Fresh off of a great defensive win on Friday night against the Washington Wizards, the Toronto Raptors find themselves in Kyle Lowry’s hometown for the night. The Raptors will take on the Philadelphia 76ers at 7:30 on TSN 2, and while the Raptors are technically 2-0 against the Sixers this year, they haven’t faced these Sixers yet. They haven’t faced Ish Smith’s Sixers.
The last time the two teams met, the Sixers were awash in rumors about a Mike D’Antoni hire to kick off the Jerry Colangelo Era. D’Antoni’s now on the bench, the Sixers dealt two second-round picks and cut Tony Wroten in order to install Smith as the starting point guard and savior apparent, and they also told intriguing prospect Christian Wood to hit the bricks in favor of the veteran presents of Elton Brand. The moves are a departure from the normal Sam Hinkie path, which you should read more about in Briand Windhorst’s excellent TrueHoop piece from Friday.
There’s some jest in my description – veteran “presents” and all – but the Sixers have a new lease of late.
The team was 1-30 when they added Smith, they’ve gone 3-4 since, and they’ve only been outscored by 6.4 points per-100 possessions (PPC) with him on the court. Considering they’ve been run off the floor by nearly double that overall (-12.4 PPC), it’s an improvement. Smith is a good player and it’s strange that the depth-starved New Orleans Pelicans gave up on him. It’s not like he’s a sure-fire starter in this league, or anything, but he’s the best scorer the Sixers have and he gives them a drive-and-kick option they didn’t have previously with Kendall Marshall (a nice passer but hardly a slicer), T.J. McConnell (my dude, but not a threat to score), or Wroten (barely a threat to pass). Smith’s averaging 14.3 points and eight assists in seven games with the Sixers, and the pressure he creates has helped open up a bit of space for 3-point shooters.
Still, the Raptors will be heavy favorites. These are the Sixers, after all, and the Raptors have beaten them by 16 and 20. In the first case, the Raptors let Philly hang around until the third quarter. They followed a similar path in their second meeting. On the second night of a back-to-back and opposite what should be a beatable opponent, it would be nice to see the Raptors get out to a comfortable lead to allow head coach Dwane Casey to give some run to the D-League mob occupying the end of the bench. Delon Wright, Norman Powell, Bruno Caboclo, Anthony Bennett, and Lucas Nogueira have played sparingly due to the team’s inability to take large leads into the fourth quarter, and while one of them will have to join DeMarre Carroll on the inactive list, it’s a good opportunity to see how the others look with bigger minutes.
It could also stand to give Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan some unnecessary but surely welcome rest ahead of a one-game-in-eight-days stretch. After this one, the Raptors are off until Thursday, when they take on the Orlando Magic in England, then they’re off again until the following Monday.
Raptors Updates
Carroll remains out, likely for six-to-eight weeks. The more pressing issue is that T.J. Ross left Friday’s game with a sore lower back and the team’ is unsure if he’ll be able to play Saturday. We broke that injury down here, but this threatens to throw a wrench into the rotation.
PG: Lowry, Cory Joseph, Wright
SG: DeRozan, Ross, Powell
SF: James Johnson, Caboclo
PF: Luis Scola, Patrick Patterson, Bennett
C: Jonas Valanciunas, Bismack Biyombo, Nogueira
Ignore that depth chart, though. If Ross can’t go, it’s a lot of Joseph at the two and a heavier load on Lowry and DeRozan until the game’s put away. It’s a big chance for Powell and potentially Wright, though.
76ers Updates
Joel Embiid remains forever sidelined. Brand is yet to play and is considered questionable, as he probably should be in perpetuity given that his job is more about mentorship than on-court play. In any case, the Sixers’ rotation will look something like this:
PG: Smith, Marshall, McConnell
SG: Nik Stauskas, Isaiah Canaan, Hollis Thompson
SF: JaKarr Sampson, Robert Covington
PF: Nerlens Noel, Jerami Grant, Carl Landry
C: Jahlil Okafor, Richaun Holmes, Brand
One-on-One with Andrew Unterberger
To help set the stage, we reached out to the very talented Andrew Unterberger of The 700 Level (and Spin, where you should check out his excellent cover story on Baroness if that’s at all to your musical tastes). He was kind enough to answer a few questions.
Blake Murphy: ISH SMITH!!!! I don’t have a question, I’m just so, so happy for Smith and you and the Sixers, even if it does threaten to leave my boy T.J. McConnell out in the cold. Ish Smith!
Andrew Unterberger: Yes, Ish Smith. I said the trade would be a success if he got the Sixers two wins by the end of January; he got them three in just six games, quadrupling the team’s win total in the process. Two miserable games in Los Angeles have depressed his overall Philly stats a good deal — though 14 and 8 on 39% FG is still a whole lot more than we were getting out of the PG position previously — but it’s been largely impossible to overstate the effect he’s had on those three wins, and generally resuscitating the team and their offense, since he’s come over.
