Going “small” has never been more popular in the NBA. It’s the natural evolution of the league-wide trend to more three-pointers and fewer post-ups – the opposite of the way basketball was played until the last decade or so.
The Houston Rockets gave up playing a centre at all when they traded Clint Capela. They are 10-2 since and believe they can win an NBA title that way. Almost all teams have a small-ball lineup where they essentially play with guards and wings only, leaving the paint clear for dribble drives that draw the defence and free up shooters on the perimeter for kick-outs.
Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse is not opposed to the idea, he’s certainly not one limited by basketball convention.
But there are some nights and some matchups where being big is better. An evening spent playing the Denver Nuggets is one of them, as they run almost all their offence through the soft hands and bulky frame of Nikola Jokic, the seven-foot Serbian whose weight fluctuates but whose hardwired basketball brilliance never does.
So not a night, in other words, to be without Marc Gasol (hamstring) and Serge Ibaka (knee).
But that was where the Raptors found themselves as they kicked off a challenging five-game western road swing against the Nuggets, battling for the second seed in the Western Conference.
[snippet id=4740307]
For the second consecutive game, Toronto started six-foot-six Rondae Hollis-Jefferson at centre. Not ideal.
Jokic – aptly nicknamed “Joker” – was the Nuggets’ best player, as he is most nights, in Denver’s 133-118 win. With the Raptors trying to hang on down the stretch of what was an intense, entertaining game, he began to assert himself even more. A light-footed post-move here, a one-handed rebound and a full-court football throw there.
He comfortably controlled the game, either by bringing the ball up as the world’s biggest, slowest point guard, posting up and spreading the ball around when the doubles came or scanning over the defence from his favourite spot at the foul line. Defensively he stood tall at the rim, Gasol style. He snuffed out the Raptors’ last gasp with a block on a driving Pascal Siakam at one end, and put the Nuggets up 13 with 2:11 left on a hand-off under the rim for a dunk by Jerami Grant at the other.
The assist gave Jokic a triple-double as he finished with 23 points on 11 shots to go along with 18 rebounds and 10 assists.
“I just think it seems like it catches up with you just a little bit here and there and that’s kind of just the difference in the game,” said Nurse of being so undersized. “Like, there’s a putback here and putback there, and just some pretty easy offence when he (Jokic) just goes down and parks in front of the rim and they throw it into him. There’s not much we can do because of the sheer size and strength of it.”
It all came pretty easily to Denver, which shot 56.6 per cent from the floor and 18-of-36 from deep with an impressive 39 assists on 47 field goals. The Raptors shot 46.1 per cent, but only 26.3 from three.
Raptors guard Kyle Lowry argued that even short-handed, Toronto could have left more on the floor. He wasn’t in the mood for excuses.
[snippet id=3360195]
“We just have to play harder,” said Lowry, who finished with 17 points and four turnovers on 4-of-14 shooting, including 2-of-10 from three.
“Understand the game plans a little bit better and play a lot harder. Play harder. Offensively we had good looks, me and Pascal didn’t make any shots, but we still shot 46 per cent as a team, but our defence was trash tonight. Honestly.”
The loss was the Raptors’ third straight and dropped them to 42-18 with just a half-game lead over Boston for second place in the East. Their next stop is against the Suns in Phoenix on Tuesday night. The Nuggets improved to 41-19 and kept pace with the Los Angeles Clippers in the West.
The Raptors were predictably going to run into a buzz saw as the Nuggets were coming off a 29-point loss to the Clippers, who Denver is trying to beat out for the second seed in the West. Nuggets head coach Mike Malone called his team out – “soft” was the most stinging adjective – and was expecting a bounce-back performance Sunday night.
“We hit first,” said Nuggets star and Canadian national team hopeful Jamal Murray, who was slowed following a hot first quarter after the Raptors went box-and-one on him. “I think we were aggressive on defence too and we were at home so we had an advantage. But they pushed the pace and made it a fun game.”
The Raptors, coming off two straight losses, had their own problems, beginning with figuring out how to manage against Jokic and the Nuggets’ bigs without their own equivalent weapons.
Jokic gave credit to the Raptors for their effort, not that he seemed all that bothered.
“They were pressuring the ball, they were pressuring every screen, it was really tough to get through,” said Jokic. “They were really aggressive, but I think we did a really good job of cutting, finding our open shots. They were collapsing in the paint a lot. They were giving up a lot of threes attempts, I think they are second in defending those, but we made a lot of good shots and that’s why we won the game.”
[snippet id=4725691]
No one took up the challenge more early on than OG Anunoby, who has strung some good games together while the Raptors have been short-staffed. He was Toronto’s best player for long stretches of the game, using his body well on the glass at both ends and his quickness to disrupt the passing lanes the way someone his size really shouldn’t be able to. He had five steals to go along with 16 points and nine rebounds as the lone bright spot in Toronto’s ugly loss to the Charlotte Hornets on Friday. He picked up right where he left off, finishing with a career-high 32 points on 12-of-16 shooting and a career-high seven steals.
“We’ve put him on some really good players here lately,” said Nurse. “He starts tonight on Jokic, a little bit unorthodox to do, but he’s taking the challenge of trying to be the guy that’s going to be that defensive stopper we need him to be. Man, he’s been really good, was really good tonight.”
The lack of size didn’t automatically hurt the Raptors. They held their own on the glass and got such good production from Anunoby, they were able to survive. But the Nuggets size showed up in other ways. No one struggled more than Siakam as he couldn’t get anything going in the paint and was abandoned by his jumper. He finished with 16 points and five assists but was 6-of-21 from the floor.
“I’ve gotta play better,” was Siakam’s self-assessment.
The Nuggets’ first quarter was a thing of beauty, Raptors’ interests aside. At one point they had made nine straight threes and finished the quarter with 14 assists on 14 made field goals. Jokic and Murray – the axis on which the Nuggets turn – were a combined 9-of-9 from the floor and Murray showed why Nurse is so excited to have him play for Canada this summer as he knocked down five threes in five tries for 17 first-quarter points.
Only some inspired play by Anunoby – who ended up shifting over to centre in the early going – helped the Raptors stay in it. The third-year forward started his game off with a pair of offensive rebounds for buckets, turned a steal into a solo fastbreak dunk and hit a three for good measure as he went off for 13 quick points. The Raptors were lucky to only be trailing 40-32 as the Nuggets shot 63.6 per cent for the first 12 minutes.
The Raptors were able to slow the Nuggets down just a bit in the second quarter and heat up themselves. A Lowry triple with 4:20 left in half tied the score 60-60 and capped off a 20-6 run before which the Nuggets had been threatening to blow the Raptors out. Lowry and Norman Powell combined for 17 points in the quarter on nine shots to keep the Raptors in it, though the Nuggets led 73-69 to start the third.
Anunoby had set a new career-high for points — it was 25 — midway through the third quarter and kept rolling, to go along with a career-high seven steals through just 32 minutes. He hit a three and scored a three-point play in the final 90 seconds of the quarter as the Raptors trailed 100-96 to start the fourth.
He was a bright spot, and the effort the Raptors played with was notable as well. But they are short bodies and it showed.
[relatedlinks]
