The Toronto Raptors will start Luis Scola over Patrick Patterson at power forward for the team’s season opener against the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday.
Head coach Dwane Casey didn’t make the decision official until the last possible minute, but the assumption over the last week was that Scola would start. Not only did he start the team’s final two preseason games – the last of which Casey more or less called a dress rehearsal – but he outplayed Patterson noticeably during the exhibition season.
Scola isn’t a perfect fit next to centre Jonas Valanciunas, to put it mildly. Tasking Scola with guarding Paul George at the four, or playing with two relatively ground-bound frontcourt players in general, is a risky defensive gambit, and Scola was inconsistent on that end in the preseason. Still, he’s physical, rebounds extremely well (an area Casey is really hoping to improve), and adds an element of creativity on the offensive end. The Raptors were terrific with Scola on the floor this month, and as much as preseason results don’t really matter, the Scola-Valanciunas pairing should be able to survive, even against a quicker Pacers squad.
“The first thing we gotta do to match their speed as a team is just to take good shots,” Scola said before the game Wednesday, pointing out the need to prevent the Pacers from getting out in transition. “If you get back and don’t let them get easy shots…their energy will go down.”
Scola also confirmed that the Raptors may be a little less aggressive in crashing the offensive boards in response to Indiana’s speed. Instead, the Raptors are likely to assign specific crashers, tasking anyone from the corners with hustling back rather than trying to steal an extra possession. I’d also expect to see the Raptors try to grind things out on offense – they played at the league’s slowest pace in the preseason – and while offensive efficiency declines as the shot clock winds down, this seems like a Casey response to a faster team.
Casey bringing Patterson off the bench may be the best thing for him in the short term. Last season, Patterson played his minutes against an average of 2.55 starters, per Nylon Calculus, one of the lowest marks in the league. While Patterson’s effective field goal percentage barely dropped against lineups classified as starting ones, he only faced such lineups about a quarter of the time. In other words, Patterson succeeded in heavily protected minutes, and remaining a reserve may provide a means of shaking out of his slump.
And what a slump it’s been. Patterson struggled in March and April last year, and he’s carried that cold stretch through the preseason, where he averaged three points and 2.1 rebounds in 19.3 minutes while shooting 3-of-10 from outside. That rebounding number, in particular, is troubling (and not entirely new). In 639 minutes last season, Patterson-Valanciunas pairings were outscored by 0.9 points per-100 possessions and the Raptors grabbed just 72.5 percent of defensive rebound opportunities. That’s painfully low, and it seems Casey is willing to sacrifice a modicum of stopping ability to ensure the team has an edge on their own glass.
Unfortunately for Patterson, this probably means the starting spot is Scola’s for the foreseeable future.
“No, I don’t want to do that,” Casey said Monday when RR asked him if the starting four-spot could change based on matchups. Starting Scola against a quicker front line confirms as much, as Patterson would have made more sense against Indiana than most.
It may take a sustained run of the starting unit struggling – or a major rebound in performance from Patterson – before the Raptors shake things up.
