynamic of our offence as a point forward or whatever you guys like to call it.
“Rondae has a little bit of that skill as well. Coach is getting a little bit more comfortable with him. He has the freedom [and] he’s a good passer and he makes good reads. That can add another dynamic to our offence which can struggle at times, as you saw [against Miami].”
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That Hollis-Jefferson has made it this far is a tribute to his willingness to play through a somewhat erratic role and Nurse’s insistence that Hollis-Jefferson plays up to a certain standard to earn the minutes and trust he’s gotten to this point.
There have been some rocky moments – Hollis-Jefferson played just four minutes in the first eight games of the season and got buried again a few weeks ago when he was deemed to have strayed too far from the defence and rebounding priorities Nurse had laid out for him.
But overall, his season has been a story of progress beyond the 8.5 points and 5.3 rebounds the 6-foot-7 25-year-old has put up in 20 minutes a game.
“They didn’t bring me in to be a star,” he says. “They didn’t bring me in to shoot 20 shots or anything like that. Pretty much [it] just came down to coming out and competing and earning everything that has been given to me. I understand it. I respect it.
“[Nurse] has been very transparent with me. It’s something as a man you have to give credit.”
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Hollis-Jefferson concedes he’s at times chafed at the limits of the role that have been placed on him – “I ain’t perfect” – but that he’s grown into them.
“They told me when I came here it was going to be a grind,” he said. “It was going to be something you had to work for and nothing would be given to you so I knew that.”
But ever so slowly things have begun to open up for Hollis-Jefferson and that might mean they will for the injury-riddled Raptors too.
