11-1. Light news day…
Kyle Lowry Is The NBA’s Master Of Taking The Clutch Charge | FiveThirtyEight
Somehow, in a league flowing with more 3-pointers than we’ve ever seen, Lowry has found a way to make momentum-shifting plays without hitting dagger jumpers. Instead, he’s taking dagger charges — stifling an opponent’s last-ditch comeback efforts. He all but sealed Wednesday’s victory by taking one against Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox with a little more than three minutes left. Three days prior, he drew one on the Lakers’ Kyle Kuzma in the final two minutes of an eventual win in Los Angeles.
“It just feels like he always takes them at the right moment, when the other team has some momentum going,” point guard Delon Wright, one of Lowry’s backups, told me after the team’s Monday win in Utah. “He steps in there and gets the call, and it’s kind of defeating for the other team.”
There’s no doubt that Lowry has impeccable timing on such plays, and not just in the waning minutes of close games. Since the start of the 2017-18 season, Lowry has drawn a league-high 49 charges2 — an eye-popping number for anyone, but especially for someone who earns upwards of $30 million a year and plays a position that isn’t known for welcoming physical punishment. Nonetheless, this past Sunday, he drew one on runaway freight train LeBron James, who enjoys an 8-inch, 45-pound advantage on the 6-foot Lowry.
“You get hit in the private area. You might get hit in the gut,” said Lowry, who also led the NBA in assists heading into Thursday’s games with 135 — a whopping 38 more than Jrue Holiday, who ranked second. “You’ve just got to be willing to take the hit and can’t be scared of the consequences. You’ve gotta say, ‘All right, cool — I’m willing to do to help my team win games.’”
Not everyone is an ideal candidate to take charges. Aside from the fact that certain players are horrible at selling officials on bang-bang plays of that nature, there’s also the possibility of getting hurt, all for the sake of trying to force a single turnover.
Now that the dust has settled, what do you think about the changes?
Our record is good. We’re playing well. For me, it’s long-, long-term. Stay level [headed]. You can’t worry about this and that. You got to make sure that when the time comes, April, May, June, that we are still playing. That’s when you get asked about what the team is and what this year is.
Right now, we’re just 12 games in. It’s too early to tell. We got to just stay the path.
Did you still want to be in Toronto?
That’s a good question. I just wanted to be where I could win and I was wanted. And it was here. They didn’t trade me, so I guess this was the situation I was going to be in. And as a professional with the situation I am going to be in, I’m going to do my job.
Pascal Siakam shot 66 percent from the field on the trip, or only eight percentage points worse than Serge Ibaka shot. (If you were wondering how the Raptors created an efficient offence despite not shooting particularly well from deep or particularly often from the free-throw line, there you go.) Siakam was revelatory during the Raptors’ western romp, averaging 15.8 points and seven rebounds per game, establishing himself as part of the starting lineup for now.
Siakam can score in transition or in the halfcourt. The Raptors are using him as an isolation/post-up threat more often than ever before, with Siakam using his shiftiness and length to access angles that most NBAers simply do not have the tools to defend. As it happens, a lot of his baskets look like slightly altered versions of the same play.
Siakam loves spinning to his left shoulder for a right-handed layup. Siakam has other tools at his disposal, able to go straight at a defender or sometimes going to his other shoulder. But much like Jonas Valanciunas early in his career, Siakam has a strong preference to move counter-clockwise toward his dominant hand.
As Siakam becomes a bigger topic of discussion — if he and the Raptors continue to thrive, he should make it to the periphery of some all-star conversations — teams are going to start putting him on scouting reports. The Raptors have tried to emphasize that he is an “energy guy,” and while he does bring that quality, it is a disservice to his skills to label him as just that. There are levels of complexity to all the controlled chaos that is his game. Increasingly, opponents are going to start pushing him to his right shoulder or his left hand, and Siakam is going to have to adjust.
Satisfied? Not these Raptors, not even after historic 4-0 trip | Toronto Sun
“I think we were lucky to come out with this one,” shooting guard Danny Green offered. “You look up and down the line. I think the only thing we beat them in was rebounding. But that’s a good sign for us. It shows how good this team can be. Even though it was an ugly night for us, we were able to grind it out and come out with a win.” Again, it was something they did in Phoenix, and after a rather gruesome first quarter in Utah before righting the ship. In Green’s opinion, and consider him one of the better analysts in the clubhouse, the 11-1 record to date is just a sign of what the Raptors can be. The last thing he wants is for anyone within the room to take this start to the season as an affirmation that the Raptors, even though they entered Friday’s action with the best record in the NBA, are better than everyone else. “Every other team is still trying to figure it out, too,” Green said. “Not many teams have their foundation back. I think we have a good group of people back from last year with a couple of additions which makes it easier, but I’m anxious to see how we are when we are 100% healthy.” And health has been rather fleeting for this team all season.
“We have a lot of potential, I think we can still get better – this isn’t our ceiling,” Leonard told reporters after the win on Wednesday. “With me not even knowing some of the offence, we have Kyle (Lowry) in the game most of the time and he’s controlling the ball and most of the tempo.
