The San Antonio Spurs are visiting the Toronto Raptors for a 7:30 p.m. tip-off on TSN. The Raptors are…uhh…in tough down Jonas Valanciunas and DeMarre Carroll against a fully healthy, fully rolling, fully destructive Spurs outfit. How good are they? From your boy, earlier:
If the Warriors are C-4, blowing teams into oblivion in one fell, dramatic, chaotic swoop, the Spurs are air-borne bacteria, their effectiveness creeping up slowly until suddenly you can’t breathe and don’t have time to figure out what’s going on. Again, this is an 18-4 team, the second-best in the league, and nobody is talking about them. Because they’re the Spurs, and in the words of former Spur Cory Joseph, they’re “boring.” It’s reasonable that a historic defense – the Spurs are allowing 92 points per-100 possessions, less generous than a pre-Christmas Scrooge – is less electrifying than a historic offense. But the gap between the Spurs and the third-best point differential in the league is larger than the gap between the Warriors and the Spurs – in other words, the Spurs are closer to the Warriors than any other team is to the Spurs.
Check out the full game preview here.
Bebe
Lucas Nogueira missed Monday’s game with a left ankle sprain, one he suffered Saturday and played through, and one he didn’t believe to be too serious.
He will sit again Wednesday.
Minor injuries have been the one thing head coach Dwane Casey points to repeatedly when asked about Nogueira’s progress. There’s no questioning the talent, and he’s now shown he can play in moderate minutes against some legitimate competition, but he has to stay on the floor. Injuries last preseason and this preseason impeded his progress and ability to fight for the backup center job. I’m not sure how you make injuries a thing of the past, but Alex McKechnie and company will have some sort of plan for Nogueira this offseason.
Nogueira’s technically played in six games this year but his first two appearances were garbage time. In the four games prior to his injury, he averaged 6.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 0.8 assists in 15.8 minutes, shooting 81.3 percent from the floor. The comeback victory against the Hawks last week was his real breakout but a stellar 14-4-3 outing against the Warriors on Saturday, in front of far more eyeballs, really got his emergence noticed.
This means the Raptors only have small-ball options behind Bismack Biyombo, a terrifying thought against this Spurs’ frontline.
Kawhi Leonard good to go
Leonard sat out Monday’s 51-point blowout against the 76ers with an illness caused by a sandwich in Philly. KawhiBot went in for a fluid change Wednesday and will play, according to Jeff McDonald of San Antonio Express News.
Leonard said he felt iffy yesterday as well, but thinks he's good to go tonight.
— Jeff McDonald (@JMcDonald_SAEN) December 9, 2015
“He’s getting back and feeling pretty good,” head coach Gregg Popovich told McDonald and other reporters at shootaround. “I think he’ll probably play. They gave him some fluid, and it’s been another day. He might start out a little slow and get his rhythm back, but he’ll be fine.”
That’s trouble for the Raptors, who won’t have Carroll to try to slow Leonard on offense. As he continues his ascent to megastardom, Leonard has pushed his averages to 21.6 points, 7.5 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.9 steals, and 1.2 blocks, all while shooting 50.5 percent overall and a ridiculous 50 percent on 4.1 3-point attempts. Sure, that hot outside shooting won’t sustain forever – he’s a 38.3-percent career long-range shooter, but he’s developed into one of a small handful of the best two-way players in the NBA.
On the other end, DeMar DeRozan could be in for a tough night, receiving all of Leonard’s attention.
Speaking of which…
Former RR contributor William Lou ruffled a feather by pointing out that DeRozan is 25-of-130 on jump shots this season, per NBA.com. The response was because NBA splits their jump shots into smaller, more specific buckets.
Basketball Reference, which uses more broad classifications, has DeRozan down as 102-for-285, good for 35.8 percent. That’s still bad but it’s in line with what he shot last season (35.9 percent) and the year before (36.9 percent). Here’s a look at his shot chart the last two seasons, courtesy of my man Daren over at Basketball Savant:
Here it is again, this time only for shots classified as some type of jump shot:
Cory Joseph revenge game?
Joseph is playing against his former team for the first time, and while Popovich had kind words for his former point guard, Manu Ginobili is mad at an unanswered text.
Pop on Cory Joseph: “He’d still be on our team, but you can’t pay everybody…We’re thrilled that he got the contract that he did.”
— James Herbert (@outsidethenba) December 9, 2015
Manu says CoJo “left us a completely different player. I was not a big fan of his in the 1st year. I couldn’t see where his potential was.” — James Herbert (@outsidethenba) December 9, 2015
Manu said he’s proud of CoJo. After the game-winner in Washington, “I texted him but I guess it was a Texas phone and I got no reply.”
— James Herbert (@outsidethenba) December 9, 2015
Joseph’s ascension from draft after as the No. 29 pick on a loaded team and D-League regular to bonafide contributor and borderline starting point guard is an impressive one, and one that should stand as an encouraging example as Delon Wright works through his own D-League stints. The Spurs aggressively sent Joseph up and down, and while we can’t know what he would have turned out like otherwise, it certainly didn’t hurt.
And maybe Joseph can pass a thing or two on, like he had things passed on to him.
Parker and Joseph pre game. pic.twitter.com/nYzXP1JYuy
— Eric Smith (@Eric__Smith) December 9, 2015
905 in action
The 905 are in action tonight, too. Check the site later on for a recap.
The Line
The Raptors opened as 4.5-point underdogs, the line quickly moved to 5.5 and has nudged all the way to Raptors +6 as of this writing. I predicted Spurs 98-91 in the pregame, so I’m (barely) comfortable with my call (the over-under is 188.5), even if it might be too optimistic.
