TORONTO — Few centres in the NBA are as purely talented as Joel Embiid, and fewer still have had as much consistent success in shutting him down as Marc Gasol.
The Toronto Raptors’ first matchup with the Philadelphia 76ers this season — during which Embiid filed perhaps the worst single-game outing of his career, scoring zero points on 0-for-11 shooting from the floor while picking up five fouls — was anomalous.
Holding Embiid scoreless like that is, probably, not replicable. But against Philadelphia, short of a four-bounce buzzer-beater, there aren’t many play-by-play outcomes more significant than limiting their marquee big man.
“(Embiid)’s a huge piece of what they do,” Gasol said during practice on Saturday. “He triggers every action. He’s so talented on both ends of the floor… if he gets in rhythm, you’re in trouble because once he starts hitting his jump shot, things change for him and for his team. It gives them a lot of confidence, it gives him confidence, which fuels the whole thing.”
But the trend of Gasol’s defence dismantling Embiid encompasses a much larger sample than just one game earlier this year.
In the 2018-19 playoffs, when Gasol guarded Embiid, he scored just 49 points across 182.7 possessions on 31.9-per-cent shooting.
During the regular season last year, those numbers weren’t much higher, as throughout just over 30 possessions per game, Gasol held Embiid to 7.5 points on 38.5-per-cent shooting as the primary defender.
But despite the repeated success, Gasol doesn’t subscribe to the notion he has found a way into Embiid’s head.
“There’s no such (thing),” Gasol said, dismissing the idea, “nah.”
A ‘no’ cannot come much more unequivocal than that.
Still, Gasol’s overall impact on Toronto’s defensive strategy is indisputable. With him on the floor, the Raptors allow 8.7 fewer points per 100 possessions than when he sits, a number that ranks in the 91st percentile among NBA big men.
“He’s great and he can do a lot of things,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said during the media availability of Saturday’s practice. “Not only can he do it in the back line, but he can do it in the front line when he’s the guy out there blitzing, he’s a great blitzer.
“He can read them, he can keep people in front, he can get his hands on the ball, he can bluff it and get back out of it when he doesn’t think it’s necessary on his own. I mean he’s super smart, man. Super smart. I can’t imagine a much better defensive centre in the league. I can’t.”
Distilling basketball down to individual matchups, Embiid versus Gasol or Pascal Siakam versus Ben Simmons, is reductive. There’s more minutiae to strategy than banking on winning the one-on-ones that occur within the five-on-five.
For the Raptors, though, knowing they have an ace up their sleeves in at least one of those one-on-ones surely doesn’t hurt. And if Toronto is going to continue its recent trend of shutting down opposing teams’ starriest names, it’ll need not just Gasol at his best, but the flexibility they’ve shown in adopting new strategies — especially against an opponent as well-versed in their playbook as the 76ers are.
“It’s always interesting to think back to your game plan from last time,” Nurse said. “And you think, boy a lot of stuff worked really well and can it continue to work so well? You think maybe they know some of the stuff’s coming a little bit more since they’ve seen it. That’s kind of the battle you’re in, that’s the battle I’m always in thinking, ‘Jeez they know we’re gonna do this’ because we’ve been doing it.”
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With Nurse, there is of course no guarantee he will lean on established rotations and schemes to get the job done. Take Toronto’s most recent loss against the Houston Rockets, for example, when the Raptors opted for rotations and coverages that were more aggressive than normal, and managed to disrupt James Harden because of it — albeit, at the expense of enabling show-stopping performances from his supporting cast.
That outcome wasn’t the desired one, but the thought process behind it and the defensive scheme’s implementation are something Nurse remains proud of after having some time to review what transpired.
“Gosh, it was really good,” Nurse said. “Now that I look back on it, I wasn’t quite sure I was glad I did it or not, but I’m 100 per cent glad I did it now. It gives us another interesting thing to do.”
It’s not outlandish to think some of that Houston aggressiveness travels with Toronto to Philly, especially if the early looks Nurse throws at Embiid don’t yield the same zero-point possessions they did earlier in the season.
Regardless of if their approach rhymes with how they tackled Game 1 against Philadelphia this year, or spindles off into entirely new territory, Gasol is sure of at least one thing: The Raptors know who they are.
“I think our identity is pretty clear. What kind of team we are and what we stand for defensively and what our pillars are on both ends of the floor. Now it’s a matter of putting everything together and we will.”
Injury updates
Patrick McCaw, who has been sidelined since the start of November after undergoing surgery to remove a benign mass from the back of his knee, is inching closer to returning to action.
“He’s meeting us in Philly,” Nurse said of McCaw. “He’s been cleared for contact in practice. I don’t know what that means. I think it, at least, puts him on the sheet as a ‘questionable’ and we’ll see how fast we can get him to the court. He’s cleared for practice but I don’t know when the next practice would be. Like, Wednesday, supposedly. So he’s still got some days if he needs a practice before he can play.”
Stanley Johnson, who has been dealing with a stress reaction in his groin, is “still a little bit away, but getting closer,” according to Nurse.
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