Jonas Valanciunas has been trade bait for more time than same-sex marriage has been legal across the United States. Yet somehow Valanciunas remains a Toronto Raptor. In 2018-19, Valanciunas will finally be irreplaceable. For the first time in his career, he could vie for a spot in the all-star game.
The Raptors don’t have a player who can replicate his skill-set. By far Toronto’s best giant, he’ll be a necessity in the playoffs; who else can wrassle with herculean monsters like Joel Embiid? For that reason alone, Valanciunas’ contract of 15.5 M – previously considered an albatross pressing on the metaphorical throat of Toronto’s cap space – has become reasonable. Let’s look at how.
Starting with offence, Valanciunas doesn’t just bring size and strength to the table. He’s long been a ballet dancer in the post. Last preseason, he busted out these gems.
Throw a tutu on him, and those moves belong in the Bolshoi Theater. This preseason, Valanciunas dusted off a eurostep in transition. In between preseasons, he began nailing 3s – at a rate of 40.5 percent on one attempt per game. (Who cares that he generally has enough time to record an itty bitty ballers commercial before his defenders close out – he makes his jumpers! And now that he’s making 3s, his pump-fake, the undisputed best in the world, is once again believable).
Valanciunas’ individual scoring skills have never been in question. He’s one of the league’s best scorers on the roll, in the post, and from midrange. Last season was the fourth consecutive year that he’s shot over 55 percent from the field, which in combination with his newfound distance shooting allowed him to join the prestigious (and totally made up right now by me) 55-40-80 club.
Only three players have ever played the majority of a season while reaching those milestones and attempting at least 30 triples. Kevin McHale (1990-91), Chris Mullin (1996-97), and Valanciunas last year.
Valanciunas did not earn a berth to the all-star game last year, nor did he deserve one. He received a smattering of fan votes in 62 472, a smidgeon of player votes in four, and a big fat zero in media votes. He received fewer fan votes than Gordon Hayward, fewer player votes than DeMarre Carroll, and as many media votes as I. It’s not difficult to see why, as his baseline per-game numbers were not particularly eye-popping.
12.7 points, 8.6 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 0.4 steals, and 0.9 blocks.
Those weren’t enough. Fortunately, Valanciunas will almost certainly improve his total numbers this year, especially in the areas where he’s previously struggled.
Lithuanian basketball journalist Donatas Urbonas reported in July that new coach Nick Nurse has big plans for Valanciunas: “I think [his role] will be continuing to expand as more of a complete player. Not just a low post player. I want him to be able to shoot threes, I want him to be able to drive, to make plays out of blitz screen and rolls, I want him to be a better backdoor passer, better deliverer of the ball. Which, he can do a lot of that stuff already. I think it’s just an opportunity to continue to expand that and do with more repetitions in the game.”
Valanciunas responded to Nurse’s signing, saying, “it’s good news for me.”
Per the beat guys, including Ryan Wolstat, Nurse and Valanciunas have long worked together on the big man’s individual skills, and Valanciunas is reported to be a ‘Nurse guy’. That kind of talk can mean very little, but it could well result in a higher usage rate for Valanciunas, who until last year has been een among the least-likely starters to finish a possession with a shot. And last year when his usage rate finally crept upwards, his minutes shrank.
Statistics taken from nba.com
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He’ll also receive a few more shots per game in the regular season. Even without a leap to minutes in the mid-30s – Serge Ibaka playing far more center minutes will cap Valanciunas’ minutes in the mid- to high-20s – Valanciunas could see his field goal attempts rise by three or four shots per game. That in turn would lift his scoring average (considering he last year scored 1.25 points per shot attempt), to a scaled 15.6 points per game.His usage rate thus far in the preseason has been an encouraging 25.4 percent, or second-highest among rotation players, behind only Kawhi Leonard. His shots per minute have continued moving in the right direction, now up to 0.42. He’s finally involved on offence, and he’ll get far more minutes in the regular season than he has thus far in the preseason.
Valanciunas’ biggest area of improvement should be in his ability to create for others. A year ago, I was raving about relatively run-of-the-mill preseason passes from Valanciunas; let’s make it a tradition.
He reads the floor well and has improved at faster decision-making. He runs the floor with panache, either for offensive rebounds or for deep post position. Against Brooklyn, Valanciunas corralled a rebound, ran the floor, received the ball in the post, and then delivered a pinpoint pass to a backdoor-cutting Fred Van Vleet.
Even when it looks awkward, Valanciunas is solid at kicking the ball out to the perimeter, where there are always waiting shooters.
Despite the low number of touches throughout his career, Valanciunas has never developed an aversion to passing. There has been talk out of Toronto this year that Valanciunas will be used as a passing hub out of the high post, which would be a huge change for a big who’s long been pigeonholed as a screen-setter. However, Valanciunas usually keeps his head up, watching a play develop before he goes to work. Multiple times in the preseason against Portland, Valanciunas worked as a high post passer. Here, he makes the right choice creating out of the high post and easily could have picked up an assist.
