TORONTO – In the middle of a cavernous basketball stadium, Masai Ujiri looked on with interest.
With new provincial COVID restrictions limiting Scotiabank Arena to 1,000 attendees – primarily arena staff, team personnel, and player families – and no fans, the Raptors’ president had the entire 100 level to himself.
Ujiri usually watches games from the video room, which neighbours the club’s locker room, or while standing in the tunnel. On Sunday, he sat alone, just to the right of centre court and 10 rows up from the floor as the team he assembled – the entire team he assembled – laid waste to the short-handed New York Knicks, defeating them 120-105.
He was the lone fan in an empty building, but he was an attentive one.
For the first time in 33 games this season, the Raptors had their full rotation available, unlocking a myriad of options for the always-imaginative Nick Nurse and his coaching staff.
This is what Ujiri, Bobby Webster and Toronto’s front office had in mind when they built one of the most unique rosters in recent memory. They envisioned a collection of long, athletic and interchangeable players that could test the limits of position-less basketball. Finally, they’re healthy enough to see the experiment out.
“We’ve got to iron it out and figure out the rotations and all that stuff positionally,” Nurse said, roughly 100 minutes before tip-off. “It’ll be interesting to figure out who’s playing what position, how they’re matched up, and who’s doing what. It’s gonna be interesting to work in our bigs, as well. [There] should be a lot of interest in a lot of rotational things today, that’s for sure.”
With a full arsenal at his disposal, Nurse didn’t hesitate to tinker, as promised. The Raptors started the game without a true centre on the floor. They closed the first quarter and opened the second without a true point guard. They shuffled through different lineups and switched match-ups on the fly. As for positions, they didn’t mean a whole lot. Scottie Barnes, who could have reasonably been considered their starting five-man, also served as their back-up point guard.
As currently constructed, this Raptors team is a bet on talent and versatility, and there were a whole lot of both out there on Sunday.
They went with their ‘small’ starting unit, which featured their five best players – Fred VanVleet, Gary Trent Jr., OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam and Barnes. When VanVleet went to the bench, they used Barnes as the primary ball handler in place of their usual back-up guards, Dalano Banton and Malachi Flynn. That lineup included five players with listed heights between 6-foot-7 and 6-foot-9. When Trent picked up his fifth foul early in the third quarter, they subbed in Khem Birch and played big.
Prior to Sunday afternoon, the team’s core four of VanVleet, Siakam, Anunoby and Barnes had played 52 minutes together over three games, each of them coming in November. Toronto lost all three contests, but it should be noted that they were Siakam’s first games back from offseason shoulder surgery.
Since then, Siakam’s gotten his conditioning and rhythm back, and has been playing some of the best basketball of his career, adding another 20-point, 14-rebound and seven-assist outing on Sunday. Barnes, an early frontrunner for Rookie of the Year, continues to blossom, while VanVleet’s season remains on an all-star trajectory, and now Anunoby is picking up where he left off before his hip injury.
Individually, all four guys have had standout stretches this season. They’ve built chemistry in pairs and as trios. However, this was our first chance to get a good look at that group as a quartet, and they didn’t disappoint.
The Raptors raced out to an early lead, with VanVleet scoring 10 of the team’s first 17 points, including a crafty reverse layup off a long outlet pass from Siakam. Early in the second quarter, Anunoby deflected a Knicks pass and pitched the ball ahead to Barnes, who found Precious Achiuwa under the rim, leading to an easy bucket for Chris Boucher.
After Siakam scored six straight points on three consecutive buckets in the third quarter, Barnes knocked down back-to-back three-pointers and roared to the crowd, which at that point consisted of Masai Ujiri and a couple of his front office lieutenants, who had joined him in the 10th row. Tom Thibodeau called timeout with the Toronto lead at 19 points, and it would grow as large as 25.
Nurse had at least two of those four guys on the court at all times until the game was out of reach with five minutes left. Overall, the Raptors outscored New York by eight points in 14.5 minutes with them out there together. They were great offensively, pushing the pace and making plays for each other, but the defensive end is where they have the potential to be special, with their versatility and ability to switch assignments, and you could see it in spurts on Sunday.
“That’s where you would hope the strength would be,” said VanVleet, who finished with 35 points in 31 minutes. “It takes all five to do it and sometimes we’ve had guys in there who are not accustomed to doing it at the level we need to do it at. So when you don’t have to think as much and you can just play and react and rotate and know that the guy behind you is gonna make the right read and the right play – and even if it’s the wrong read, we’re all on the same page – that’s a good feeling to have.”
Despite being hit hard by injuries, and most recently by an organization-wide COVID outbreak that forced 12 different players into the league’s health and safety protocols over the last two weeks, the Raptors are hovering around .500 with a record of 16-17. The silver lining of guys sitting at home in quarantine was getting a chance to rest some of their lingering ailments.
“You feel like you have a shot when everyone’s available,” said VanVleet. “I feel good about our top six, seven or eight, and the rest of those guys we’ve got to bring them along and get them up to speed. But even the end of the rotation has been [thrown] to the fire this year, so they are better for it. All of those guys are going to have their opportunity, but I think our core is pretty good, and we sprinkle the rest of those guys in and find the rhythm and rotations as we continue to play more minutes together, you just feel good about having a fair shot about it.”
Now that they’re at full strength, not only is this an opportunity to go on a run in the wide-open Eastern Conference, where they’re just two games out of sixth place, but it’s also an important stretch for internal evaluation.
With less than six weeks to go until the February 10th NBA trade deadline, Ujiri and Webster will continue to pay close attention. Finally, we’ll have a better indication of who this team is, where its capable of going, and what it needs to get there.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiZ2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRzbi5jYS9maW5hbGx5LWF0LWZ1bGwtc3RyZW5ndGgtcmFwdG9ycy1zaG93LXBvdGVudGlhbC1pbi1ibG93b3V0LXdpbi1vdmVyLWtuaWNrcy0xLjE3NDExOTbSAW9odHRwczovL3d3dy50c24uY2EvZmluYWxseS1hdC1mdWxsLXN0cmVuZ3RoLXJhcHRvcnMtc2hvdy1wb3RlbnRpYWwtaW4tYmxvd291dC13aW4tb3Zlci1rbmlja3MtMS4xNzQxMTk2P3Rzbi1hbXA?oc=5
2022-01-03 00:46:03Z
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