At midway point, Raptors’ season a success
Despite flaws, team is where it should be
TORONTO — Brilliant one night, brutal the next.
Hurt or sick or sore or tired, but more than holding their own through it all.
It has not been the greatest of half seasons for the Toronto Raptors.
Except that it has.
The team reached the midway point in the grind of an 82-game schedule Saturday night, disappointed in some facets of its play but justifiably OK with where it is at the moment.
A blistering 20-4 start to the season gave way to a rather pedestrian 9-8 stretch, but forgetting for a moment the hot takes that change with the wind and the day of the week, a 29-12 record has them right in the thick of the fight for first overall in the National Basketball Association.
They don’t shoot from three-point range well enough most nights — except when they make 14 in a game, like they did Saturday. The defence has shown some slippage — except it is still among the top 10 in the league in overall ratings.
The bench has been shoddy — except for the odd night when it carries the starters.
It’s really not been that bad. Still, they want more. And they probably should have it.
“I think you don’t want to judge too much just where we are all the time. I make that mistake in golf a lot. I will be 1-under after eight and I start thinking, ‘Gosh, I’m going to shoot 70 today.’ Then, all of a sudden, I double the next three holes because I’m thinking about the final score,” said Raptors coach Nick Nurse.
“I like our roster. I like who we are. I like our capabilities. I think there is still a lot of growth. I think we need to continue to be a little more consistent in some areas and I think we need to shoot the ball a little better, which, and I keep saying this, I think we will.”
It is the long game that intrigues the Raptors and — notwithstanding the nightly entertainment quotient they provide for fans — it will be the way the season is ultimately regarded.
But that is months away from being determined, and anyone who thinks they can accurately predict it is fibbing. Today, as Nurse said, the issue is getting by, getting better and getting ready.
“It’s normal things. Some nights our rim protection isn’t as good as we’d like it to be. For some reason we are just not rotating quick enough or our screen setting isn’t as good or we are not coming off ball screens with enough pace,” he said.
“There are many areas that you kind of flow in and out. One game we did it this way. We didn’t block out well enough that game. Whatever. There are many areas. We try to level off and prioritize some of those things a little bit.”
The most pleasant surprise of the first half of the season has been Pascal Siakam, the thirdyear forward who blitzed the Bucks for 30 points Saturday night, the fifth time this season he’s established a new personal single-game scoring mark.
The six-foot-nine native of Cameroon has been given more leeway than imaginable by Nurse, encouraged to grab a defensive rebound and take off with the ball in transition, using his speed, athleticism and quirky spin move with seemingly no plan to finish at the rim. He’s given the Raptors another ballhandling creative force, much needed in the NBA of this era.
“He’s commanding the ball against certain matchups, telling those guys give me the ball because I’m taking this guy and he gets the ball and he takes it and scores it ...,” Nurse said. “Obviously we’ve let him handle it in the open floor a lot more.”
But while Siakam has been the most welcome surprise, there have been disappointments in the first half — and turning them around will be paramount to continued second-half success.
OG Anunoby, of whom so much was expected going into his second season, has scuffled all year, and his inability to grasp a key backup role has hampered the bench production all season.
While still a quite promising youngster, the 21-year-old is shooting just 33 per cent from three-point range and an abysmal 32.1 per cent from the foul line through 35 games.
Nurse has touted him as a potential starter later in the season and the coach is intrigued by an athletic frontcourt grouping of Kawhi Leonard, Anunoby and Siakam, but that’s not going to happen unless Anunoby becomes a more consistent offensive force. He’s an above-average defender but has to at least become a scoring threat to keep opponents from completely ignoring him.
But bench play overall has been an issue all season, perhaps the most troubling aspect of the first 41 games.
With a team in perfect health and a full roster, the starters would be Kyle Lowry, Danny Green, Leonard, Siakam and Serge Ibaka — with Fred VanVleet and Jonas Valanciunas bookending the backup unit.
But finding two or three consistent players to round out a second group has been impossible. Who emerges from the group of Anunoby, Norm Powell, Delon Wright and C.J. Miles to fill the remaining two or three secondunit slots will be the biggest task of the second half of the season.
Injuries have absolutely been a large part of the story and the troubles.
Lowry’s back, Valanciunas’s thumb, the desire to perhaps sacrifice a game here and there to keep Leonard healthier for the late spring have denied Nurse a chance to truly massage his rotation. But that may be a temporary thing: The injured twosome of Lowry and Valanciunas won’t be out together much longer, and 20 or 25 games is enough time to get everyone on the same page.
So the halfway mark comes and goes, and it’s been outstanding except when it hasn’t. Ups and downs and good and bad and lurching from one supposed crisis to the next.
Except, when it’s looked at from a step or two back, being in a tense battle for No. 1 in the league has to be seen as the first half being a success.