TORONTO -- Since Nick Nurse took the reigns as head coach, there are many aspects of the game that you can point to as being "Toronto Raptors Basketball." But the most identifiable thing has, probably, been the team's defence.
Through two games of Nurse’s third season at the helm, however, it looks like Toronto’s going through a bit of an identity crisis.
“We’re nowhere near where we want to be defensively, but it takes hard work, it takes dedication of watching film, understanding who we’re playing against and making adjustments on the fly,” Raptors guard Kyle Lowry said after his team fell to the San Antonio Spurs, 119-114 on Saturday night. “I think we’ll watch some film tomorrow and the next day and see what we did bad and what we did good and try to build off the good end of things rather than dwell on the bad things.”
The second loss in as many games they played, we are still early into the Raptors' season, of course, but the uncharacteristic slippage we’ve seen from them on defence is still concerning, nonetheless.
Over two games, Toronto sports a porous defensive rating of 111.5 and have appeared a step or two slow on rotations, leading to more room for opponents to operate and make decisions with the ball.
As an example, familiar foe DeMar DeRozan torched Toronto on Saturday for 27 points and eight assists, shooting 10-of-17 from the field and, surprisingly, going 3-for-4 from three-point range. DeRozan, obviously, is a great offensive player, but the Raptors didn’t offer much in the way of resistance. They allowed DeRozan to take his time over the course of the game and dictate when, where and how he was going to attack.
This could’ve been aided by one of the basic tenets of good defence: More communication.
As Toronto guard Fred VanVleet described it, the Raptors simply aren’t talking enough to each other right now.
“I am not going to give anybody credit for communicating, myself included,” VanVleet said. “We got to do a much better job of that. So to answer your question, everybody on the team needs to be better on that end of the floor communicating, starting with myself and I think that will help our defence out. I mean there’s nobody in the building so there’s no excuse to not be talking. It’s quiet as hell out there.”
In general, the Raptors have been disappointing on defence to kick the season off, and they know it.
“It’s tough. It’s tough. I think we’ve got to guard our guys a little better,” VanVleet said. “Individually, we’ve got to make multiple efforts. Make more slides. Figure it out. It’s not rocket science. I don’t want to say it’s an effort thing. I feel like guys are trying out there. We’ve got to make more plays at a higher level.
"It’s easy to say it on offence when you say guys have got to make plays, you’ve got to complete the play. But it’s the same thing on defence: You’ve got to make the extra rotation, you’ve got to make the close out, you’ve got to come up with the rebound. We’re trying. I think we’ve got to perform defensively at a higher level each possession. I think we’re just not doing it for a full game. We do it in spurts, but I think teams are just a little too comfortable right now, or these last two teams that we play.”
What is encouraging about Toronto’s defence, however, is those spurts VanVleet speaks of, have been excellent.
The makings of a strong defensive club is still there for the Raptors thanks to the fact they still have personnel like OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam and, as evidence Saturday, Chris Boucher.
Boucher recorded a career-high seven blocks on Saturday, and while his shot contests can come at the expense of cleaning up the defensive glass, the energy he brings on defence, attempting to swat everything within his vicinity, is exactly what the Raptors need right now. That willingness to lay it all out there on every defensive possession was part of the reason why the Raptors became as stout a defence as they did the past two seasons in the first place.
“If we can perform at the right place, I think we can be a really good defensive team,” Boucher said. “We've just got to go out there and prove it every time.“
And it really should be just that simple.
Yes, this Raptors team has new faces to incorporate and didn’t have much time to prepare these new guys thanks to the short training camp and pre-season. But the fact remains that Toronto picked up a couple losses to teams it probably shouldn’t have lost to because the club’s signature defence isn’t up to snuff yet.
“I think it's a lot of things that goes into that, everybody making adjustments trying to figure it out,” Lowry said. “Your defence should be a little bit more ahead of your offence right now, and we're just kind of even right now with everything, and it's a brand new situation for everybody, but we're 0-2 and I haven't been this record in a long [expletive] time.”
