The Toronto Raptors began life without Jonas Valanciunas on Sunday, and it went better than they could have reasonably hoped.
While the Los Angeles Clippers played terribly opposite them and they nearly blew a 29-point lead, the Raptors still beat a presumed Western Conference playoff team and second-tier title contender on the fifth game of a west coast road trip. Apply whatever caveats you need to about how the Clippers are playing right now – not great, Bob – but a shorthanded Raptors team got it done under difficult circumstances.
Valanciunas is set to miss six weeks as he rehabilitates a fractured fourth metacarpal in his left hand, so it’s worth taking a closer look at how the Raptors’ rotation looked Sunday without him. The Clippers are under-performing on the defensive end and on the glass given their personnel, but their starting frontcourt stands as one of the most challenging the Raptors will run into. As expected, head coach Dwane Casey opted to start Bismack Biyombo in place of Valanciunas, playing him 31 minutes.
I suggested Saturday that outside of Biyombo and Lucas Nogueira, Valanciunas’ injury was a call for lineup creativity. Here’s how thing shook down Sunday.
Biyombo starts, plays too much
Here’s what I wrote about Biyombo over the weekend:
The primary fallout of the injury is that Biyombo is probably now the team’s starting center. That’s fine, and head coach Dwane Casey will probably want the defense he provides early in games rather than going with more offensively oriented lineups early. So long as it’s only the specifics, and not the scope of Biyombo’s role changing, this is an acceptable adjustment.
What the Raptors can’t do is shift the bulk of Valanciunas’ minutes to Biyombo.
In response, Casey played Biyombo for 31 minutes, which extends past the upper limit of his utility. He had the worst plus-minus of anyone on the team (-4). I am Bruno’s complete lack of surprise. A substantial chunk of those minutes saw him weigh down the starting lineup, as that group was outscored by four points in 18 minutes with him and turned around and outscored the Clippers by nine in six minutes without him.
That’s not necessarily a common trend with that foursome – they had performed roughly the same with Valanciunas or Biyombo so far this season, albeit in a small sample for the latter (sample size warnings abound for all lineup data so early in the year). Other lineups, however, have suffered a great deal with Biyombo, particularly the team’s closing unit (Cory Joseph in place of Luis Scola). Biyombo has laid waste to the awesomeness of that unit and did so again Sunday, though Casey quickly opted for a change after two minutes and a 1-of-7 shooting mark. In that 2:27 of play, the Raptors were outscored 3-2 and all Biyombo managed was a foul (he didn’t have any of the team’s three offensive rebounds or, shockingly, their turnover).
Biyombo has a place in the rotation, to be sure. He’s a strong defender on the block, he can capably switch on to guards and, if Casey shifted schemes, hedge well in the pick-and-roll with the agility to recover. And there’s the rim protection, something he’s elite at coming as the weak-side help.
With the team’s worst net-rating of any regular rotation player, Casey can’t lean on Biyombo for 30-plus minutes a night. He just takes too many other things off the table.
Nogueira non grata
That’s mixing languages, but Nogueira was nowhere to be found on the floor Sunday, a moderate surprise since he was the second and final traditional center on the active roster. This could be a case of Nogueira having flown in from Maine on short notice, without the benefit of practice and video sessions in preparation for the Clippers, or Casey wanting to experiment with creative lineups in a larger sample. There are a number of reasons Nogueira may not have played.
There’s also a chance Casey doesn’t trust him to play right now. That will almost surely have to change over the next six weeks, and the Raptors playing once over a five-day stretch should afford Nogueira plenty of practice time with which to get up to speed.
Here’s some of what I wrote about him Saturday:
There’s a lot of Nogueira in our post-game breakdowns from Thursday (a near triple-double performance) and Friday (a lesser outing with some encouraging signs), so check those out.
Nogueira’s inconsistencies are liable to frustrate Casey. An obscenely long defender with quick feet, Nogueira, like Biyombo, is capable of hedging hard on the pick-and-roll and even switching on to guards for brief stretches. He’s still having some trouble adjusting to this year’s more conservative scheme that asks him to drop back, and he’s too often on his heels as the dribble-attack arpporaches. Pick-and-roll defense was a major point of emphasis for his trip to the D-League, so expect NBA teams to attack him to see if his awareness has improved. Offensively, Nogueira’s a gifted player with terrific passing vision and a solid mid-range jump shot, but he’ll need to play within himself. He can be a clumsy screener and his dribble is a little loose. At the same time, he’ll make a couple of plays that few 7-footers have any business making and he’s a major threat for a high-low feed from the elbow to a cutter.
Casey would have good reason to be hesitant with Nogueira, but he has to be given some leash to prove himself with. He’s already 23 and played in the Spanish ACB league, so the team needs to measure his development against NBA talent at some point. The ideal time is when there’s only one other center healthy.
