Since the departure of Amir Johnson the team has struggled to find someone to play in the frontcourt next to Jonas Valanciunas, trying out players who were either experienced but physically incapable(Luis Scola) or inexperienced and perhaps too physically capable(Pascal Siakam) while refusing to go with what many felt was the obvious solution in Patrick Patterson. When the team finally decided to go with Patterson as the starter and he got injured things seemed rather bleak because the team did not seem to have any viable replacements. They had recently deciding that it may be for the best if Siakam didn’t see the floor much – if at all – and everyone else on the active roster seemed a bad fit, so of course this predicament may have ultimately solved a problem that has plagued them for the last 15 months.
With few options left on the table the Raptors did the only thing they could do: they ignored common sense and conventional wisdom, throwing out their two best remaining frontcourt players in Valanciunas and Lucas Nogueira just to see what would happen. It’s a pairing that shouldn’t work: they operate in the same general regions on both ends of the floor and have a lot of overlap in their skillsets but there are situations where one can cover for the weakness of the other and the coaching staff continues to work small miracles on the offensive end to make lineups like this viable.
With the usual “small sample size” caveat, the numbers are most impressive:
For context, the teams overall offensive rating is 113.3 and their defensive rating is 105.4.
When they play that much length in the frontcourt the Raptors defensive and rebounding problems disappear. Predictably, the offense does take a step back as there isn’t quite as much space as the Raptors slashers and shooters may be used to but the pair more than makes up for it by contesting every shot and actually managing to secure some defensive rebounds. So far the Raptors defense with this pairing is even better than it has been with the Nogueira-Patterson duo on the floor; if the Raptors continue to use the Valaniuncas/Nogueira pairing and they continue to defend this well Patterson may even find himself bumped from the crunchtime defense at times, particularly when the other team has very active offensive rebounders.
The success of the pairing highlights some important things for the Raptors. First, the issue has never really been Patterson coming off the bench as much as it has been who was starting in his place. The team clearly wants Patterson in that reserve role because they believe he’s more effective there and that’s fine so long as you are filling that starting spot with a capable player but to date the team has failed to do that consistently. Last year they never really gave a small starting 5 with James Johnson at power forward a chance; he’s inconsistent and makes questionable decisions but he also makes plays and that should be the most important thing. Making the correct decisions on the floor is meaningless if you are physically incapable of making the subsequent play. As long as they were planning on going with the likes of Scola or Siakam at some point in time it didn’t matter when they played Patterson, they would have been merely shifting around the timing of their poor play. It didn’t have to be Patterson who stepped into that starting spot, just somebody who wasn’t a total liability.
Second, it really helps to highlight one of the best things about this Raptors squad: their staunch refusal to play modern NBA basketball. Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if the Raptors were able to spread the floor and move the ball the way the Spurs, Cavs and Warriors do and I don’t think they’ll be a truly elite team until they manage to do so but there is something beautiful about a team stubbornly refusing to play the way that everyone else plays and being successful at it. It warms the heart of this jaded old punk rocker to see the home team go a little anti-establishment even if it’s not exactly by choice.
Finally, the success of the two-centre frontcourt further drives home the point that getting your best players out there matters a lot more than “fit”. The team has seen a fair amount of success running with unconventional lineups – two centres, no centres, a 6’4” power forward – that it makes you wonder why they’ve stuck with the likes of Siakam and Scola for so long. They don’t play like a typical team and don’t have the roster structure of a typical team so forcing a traditional rotation on the roster is just handcuffing their effectiveness. The team should keep this in mind as they get back to full health and consider continuing to start Valanciunas and Bebe together while finding minutes for Patterson and Jared Sullinger where necessary. They should also continue to look for opportunities to go super-small so long as Norman Powell is outperforming Sullinger; don’t just play the bigger player for the sake of having size. Powell has demonstrated his value over and over again, the team needs to find opportunities to use him.
When you think about the way this team was built it makes perfect sense that they would stumble onto the frontcourt pairing they’ve been seeking for the last 15 months. They made a trade to dump salary and ended up with one of the better two-way players in the league in Patterson. They tried to trade away Kyle Lowry and the trade was vetoed by the other teams owner, followed by Lowry inexplicably becoming a superstar and MVP candidate at the age of 29. A lot of what makes this team great was more or less accidental so of course an injury to a crucial rotation player would lead to the discovery of a potentially great frontcourt pairing. The difficult thing for the Raptors will be figuring out what to do with this once the team gets back to being healthy, but having too many effective lineup combinations is what we would call one of them good problems.