The biggest thing he’s done for us has been to step up the pace significantly. Our previous point guards were some plodding motherfuckers; even though T.J. McConnell tried his best to stay in motion, he just wasn’t fast enough to run an effective break. Ish is fast enough not only to make teams sweat in transition, but to pressure their halfcourt offense as well; he catches a defender leaning or sprawling at him and he can turn a 5-on-5 into an odd-man rush pretty quickly. Obviously, Nerlens Noel has been the biggest beneficiary — 14 and 10 on 69% shooting with two blocks and two steals a game, basically All-Star numbers since Ish rejoined the fold — but there hasn’t been a single Sixer who hasn’t been helped on offense by the havoc Smith can wreak on a defense. (Except for Robert Covington, who we all hope will come out of hibernation at some point before season’s end.)
His shooting comes and goes, of course, but he’s the only ball-handler we’ve had thus far this season who can comfortably get his own shot off, and when he’s hitting — like he was against the Timberwolves — he’s our best approximation at a late-game closer. He’s the greatest, and anyone who doesn’t give him a down ballot vote for MVP this year has no idea what the word “valuable” truly means.
Blake Murphy: While we’re on point guards, let’s talk racism. Kendall Marshall’s dad seems like a crazy person who is unaware his son is recovering from a torn ACL, hence rest and perceived benchings. However, Nik Stauskas has been bad from long-range for a long time now. I’ve written about how shooters need to keep shooting, and how we have to use Bayesian priors in the face of a high stabilization point for 3-point percentage, but that’s nerd stuff. How much of your rope with him has Stauskas used up?
Andrew Unterberger: I can’t really be objective about Sauce for any number of reasons, but I will say that regardless of how unrealiable he’s been this season, I still like our starting lineup better with him than without. It drives me nuts when he misses open catch-and-shoot threes, but the fact that he actually seems more efficient on bombs when he has to backpedal three steps and then fire to beat the shotclock makes me think his clunking ways really do stem from some mental block which, lord willing, he will some day be able to eclipse. (He did hit six of ’em against L.A. the other night, for whatever that’s worth.)
But in the meantime, he’s starting to do some other things. He’s exerting himself more on D, and is on his way to becoming a serviceable half-court perimeter defender. Pre-Ish, he was our best ball handler in the pick-and-roll, and his chemistry with Jahlil seems to be improving. And dude can get up. He needs to get more aggressive with his rim attacking, but you watch him, and you see that the tools are there with Sauce. At this point I’d start him and give him 25 minutes for the rest of the year, basically no matter what — unless he specifically asks out because his confidence is that shook — and reassess in the offseason.
Blake Murphy: Brett Brown’s been opting to stagger Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor a lot more, because the pair struggles so mightily together. Are you in favor of this strategy, or would you rather let them work out playing together? Do you think they’ll ever be a fit?
Andrew Unterberger: I’d be in favor of a strategy that starts them both but staggers their minutes more. Brown was doing more of that early in the season, but for whatever reason, there are large stretches in the first and third quarters now where neither Okafor or Noel are on the court, which seems silly to me — even with Richaun “Dunkman” Holmes exploding for a dozen slams every fourth game or so. With Ish in tow and Sauce back in the starting lineup, there seems like less reason to me to need to separate Noel and Okafor at all costs — I feel like those pieces can fit into a coherent offense, at the least — but I do think it’s good for both to get a healthy run without the other. Of course, it doesn’t really matter, because this will all become moot when Joel Embiid returns next year and plays 48 minutes a night at both the PF and C positions.
Blake Murphy: It’s way too early, but give me your favorite draft prospects for the Sixers as of this writing. If the Lakers pick conveys (outside of the top-three, a 35.7-percent proposition even if the Lakers finish dead last), do you think about drafting a duo for fit or just taking the two best players available?
Andrew Unterberger: Sadly, I have done very little to zero college scouting this season. Sixer fans seem to have locked onto either Ben Simmons or Brandon Ingram, with Kris Dunn being the sort of contrarian third-party pick, but I’ve yet to watch any of ’em extensively. Assuming the Lakers keep their pick, I think we’re at the point now where we have to consider fit at least a little bit with our drafting — security against Hinkie taking another landlocked big man with our lottery pick might have been the primary reason for ringing Jerry Colangelo on board — though if we have the second top-five pick, that might complicate things a little.
Personally, I’m not sweating the Lakers pick (or the Miami/OKC ones) as much as I am the Sixers not getting screwed with their own pick, Dario coming over from Turkey, and Joel getting healthy — give us those three things and no Sixer fan could possibly complain. If we get #4, Dario stays another year, and Joel is ruled out for the season with a ruptured eardrum, the Process will have a tough time withstanding.
The Line
The Raptors were 8.5-point favorites before they tipped off against the Wizards on Friday and it remained there even after the Ross injury and after DeRozan and Lowry played 40-plus minutes. That’s a nod to Philly’s stronger play of late and the back-to-back scenario, but the Raptors are still largely expected to handle their business.
