There are some games that just don’t seem worth playing. Every game the Knicks have played this season would fall in that category.
Somehow NBA commissioner Adam Silver needs to figure out a mechanism where games like this one – between a team that only wants to lose games in order to get themselves a better lottery position and at team like the Raptors who only want to get to the playoffs without getting hurt – an elective. Maybe franchise could get something like a challenge flag where three times a year they can just agree not to play and everyone gets their money and – more importantly – their time back.
“I know everyone’s like ‘we’ve got to play all these games’ … well, these games are on the schedule and they’re very important for a lot of teams right now, we just don’t happen to be one of them,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse told reporters in New York before the game. “We’re not moving any direction probably, within where we are, but it is a chance for us to do some polishing and stay positive.”
The positives? The Raptors (53-23) won 117-92 without Kawhi Leonard (load management) or OG Anunoby (concussion-like symptoms) and no one got hurt as the Knicks fell to 1-13 for the past month, and 14-61 overall.
Here are some takeaways from the game.
Nets no longer worst team in New York
Of course for the Knicks this is all part of a grand design. The Knicks’ plan this season was to create enough cap space to sign two ‘max’ free agents in the summer, ideally pairing them with the No. 1 overall pick.
Due to their studied lack of effort on the floor and a determined effort to trade away good players, the Knicks are within reach of their goal. They are the NBA’s only 61-loss team at the moment, will almost certainly be one of the three worst teams in the NBA and earn a 14-per-cent chance at the No. 1 pick.
At worst they’ll be picking fifth.
This summer the Knicks project to be $74-million under the salary cap and have an eye on adding the likes of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, along with – if the lottery balls fall their way – Duke star Zion Williamson. Dare to dream. Either way, the Knicks have won a single playoff series in 19 years, haven’t been to the playoffs at all in six years and will be trying to convince two superstars to spend the prime of their careers on a team that has almost no appreciable talent around them and no track record of developing talent.
Right.
Amazingly the other New York team – the Brooklyn Nets – who have been out of the playoffs for four years and haven’t had their own first-round pick for any of those years, are in a battle for the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference. The Nets are stuffed with promising young players and have loads of cap space this summer as well. Which New York team would you bet on?
Powell needs more games like this
Nick Nurse has seen Norm Powell at his best. Like when he came off the bench in Game 7 against the Indiana Pacers in 2016 and helped the Raptors exercise a lot of demons by chipping 13 clutch points on just six shots in the team’s first ever seven-game series win, all in his rookie season. Or when he was inserted into the starting lineup in Toronto’s hard-fought first-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks in 2017, made nine straight threes over three starts and played a smart, controlled game, averaging 15/3/3 on 58 per cent shooting while turning the series in the Raptors’ favour.
Nurse would be crazy not to want that Powell again. Some probing offence, some thunder on the break, some deep threes against the clock? Please. But when he hunts his offence, gets tunnel vision and dribbles into trouble? Look out.
“When you’re aggressive, you’re going to make a few mistakes, right?” Nurse said the other day. “[But] there is line you’ve got to ride between over-doing it and playing too passive. It’s tough because his natural instinct is to get that thing, put his head down and go to the rim, right? I think we need a little less of that [overall] and more at the right times.”
The Knicks defence must have been like catnip to Powell, who was coming off a 20-point night against the Bulls. In the past Powell has used games like this to pad his numbers. But against the Knicks, Powell played the game the Raptors need him to play – an aggressive type of minimalism. He was 3-of-4 from deep, his first two threes were assisted as he spot up from the corners. He only took seven shots. He didn’t try to do too much.
As long as he keeps doing less this well he’ll have a great chance to reprise his playoff Norm moments of the past.
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Ibaka and Gasol share the floor
Could playing Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol together become a thing? Nurse went to the ‘Twin Towers’ lineup twice against the Knicks, with middling results.
The problem with doing anything against the Knicks is doing anything yields at least middling results. The Raptors won every quarter on Thursday night. It didn’t matter who played. It’s hard to see exactly where Gasol and Ibaka would be an important go-to lineup option in the playoffs. Maybe against Detroit to counter-act Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond? Conceivably. It could also just be a way to get both of them some minutes.
It worked reasonably well against New York, because everything does. They were on the floor for a 12-0 run in the second quarter that helped split open the game, although the only box score contributions were a lay-up and an assist from Ibaka.
The more encouraging sign for the game was Ibaka playing well off the bench as Gasol made his ninth straight start. Signs of Ibaka sulking would be concerning but he was energized for the second straight game after a stinker against Charlotte as he finished with 10 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks in 24 minutes.
Gasol’s offence continues to be MIA as he finished with just two points after going 0-4 from the floor in 23 minutes, the third time in four starts he’s scored exactly two points – which seems almost impossible to do. And yet the Raptors seem to be doing fine with him out there.
Three of his four assists were for open threes – he’s a big target and the ball is in-and-out of his hands in a blink.
But at some point he has to look to score, doesn’t he?
Put some RESPEK on his name @pskills43 | #WeTheNorth pic.twitter.com/KuLL1jkkWc
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) March 29, 2019
Siakam does everything right
Pascal Siakam. What more can be said. He is proving to be that elusive combination of world-class talent and dogged determination. It is a combination that never gets old and never fails.
For all the talk of ‘load management’ this year, no one has carried the mail more reliably than Siakam, who leads the team in minutes played, is second in points, second in rebounds and second in blocks and third in steals. He also leads the team in field goal percentage and is second in free-throw attempts.
You’d think he might be tempted to rest on his laurels, but on a night when it would have been easy for the Raptors to coast around he was out sprinting behind the defence for early scores like he always does to give the Raptors a quick boost in the first quarter, before nailing the game down with 18 of his 31 in the third and the first few minutes of the fourth.
It will be fascinating and telling to see what Siakam does when teams start doubling him because they can’t cover him 1-on-1 now, not when he was the ball in space on the wing and the paint is relatively clear, as was the case against New York. He’s too quick and too long and he knows it.
It’s a basket and/or a foul every time.
With five assists, he showed he’s willing to get off the ball too. Between Siakam, Lowry and Leonard, with Gasol facilitating from the top, Danny Green is going to keep getting a steady diet of open threes, which is a good thing because he’s shooting a career-best 44.8 per cent from deep on 5.5 attempts a game after dropping a 5-for-8 against the Knicks.
Yes it was against the Knicks, but the basket doesn’t move.
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