Dwane Casey deserves a lot of credit for inserting James Johnson into the starting lineup for the game Sunday against the San Antonio Spurs.
Over the past two seasons, Casey has changed his starting lineup a total of 29 times over 184 games.
Only two of those changes to Toronto’s starters weren’t due to trades or injuries.
That means Casey is the kind of coach that likes his rotations and sticks with them through hell or high water. It was just last week I wrote about this here on Raptors Republic.
Casey being a coach that sticks with a set starting unit and rotations isn’t a bad thing as last season the Raptors set a franchise mark for highest winning percentage and this season they are on pace to eclipse that mark.
Clearly Casey knows what he’s doing and the Raptors are having success with him at the helm.
The interesting thing is both of those Casey’s changes to his starting five that weren’t due to trades or injuries have happened over the past month.
The first occurred when Terrence Ross was moved to a bench role and the second time was yesterday when James Johnson was given a chance to move into the starting line-up.
Johnson had been inactive for four games before he helped Toronto steal a win against the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday night. He also racked up two DNP-CD’s earlier this month.
Johnson played a shade under 19 minutes against the Clippers and chipped in 16 points (while going 7-7 from the field), five rebounds and two steals. He had a plus/minus rating of +14 and he did a great job getting under the skin of Blake Griffin.
Johnson was moved into Toronto’s starting five yesterday and he rewarded Casey with 20 points (8-10 from the field) and a team-high plus/minus rating of +20. All while guarding the MVP of the 2014 NBA Finals.
Fans have been clamouring for a starting unit of James Johnson, Patrick Patterson, Jonas Valanciunas, Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. What’s interesting is that Casey seemed to be getting a sample size with those five playing together as they played 10 minutes together against the Spurs.
The experiment worked as they had a plus/minus rating of +16.
It’s a small sample size – 10 minutes and one game – but it’s still good enough for the third best +/- rating for any NBA team over their past game.
Those five players have the fourth best +/- rating this month of any five-man unit in the NBA despite playing less minutes than any of the pairings with a higher rating.
Also worth noting is the fact Casey let Jonas Valanciunas play late in the game yesterday. This it’s been baffling to watch Valanciunas play big minutes in the first and third quarters, sparse minutes in the second quarter, and then not see the court in the fourth quarter.
Yesterday was only the third time in 2015 that Valanciunas had played 33 or more minutes.
The fact Casey allowed Valanciunas to play big minutes in the fourth quarter – well deserved minutes, by the way – and started James Johnson shows that Casey is starting to go with his gut more and show a willingness to switch things up.
It also shows he’s willing to match up against certain players or give a player with a hot hand more minutes late in a game.
This kind of growth is a welcome change from Casey.
