TORONTO — He looked ridiculous, Serge Ibaka did, emerging from a restricted area adjacent the Toronto Raptors dressing room wearing all-black everything save for the gigantic, light-bronze, crochet scarf he’d burrito’ed around his neck, announcing to some assembled media, “OK, let’s go — I’m ready.”
Ibaka wouldn’t say who made it. Actually, he did. He said he made it. Also that it wasn’t big enough. He’s still looking to add “the double one” to his collection. It’s high fashion, you see. He’s been in the scarf game 10 years now. He doesn’t dress, man. He does art.
And, look, art is an expression — the artist, an expresser. And if Ibaka wants to express himself with a modest area rug draped from his shoulders or, say, a 15-point, three-rebound, two-assist fourth quarter capped by a game-winning, hand-in-his-face, complete-the-comeback three that shook the arena to its studs, well, the Raptors will take it.
And if Ibaka wants to keep riding this wave he’s on, in which he’s not only averaging 23.4 points and five rebounds over the five games since Marc Gasol went down with a hamstring injury, but facilitating some honest-to-goodness offensive actions, throwing dimes from the elbows and making fluid, accurate decisions in heavy traffic, well, they’ll take that, too.
“He’s been really good — really good,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said after the team looted the vault against the Indiana Pacers Wednesday, winning by a point on Ibaka’s last-minute three. “Way more than just pick, pop, shoot. Now he’s rolling, he’s dunking, he’s driving, he’s kicking out a little bit. Which is — well, it’s good. It’s good.”
It’s pretty amazing what Ibaka is doing in his 11th NBA season. He’s averaging career highs in points, assists, steals, and defensive rebounds. He’s getting to the free-throw line as frequently as ever and shooting three’s better than ever. His true-shooting and effective-field-goal rates are only a couple of points off the career-highs he set nearly a decade ago as a 23-year-old with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
That’s all while playing the second-fewest minutes per game of any season over a career that began the year Barack Obama was sworn in for his first term. It’s no small feat. At a time when a player of his age and experience ought to be a finished product, possibly even beginning to decline, Ibaka’s still finding ways to improve.
“I give him all the credit in the world,” Nurse said. “He’s really serious about continuing to improve. He knows his role, he understands our offence and how he can fit in it. He knew what he had to do to get a little bit better within our offence and as a teammate. And he’s done those things — he’s done it.”
It’s partially a credit to Nurse and the Raptors coaching staff, and how they’ve utilized Ibaka not only this season but since he was transitioned from a nominal power forward to primarily a centre around 16 months ago.
It was initially a pre-season experiment meant to open up front-court playing time for the dramatically improving Pascal Siakam and the still-developing OG Anunoby, not to mention the occasional run for Kawhi Leonard in smaller lineups. But then it became something more.
“We found out that it was giving him pretty good matchups,” Nurse said. “He was quicker — he is quicker. And his pick-and-pop ability against some of the fives was paying dividends for him.”
It’s also a credit to Toronto’s well-regarded player development system, one we often think of as helping only young athletes like undrafted success stories Fred VanVleet and Terence Davis, but that can have a sizeable impact on even 30-year-old first-round picks with nearly 800 games in the league like Ibaka.
DeMar DeRozan improved steadily every year he spent with the Raptors. Kyle Lowry went from a gritty-yet-limited malcontent to a six-time all-star. Bismack Biyombo arrived in Toronto after the Charlotte Hornets refused to qualify him, had the season of his life, and parlayed it into a $72-million free-agent contract. It’s not only the rookies who have benefitted.
Of course, none of those players enjoy that success without committing themselves unconditionally to the work necessary to improve by such margins. Which is why it’s a credit to Ibaka more than anything else.
When Raptors practices are opened to media, shortly after official business has concluded, it is a 100-per-cent certainty that you’ll find Ibaka on a side court with a member of Toronto’s staff, working intently and deliberately on some facet of his game. Some days it’s three-pointers. Some days it’s post moves. Some days it’s the little jumpers he reliably hits from the edges of the paint. Every day it’s something.
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These aren’t exhausting, sweat-through-your-shirt work-outs like the half-court scrimmages that are waged between end-of-roster players at the far end of the gym. They’re long, focused, technical ones spent breaking down his game into its finest mechanical elements.
“That’s his method,” Nurse said. “I really think that he puts a lot of thought into it. And I think while he’s out there he’s really trying to use the mental side of it, as well, to think about exactly how the footwork is going to look on the next rep and what he’s going to do to work the mechanics out. I just think that’s kind of the rhythm and the method he uses.”
A focus of late has been Ibaka’s three-point shot, which he’s been determinedly tweaking in between games. He came into Thursday night having hit eight of his last 13, but suddenly hit a rut, missing five-of-six against the Pacers, several of them wide open. That’s when Nurse came to Ibaka during a timeout and told his centre to keep shooting it when he had the opportunity. The mechanics looked good. He just needed to finish it.
“That really gave me a lot of confidence,” Ibaka said. “And after [Lowry] passed me that ball, I said to myself, ‘I have to shoot that.’ Because I work on this shot every day. And then it went in.”
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And then there was the passing. Ibaka made a number of accurate, pressured plays in that fourth quarter as the Pacers began trapping and blitzing him off pick-and-rolls, searching for some way to slow him down. He found Siakam on the baseline with a crafty little bounce pass at one point. And looked downright Gasol-ian throwing another dime to Siakam over his left shoulder from the elbow.
Ibaka actually credits an up-close look at Gasol’s sublime playmaking for encouraging him to further develop that aspect of his game. Over his first nine seasons in the league, Ibaka never averaged more than an assist per game. This season and last — the two that Gasol’s spent in Toronto — he’s averaging nearly one-and-a-half.
You know, art isn’t only expression. It’s imitation, too.
“Every time when I see [Gasol] playing, I see the way he’s passing, and I feel like he always helps our team. So, when I’m stepping on the court, I have to make sure I try to keep the same vibe for our team,” Ibaka said, the bottom-third of his face almost entirely shrouded by wavy crochet. “We all can learn something from somewhere — from someone in this life.”
