There was never any competition for the starting center spot on the Toronto Raptors. After signing a $64 million extension it was clear from the jump that the job belonged to Jonas Valanciunas and nothing short of a catastrophe would take that spot away from him. Then catastrophe struck not once but twice, with the young Lithuanian missing time on two occasions for injuries to his left hand. In his absence Bismack Biyombo thrived, setting team a team record for rebounds in a single game and drawing a lot of attention for his energy on both ends of the floor. Biyombo’s play during the most recent stretch without Valanciunas has been enough to make people question whether Valanciunas should be such a lock for the starting spot – or, perhaps to be more accurate, to make the people who have always been questioning that puff up their chests and raise their voices. The debate has quieted down recently, in part because Valanciunas has played well since his return and in part because bigger issues have come to the forefront but it’s still worth shedding a little bit of light on the subject because even if it’s not a major issue at the moment a closer look helps to identify the real issue with the Raptors starting lineup.
It’s not hard to see where these questions are coming from. Sports fans love “hustle players”, guys who are raw but energetic and effective despite lacking the skills we’ve come to associate with the elite players in their sports. Biyombo is that player through and through – he has trouble catching passes and can’t be trusted to move with the ball but his relentlessness makes him a key contributor by getting him to the offensive glass and seemingly impacting every defensive possession while he’s on the floor. On the flip side Valanciunas is one of those players with everything scouts tend to look for in a big man. He’s gifted with a combination of brute strength and soft hands. He can generate his own offense in the post with his back to the basket or facing up, catch difficult passes on the move and is showcasing a nice passing game when given the opportunity. He’s not quite as quick as Biyombo and doesn’t showcase the same exuberance so it can appear at times that he’s not putting in the same effort – again, fans love hustle so it’s easy to see why some might favour Biyombo as the starting center for the franchise going forward.
A cursory look at the Raptors on/off data seems to favour Biyombo, who is a slight overall positive at +0.9 while Valanciunas is a slight negative at -3.0, but in a team game like basketball things are rarely that simple and for most players the impact they have on their teams performance is at least partially defined by who they play with. When we move beyond the individual on/off numbers and start to look at player pairings or entire five man units it becomes clear that the difference in their respect on/off numbers comes from who they play with, not how they play.
Earlier in the season Daniel Hackett from Raptors HQ did some excellent work looking at how the Raptors impact each others performance and one of the recurring trends was players displaying a tendency to perform better playing with Cory Joseph and Patrick Patterson while performing worse with DeMar DeRozan and Luis Scola, in large part because of the defensive impact of the Raptors reserves. Season to date Valanciunas has played 63% of his minutes with Luis Scola, the crafty old veteran who means well and tries hard but doesn’t seem to have enough left in the tank to be an effective player. Biyombo has played 62% of his total minutes with Patrick Patterson, the energetic stretch four who seems to make the fewest mistakes of any Raptor defender. You can see the impact that has by looking at the numbers for those particular player pairings:
Scola is a drain on both of them, but moreso on Valanciunas. It makes a lot of sense, the Scola-Valanciunas pairing is probably one of the slowest frontcourts in the NBA while the Biyombo-Patterson pairing is by far the most agile one the Raptors have to offer without including walking brain fart James Johnson. Biyombo is more equipped to make up for Scola’s defensive limitations while Patterson benefits greatly from the defensive attention that Valanciunas draws. The defense is pretty good with Patterson and pretty bad with Scola regardless of which center they’re playing with, so all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth over Valanciunas’ defensive struggles seems a little excessive considering it’s unlikely that he’s actually been the problem. Sure, he’s not as good as Biyombo on the defensive end but the gap is not as big as it seems and it’s certainlynnot as big as the gap between them on the offensive end.
Just to drive that home, we have Valanciunas’ top 10 lineups without Scola:
The Raptors are not just good with Valanciunas in the game and Scola on the bench, they’re great. No five man unit featuring Valanciunas without Scola that has played more than 10 minutes has a negative rating and the majority of them are straight up dominant. Yes, sample size is an issue but in total we’re looking at 400+ minutes of basketball that is good defensively and dominant offensively.
When the Raptors effectiveness with Scola plummeted shortly after the start of the new year part of that was due to his cold shooting, but the Raptors were still 6.7 points per 100 possessions better with him on the bench during that recent 5 game stretch where he was on fire. All the hot shooting did was reduce how badly the team gets outplayed with him on the floor. Teams don’t fear his outside shooting much because it’s been inconsistent and he’s not much of a threat to attack closeouts so his shooting doesn’t impact the game like Patterson’s and while he certainly tries his best he’s just not a good defensive matchup for anyone. He kills the Raptors defensive efficiency, doesn’t help their offense much and drags down the play of almost everyone he shares the floor with, especially Valanciunas and all-star guard DeMar DeRozan.
The solution to all of these problems is probably to shut Scola down, there don’t seem to be any lineup combinations that consistently work well with him and many that are consistently terrible. Like Coach Casey I’m wary of breaking up a bench lineup that is working well so I’m not necessarily suggesting that the team just swap Scola and Patterson but the most recent matchup with the Hawks did give us a peak at a solution that may work very well: increase Patterson’s minutes off the bench and start Jason Thompson. They got off to a great start with Valanciunas scoring easy buckets in the paint and the defense holding up with Thompson starting in place of Scola. The starting big men actually finished the game with the best defensive ratings on the team. Starting Thompson but limiting him to around 15 minutes may give the Raptors everything they need: it preserves the bench pairing of Patterson and Biyombo, it gives Patterson more minutes with Valanciunas and it slides Scola into a James Johnson role, allowing him to provide moral support and occasionally provide a different look if matchups suggest it may work.
The Raptors do have a problem with their starting lineup but it’s not the man in the middle and sending him to the bench won’t resolve any of the teams issues. The starting five won’t suddenly become a lockdown defensive unit with Biyombo there in place of Valanciunas, the team defends poorly when either one is paired with Scola. The bench unit doesn’t need the additional offense that Valanciunas provides, that unit already outperforms the starting five on the offensive end. Decreasing or eliminating the minutes that Scola plays with Valanciunas should put an end to their porous defense and slow starts, changing the look of the Raptors from a team whose staring lineup merely keeps the game close while the bench wins it to a team that starts strong and finishes stronger.
