Young steps up for Raptors as Poeltl injury looms over shorthanded lineup

CHICAGO — The Toronto Raptors have been playing without a centre for three weeks now, but they have Thad Young, who is ready, willing and able to fill in where needed. 

Of late the Raptors have needed the 35-year-old the way a leaky boat needs to find shore or dying phone needs a charger. 

At six-foot-eight and a lean 220 pounds, Young doesn’t really fit the part of NBA big man, especially when he’s banging against 14 feet and nearly 500 pounds of Nikola Vucevic and Andre Drummond, the Chicago Bulls' centre tandem. 

But after 17 years in the NBA, Young is well past sweating perfect. He’s more about figuring out what needs to be done to be good. 

“Those are two tough bigs to go against, Vooch and Dre, it takes a toll on you,” said Young after he helped the short-handed Raptors to a surprising 118-107 win at the United Center to snap Toronto’s five-game losing streak and even their six-game road trip at 1-1. “But one thing I’ve been willing to do is fight with them and do the job that’s needed to be done.”

Young had a season-high 16 points and six rebounds and six assists in his season-high 32 minutes. This year his contributions have mostly come from his locker room and practice-floor presence, but make no mistake, the old dude can still ball. 

“This whole season, if he was not playing, he was not in rotation, he always stayed in shape, he was always a part of the [scrimmage] groups,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “He was the right voice for our team, he was always building our guys.

“It’s great to see him on the court out there playing and now even more his voice has value. Now he is sharing the court with players, and he can help them even more.”

After barely playing the last part of last season and seeing the floor just seven times in the Raptors' first 35 games this year, Young has been pressed into service lately as the Raptors have weathered some injuries, particularly to centre Jakob Poeltl. Young has appeared in 11 straight games since the big Austrian sprained his ankle. 

Not that he needed to, but Young’s ability to perform well in adverse circumstances in his 17th season has shown his teammates what it takes to have a long and productive career in a league where players can come and go in the space of a season. 

"Just his approach to the game, his mindset, his knowledge, the things he talks about, the things he sees on the floor, the countless situations that he's been in," said Gary Trent Jr. of the example Young provides "He's like an Old Testament book that got all the rules."

Even so the Raptors have been in tough without Poeltl. Their win over Chicago was surprising because not only were the Raptors missing Poeltl, starters RJ Barrett (knee swelling) and Immanuel Quickley (thigh bruise), but also because Toronto had won just one previous game since Poeltl went out.  

Poeltl’s value has in some ways been proven by his absence.

For nearly two years before he was re-acquired at the trade deadline last season, Poeltl was someone fans and management were equally eager to repatriate after he was included as part of the 2018 trade that netted Kawhi Leonard.

When the deal was finally made the excitement continued. After more than two seasons without a seven-footer on the roster, having a big man who could block the odd shot, set good screens and finish well at the rim was buzz-worthy. The Raptors finished 15-11 with Poeltl starting last season.

This year Poeltl has played as he ever does — the big Austrian is a low-maintenance double-double machine whose calling card is his consistency — but after all the effort the Raptors went through to get him, there were questions about his fit.

Even though Poeltl is averaging 14.4 points, 11.3 rebounds and two blocked shots per 36 minutes while converting 68.5 per cent of his field goal attempts, that he is a non-shooter outside of perhaps 12 feet complicated things for a team that wanted to spread the floor, shoot threes and cut into open space. It was even more so when Poeltl was paired with point guard Dennis Schroder, who is not thought of as a deep shooting threat, even if he is hovering around a league-averaging mark, having converted 35.5 per cent of his three-point attempts this season.

So in that respect, the results have been definitive. Whether Poeltl is the ideal person for the job or the Raptors trading a lightly protected first-round pick and two future second-rounders to San Antonio was too steep a price or if signing him to a four-year, $78-million contract will ultimately prove good value, there is no question that the Raptors have suffered playing without a legitimate big man, and Poeltl is the best one they have.

Still, every once in a while a squirrel finds a nut, and a severely-undersized team figures out how to win an NBA game as Toronto did against a Bulls team that was playing its first game at home after a long west-coast road trip and missing Zach LaVine and Patrick Williams.

Enter Young, who started at centre for the third straight game and relishes every chance he gets to be on an NBA floor. 

“For me, you know, it's always about the battle,” he said. “I enjoy the competition level, so for me I'm willing to take whatever challenge there is whether it's me going out to guard [smaller players] or me going out there and guard my position or playing at centre. It doesn't matter to me, but my mindset is always just do the best job I can and then live with the results.”

For a long stretch of the game, it looked like the results were going to be ‘same-old, same-old’ for a struggling team.

But after trailing by as many as 16 in the second quarter and in the early moments of the third the Raptors got back into the game with a spirited third quarter where Toronto leaned into playing small. Not that they had much choice, but it paid off as Toronto was able to win the period 37-26 and head into the fourth up by one. Young had 10 in the quarter and Bruce Brown — in his best all-around effort since being acquired in the Pascal Siakam trade — added 10 points of his own as the Raptors' tempo proved a problem for Chicago. Bulls backup centre Drummond in particular caused some issues for the Raptors — scoring on a deep post-up past an over-matched Young, then blocking his lay-up attempt at the other end leading to a Bulls fast break were examples — but for the most part the Raptors were able to make their centreless lineups work.

They held their own on the defensive glass for the game and otherwise found ways to put pressure on the rim. Gary Trent Jr. led Toronto with 24 points while shooting 6-of-11 from three while Brown had 19 points, seven rebounds, three assists, three steals and two blocks.

The Bulls were led by DeMar DeRozan, who had 25.

The Raptors' biggest challenge was defending the paint, such as when DeRozan crossed over Jalen McDaniels and rose up to crush a dunk over Brown, who was about a foot short of being a proper deterrent.

But Toronto otherwise defended very aggressively and quite well. After DeRozan’s dunk, the Raptors answered right back by forcing a pair of turnovers leading to a fastbreak lay-up by Young and a triple by Trent that put the Raptors up by nine with minutes to play. A steal by Schroder led to another score by Young to keep the lead at nine with three minutes left. Meanwhile, the Raptors held the Bulls without a field goal after DeRozan’s slam.

“Our focus was on very high alert, we stayed down on shot fakes, we were able to contain in a couple of those situations against DeRozan and then at the end of the game, the last couple of minutes, every time we trapped him, we wanted to get the ball out of his hands,” said Rajakovic. 

“If anybody else is going to beat us, they’re going to beat us, we didn’t want DeRozan tonight to be the guy.”

Fittingly, the game’s clinching basket came with just over a minute to play when Scottie Barnes was matched up against Vucevic on a switch on the perimeter. After a couple of timing dribbles, Barnes threaded a seeing-eye pass to Young, who was lurking by the Bulls basket, undefended.

It was a win a long time coming and welcome for a Raptors team that is trying to make its way to the trade deadline and then the all-star break with some dignity.

Even better, the expectation is that Poeltl should be back in the lineup soon enough. The Raptors have two days off before they suit up against Houston on Friday for the third game of a six-game trip. Poeltl has been active and doing on-court work at full speed for nearly a week now. His return is likely imminent.

It will mean a reduction of Young’s minutes, but as he’s proven so many times, when the veteran’s number is called, he’ll be ready. 

“I mean for me every time I can step on the court and be able to play against guys at a high level and still be able to do this after 17 years, it’s always going to be great for me,” Young said. “If I didn't enjoy the competitive nature of it, you know, I'd have been done three, four, five, six years ago. So you know, for me it's always gonna be about that competitive spirit. And just, you know, being in that battle with my teammates.”