Maxing out Valanciunas tall order for Raptors: Cox | Toronto Star
This can’t be about any one player. At the same time, it’s hard not to feel — watching this team night in, night out — that centre Jonas Valanciunas and his role have hit a brick wall. For a team looking for answers, at least part of the focus has to be on the 24-year-old centre.
Now, if you’re looking for a rant on how J.V. must go, you’ve come to the wrong place. More than anything, there’s just confusion concerning where he fits and his future. Remember opening night? Valanciunas poured in 32 points and snared 11 rebounds against the Detroit Pistons. The matchup was the right one, and it certainly fuelled the sense that this, the Lithuanian’s fifth season, might produce a meaningful leap forward in the big man’s production and alter the look of the team.
The second game of the season was a loss to Cleveland, and while Valanciunas still had a double-double with 10 points and 17 boards, the team shot 38 per cent from the field and Cleveland’s game plan of taking away DeRozan and letting the other Raps step forward exposed the support group and the bench.
It’s now been like that most of the season. Some nights, Valanciunas is a big part of it. Some nights, he’s an afterthought. He’s averaging 27 minutes, but some nights it’s almost like Casey feels he can’t be used. Sunday against the Magic, Nikola Vucevic, Valanciunas’s man, just kept stepping outside the arc and hitting threes, another big man stinging Toronto with outside shooting.
Raptors searching for answers on defensive end – Article – TSN
This doesn’t appear to be smoke and mirrors. Unlike other struggling teams around the association, their recent bout of adversity hasn’t splintered them, at least not yet. However, with each passing loss the tension is building and, with it, the sense of urgency rises. What was once a harmless mid-season slump threatens to grow into something a lot more damaging.
Like the rest of us, the Raptors are trying desperately to get to the root of their broken defence. As they search for answers, they’re coming to realize that the problem may not be a tangible one. It can’t be solved with a simple adjustment or lineup change, but the longer it persists, the more it could, eventually, tear them apart.
“It just comes down to the will,” the always candid Patrick Patterson said after Sunday’s loss. “We can do it. We’ve done it before, we’ve shown we can do it for long periods of time, but it just comes down to the will and the want to actually do it and do it on a consistent basis. Not every other game, not once in a blue moon, but every single day, every single time we step out on that court. We can do it. It’s just each and every individual on this team wanting to do it and putting it into action.”
Without being quite as blunt, former Raptor Bismack Biyombo echoed a similar point: it’s about effort and a commitment to the defensive end.
Asked if he can explain his old team’s defensive regression this season, Biyombo implied that their top priority may not be getting stops, as it was last year. Specifically, he mentioned the Lowry-plus-bench lineup he was often a part of (Lowry, Cory Joseph, Terrence Ross, Patterson and Biyombo), one of Toronto’s best. They would take pride in shutting down the other team, they had fun with it.
Casey puts the Raptors’ defence on notice – Video – TSN
Sam Mitchell joins SportsCentre to explain how Dwane Casey is putting the Raptors on notice about their defensive play and also thinks it’s still too early to hit the panic button.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BP6RyCTg40L/
Stars in the city: Complicated history for star players in Toronto – Sportsnet.ca
“It’s just the way the business goes,” DeRozan says of the NBA’s roster churn. “So many guys year-in, year-out are coming into the sport and your window is always closing smaller and smaller every year, so the opportunity is not as great for the organization or the player to stick through that. Luck has to be involved, timing, everything has to fall into place for that to happen that way.”
Certainly all those elements aligned for DeRozan, who at 27 is only getting better as the Raptors enjoy the best competitive window in franchise history. Re-signing the player was the obvious choice for a team that pushed the eventual NBA-champion Cleveland Cavaliers to six games in the Eastern Conference Finals. And though there was a year of speculation that the native of Compton, Calif., would head home to Los Angeles and take over from Bryant with the Lakers, such talk was more a product of the chattering classes than anything of substance.“For me, it didn’t matter what someone else did, I never followed a trend,” says DeRozan. “I could have been playing in Alaska – once I have the mindset I’m all in, I’m all in through good and bad. That’s a credit to the type of person I am, so once I got drafted here, I was all in. That was always my mindset. It was never, ‘What if I played here?’ I never had questions about going anywhere else. That made everything easy for me with going through the tough times, and enjoying the good times, as well – having that mentality from the get.”
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Game Preview: Raptors vs. Pelicans | Toronto Raptors
Locker room accountability
As the team works its way through this slump, Dwane Casey, Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan have all discussed the importance of everyone keeping each other in check.
“It starts with us,” DeRozan said of himself and Lowry. “We’ve got to establish that early by being more vocal and doing it. We’ve got to be the first to do it and let it trickle down.”
Lowry pointed to the camaraderie of a close-knit locker room as a positive when dealing with adversity throughout an 82-game season. With everyone understanding each other’s intentions, calling out mistakes and giving instruction becomes easier.
“It’s all just about talking and communicating,” Lowry said. “We have a great team and a great vibe in here. We just have to get a little bit better communication going within our locker room and between each other and just push each other to be better.”
While communication in the locker room is important, it is crucial that it crosses over onto the court as well.
“I think it’s just in general – on the floor, in the locker room, all over,” Lowry said. “We are good off the court. Off the court we have a great team and great chemistry. On the court we have to be able to get on each other a little more. We don’t have to but it’s OK for us to do that. We have a good enough team and guys will understand if someone says something it’s out of the good of their heart and they’re just trying to make the team better.”
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I like Terrence Ross off the bench; he’s my instagram avi, in fact! He’s a willing shooter from all over the floor and is a surprising shooter from mid-range. E’Twuan Moore will probably spend time chasing him around screens, but this guy is generally a 6th Man of the Year candidate thanks to his scoring ability. Ross went off for 51 like forever ago… okay, 3 seasons ago… and you never know if he’ll do it again.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BP6jQHbATHw/
New Orleans Pelicans at Toronto Raptors: Tuesday NBA preview | Toronto Star
KEY MATCHUP
Davis vs. Valanciunas
Davis is one of the new wave of NBA big men, as comfortable shooting jump shots as he is with his back to the basket, and Valanciunas’ defensive skills will be tested. Look for Lucas Nogueira to get some time on Davis as well.
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