“I feel like once I start learning the offence I could even give him a little break and let him get some easier shots even though he’s playing well.”
Lowry has been the workhorse for the team so far this season on both ends of the floor. Without Leonard on the floor, it’s Lowry who’s done the heavy lifting as his usage percentage climbs from 17% to 24%. His shot attempts go from 10.6 to 17.3 per 36 minutes – he’s not only being asked to facilitate the offence he’s being asked to be the offence.
So far with Lowry doing everything he can for the Raptors, it’s worked out, the team is off to an incredible start and Lowry ranks inside the top five in offensive rating with a 121.7. Can Lowry keep shouldering that burden? If it’s up to Leonard he won’t have to.
“He’s leading us to victories, some of it is me – I don’t really know the offence in and out yet so with that we have potential,” Leonard continued.
Nothing But Net: Raptors weren’t at their best in Western sweep — scary | The Star [subscription]
The Raptors can be much more. They are 11-1 and haven’t played particularly well for long stretches of any game. They simply decide “OK, it’s time to win” and they go win, as the just-completed trip underscored.
“None of those (wins) were particularly pretty aside from the Lakers, and even in that second half we gave them a run,” VanVleet said after Wednesday’s win in Sacramento. “It’s finding a way to win, different ways. I think each of the four games were different in their own right, and that speaks to the versatility and the calibre of team that we have.”
The last two wins on the trip — at Salt Lake on Monday, in Sacramento on Wednesday – were mirror images and speak loudly to what the Raptors are right now. They threw the ball all over the arena in the first quarter of each game and got down early, looking all the world like a tired team going through the motions at the end of a trip. But they were unrelenting after that, hunting down the Jazz and Kings and winning going away. They were tidy wins. Workmanlike. Impressive.
“Go down the line, I think the only thing we beat ’em in was rebounding,” Danny Green said after the Kings game. “But that’s a good sign for us, sort of how good this team could be. We’re having fun with it, enjoying it. Even though it was an ugly night for us, we were able to gut it out, grind it out, come out with a win … That’s a good sign early in the year for this ball club. Things aren’t going well, we’re not shooting well, but we find ways to get it done.”
The NBA made a logical decision and will broadcast the draft to determine the teams for the 2019 all-star game in Charlotte. Two captains — the leading vote-getters in each conference — will once again select their teams from a pool of players determined by coaches, fans and media members as they did last season for the first time. But instead of having the “draft” conducted in private and with no hoopla, the league plans to open the process for all to see. It shouldn’t be a big deal, because many all-stars wanted it broadcast in 2018, but seeing who goes where and in which order could be fun for the fans.
“We’ve got maybe eight starters and we’re giving them a chance to start every once in a while,” Nurse said.
It has worked so far. The Raptors (10-1) have the best record in the Eastern Conference through Tuesday and their two main starting lineups — Kyle Lowry, Green, Pascal Siakam, Leonard and Ibaka, or the one with Valanciunas at center — are two of the three best first-quarter lineups this season.
But even with the success, it has not been the smoothest road to go down.
“I wouldn’t call it hard, but it’s not easy, either. They’ve been really unselfish and pretty good about it,” Nurse said. “But, it doesn’t mean I haven’t had a lot of meetings in my office with certain guys.”
Valanciunas, who has come off the bench as much this season (six games) as he had in the previous six seasons, said the switching hasn’t been an issue for him.
“That’s the strength of this team,” Valanciunas said. “We’re looking at the big picture. We don’t want to score 25 [points] or average 30 [points]. We want to win. We do what’s good for the team. It doesn’t matter how many minutes you play, how many points you score.
“What matters is the end result, if you win the game.”
Serge Ibaka’s offensive game has never been better, and here’s why – Hoops Hype
baka wasn’t (and still isn’t) a consistent enough outside shooter to force opponents to respect him when he would spot up from beyond the arc, his ball handle isn’t tight enough to blow by other big men on the perimeter and his playmaking will never be a plus.
Simply put: All of those deficiencies made slotting Ibaka into the power-forward spot a fruitless endeavor, and he went from being a difference-maker in his heyday to being… not that as a member of the Raptors.
What did Nurse do to change that so quickly?
To this point, he’s given Ibaka approximately zero minutes at power forward, and zero minutes next to Valanciunas. In comparison, last year, Ibaka and Valanciunas were sharing the floor for roughly just north of 20 minutes nightly.
Ibaka’s shift one spot up on the positional scale has made a world of difference.
Now, with most of his shots coming around the rim as opposed to 20-plus feet out, he’s having the most efficient offensive season of his career. Not only do that raw stats tell us that but so do the advanced metrics.
Prior to this year, Ibaka’s previous career-best offensive box plus/minus was a meager +0.2. This season? He’s at a whopping +1.4. Furthermore, his Win Shares/48 (0.198) are also way up from the previous top mark of his career (0.181).
Shot selection has a lot to do with that.
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