According to playbook expert Cooper Smithers, that play has a variety of pieces. The Raptors run motion strong, followed by a slice cut to enter the ball to Valanciunas. A pair of scissor cuts are designed to free up the strong-side shooter above Valanciunas, who in this clip is Danny Green. Coop is amazing, and you should follow him for deep playbook analysis, but the point here is that creative playcalls like ‘slice scissor’ will give Valanciunas passing reps from the post, and it should dramatically increase his assist total.
“Our mindset is play freely,” Valanciunas told The Athletic’s Blake Murphy. “When you play freely, everybody’s touching the ball, everybody’s sharing the ball, everybody has a right to make a decision. Not just a decision to drive to the basket and lay it in. A decision to get somebody open, a decision to have a good pass, whatever. So it’s just our mindset, to be free, share the ball, and play together.”
It’s reasonable to expect his assists per game to improve to two-and-a-half or so, as he’ll receive far more touches in playmaking scenarios, and his passing ability and vision took leaps forward last year.
On defence, Valanciunas has improved dramatically. He is no longer a muscle-bound giant, having slimmed down to improve his quickness and flexibility. Even noted and unabashed Valanciunas-haters have acknowledged his improved body coming into the regular season.
JV hasn't been this trim since his rookie year https://t.co/02GUeKLkF8
— William Lou (@william_lou) October 10, 2018
He’s been better at defending in space so far this preseason. Valanciunas doesn’t need to be an elite, switch-everything defender, and he never will be. He simply needs to be passable in order to not be played off the floor. Valanciunas will never be the team’s best option on players like Kevin Love, but those few instances in which Valanciunas is unplayable are increasingly becoming the rarity instead of the norm.
Valanciunas has become quite adept at guarding two players at once during screening actions, whether on- or off-ball.
That Toronto’s point-of-attack defence has no weak links this year (sidenote: Valanciunas and CJ Miles should have minimal minutes together) means that Valanciunas will rarely be asked to clean up teammates’ messes. When guards do their job, wings stunt and recover, and Valanciunas is alert, a defence anchored by the big Lithuanian can look downright stifling.
(Note that the shot goes in, but Fred Van Vleet likely digs a little too low on the middle pick-and-roll, and Powell should have stunted up higher from the corner to take away the shot. The mistakes were not Valanciunas’.)
His defence at the rim has always been solid, which is why the Raptors built their entire defensive scheme last year on funneling players into Valanciunas. He defended more shots per game at the rim last year as Steven Adams, and he forced players to shoot worse at the rim than Clint Capela.
Valanciunas’ block totals should rise subtly due to increased minute totals. However, Valanciunas’ increased quickness should allow him to collect more steals, which he showed off in the preseason, ranking 33rd in the NBA with 1.5 steals per game. That should drop in the regular season, but a steal a game isn’t out of the question.
Valanciunas’ rebounding rates have always been incredible, ranking 80th percentile or above for bigs at both offensive and defensive rebounding for each of the past three years, per Cleaning the Glass. With a few more minutes, he’ll easily reach the important-for-all-star-consideration benchmark of double-digit rebounds per game. If his minutes increase to 27-per, with identical rebounding rates as last year, Valanciunas will snatch 10.4 rebounds per game. He’ll likely collect even more, as he’ll play far fewer minutes this season tethered to another big man in Serge Ibaka, meaning Valanciunas will be asked to entrap an even higher percentage of defensive rebounds.
So that places my wildly scientific, yet somehow conservative, estimates for Valanciunas’ upcoming season per game stats at:
15.6 points, 10.4 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1 block, and 1 steal.
Will that be enough for an all-star berth? Last year Andre Drummond reached the all-star game with similar traditional stats, dramatically inferior shooting splits, and likely worse advanced stats. Al Horford played in the same all-star game with worse traditional stats, slightly worse shooting splits, and likely superior advanced stats.
It’s not out of the question. Name recognition will hurt Valanciunas, as it’s easier to reach the all-star game once you’ve already made it in the past. It will also hurt Valanciunas that Lowry and Leonard will likely already be representing Toronto; any stumbles from the team, and they won’t deserve three all-stars. But projecting a reasonable step forward from Valanciunas gives him a shot.
While the league and its pundits have loudly and proudly proclaimed the death of the traditional big man, Valanciunas’ development has engendered a dramatic shift in perception regarding his importance. He remains a traditional big, though he has fleshed out his skills in every area. Every team still needs at least one traditional big man, and Valanciunas has worked his way from obsolete to essential in the span of one season. That magic act is worth more than an all-star berth on its own.