Let’s get weird
Again from the weekend, on playing without positions:
That same logic applies now. Valanciunas is hurt, and that’s something the Raptors can’t change; center depth was always going to be an issue if he got injured. That doesn’t mean the Raptors have to bow to convention and just shift everyone up a spot in the depth chart. Instead, Casey can get creative with center-less lineups that lean on the team’s athleticism and defensive versatility. It’s not the ideal way to run a team, particularly on defense, but ideal went out the window on Valanciunas’ second-quarter drive to the hoop. Get your best players on the floor and figure it out as you go.
Like he did in the second half against the Lakers on Friday, Casey opted to give center-less groups plenty of run Sunday. The Raptors played 17 minutes without a true center on the court, outscoring the Clippers by 15 points in that time. Again, this is a team against which that should be difficult, even if Blake Griffin turned in one of his worst games in recent memory. The Clippers don’t have strong frontcourt depth and Casey did well to stagger his substitutions such that he was playing his no-pivot look opposite similarly structured Clippers lineups. For as much as this won’t sit well with some readers, Casey has managed the six quarters without Valanciunas about as creatively as could be hoped, save for a few too many minutes for Biyombo.
Of the smaller groups, there are three particular things worth focusing in on.
*Luis Scola played 13 minutes as the team’s center. I suggested he may work as the de facto backup center now if Casey staggers his subs properly, as he’s an exceedingly strong 240-pounder. He’s on the shorter side and not particularly agile, but he’s a decent enough post defender and the Raptors don’t require agility from their center in their pick-and-roll coverages. Offensively, his Old Man’s Finest back-to-the-basket game is solid and he can help stretch a defense with his new-found outside shot.
The net result Sunday was favorable, with the Raptors outscoring L.A. by seven points with Scola at the five. The closing unit with Scola in place of Valanciunas (instead of Biyombo) was also effective, winning a five-minute stretch 12-8. That’s likely to be the team’s closing unit with Valanciunas out, and it will be interesting to see if they find the same chemistry the group had with the Lithaunian.
Scola as the team’s center isn’t a long-term or major-minutes fix, but it’s a reasonable look that you can probably get used to for at least a few minutes a game. It’s a good way to give the offense a jump when Biyombo’s off the floor and Casey can be selective about the defensive matchups he deploys it for.
*Patrick Patterson and James Johnson as a frontcourt. These two have had a nice chemistry all season long as complementary forwards, and sliding them up a position to share the frontcourt worked well against both L.A. squads. Patterson helps keep spacing in tact and Johnson provides offensive rebounding and secondary ball-handling. On defense, these two (and DeMarre Carroll when he’s on) can switch assignments seamlessly given their similarity in size. Johnson is a better on-ball defender and can take the tougher match-up, while Patterson is an intelligent system defender who’s rarely found out of position or making a bad read. The ability to pick up any of two or three men in transition should help what’s been a leaky defense off of misses, too.
The Raptors ditched Biyombo and Scola for five minutes against the Clippers and subsequently outscored L.A. 12-4. Johnson and Patterson played with Carroll only for a moment, but an all-bench-plus-DeMar DeRozan unit showed potential. Going without a center or Scola is a tough option defensively but it’s one that can really push the tempo and the transition game.
Lineups with Patterson and Johnson as the center have been very effective in 19 minutes this season, even though all but three of those minutes came with at least three reserves on the floor. It’s worth exploring more.
*More two-PG time. In news that should surprise nobody at this point, the Kyle Lowry-Cory Joseph pairing continued to prove effective. The Raptors outscored the Clippers by five in their 15 minutes together and by six in just nine minutes when the Raptors went with two point guards and no true center. The pairing made sense on paper as a small-minute deployment to goose the offense, but Joseph’s defense at either guard position has impressed more than expected, as has Lowry’s adjustment to playing off-ball more.
The duo have now played 189 minutes together on the year, outscoring opponents by 16.8 points per-100 possessions. Twenty minutes is probably about the upper limit of how much Casey can play together without over-taxing both, and putting too much of a burden on Lowry with Valanciunas out is a concern. Hopefully, Joseph’s presence mitigates Casey’s inclination to do so, especially since he’s run the second unit well enough when Biyombo’s not on the floor.
That last point is a trend worth watching more closely in the next few games. The Raptors may wind up better off giving Biyombo his minutes primarily with the starters, even though he may bring their performance down some, as the second unit is the one best served by going position-less. Bench scoring has been an issue this season, and freeing the bench group from having to work around Biyombo’s anti-gravity on offense could help them a great deal.
All eyes or on Casey’s rotations with Valanciunas out, and the early returns are encouraging. The Cavaliers will prove a mighty test Wednesday.
