https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaEs-YSN7wM
Nurse on Coach Kyle: "Obviously a lot of years and a lot of smarts in the game and the guys listen to him. He jumped out there in a drill today to say 'we're not quite doing this right, here's what it should look like', and he walked them through it… He's a good coach."
— Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) November 26, 2019
Nurse says it'll likely be 4 weeks for matt Thomas (broken finger)
— Eric Smith (@Eric__Smith) November 26, 2019
It was a masterclass in how to defend Embiid, one that can’t easily be replicated by other 76ers opponents. Gasol proved in the playoffs a year ago that his defensive peak remains high, even if his overall game sometimes lacks its prior aesthetic appeal. He is a difference-maker thanks to his size and physicality, and more importantly thanks to his intelligence; his defensive impact has stood out all season, and Monday offered a high-leverage moment for that impact to be appreciated.
Gasol was not alone in shutting down Embiid. Even shorthanded — the Raptors were without six players, including the only other centre on their roster in Serge Ibaka and their next-biggest option in Dewan Hernandez — Nick Nurse was able to help his team’s cause with smart schemes and rotations. Gasol was tethered to Embiid like he eventually was in the postseason, entering and exiting at his non-standard cadence to make sure the likes of Chris Boucher and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson weren’t charged with that assignment. Nurse deployed Boucher as a power forward in Fred VanVleet- and Gasol-led bench units, and he used Hollis-Jefferson in multi-forward lineups when Embiid sat and Al Horford manned the pivot. (That VanVleet-Gasol bench unit, by the way, has some nice two-way chemistry building.)
Nurse’s rotations looked to minimize not only Embiid’s potential but also the potential everywhere — the Raptors can’t quite match size, but they have stout enough post defenders to negate some of Philadelphia’s edge there, and because the 76ers are light on outside shooting, they could dig down into the post or get arms into driving lanes aggressively. When VanVleet got into first-half foul trouble, Nurse turned to gigantic lineups with Pascal Siakam as the de facto shooting guard or Norman Powell as the smallest player on the floor.
It was a smart rotation pattern with clear lessons from May, and those lessons were obvious in the actual schemes, as well. When the Gasol-Embiid matchup was taking place, the Raptors adjusted their approach to discourage Embiid field goal attempts. They made more of a point of marking him as a trailer in transition so he couldn’t initiate half-court possessions surveying the floor against a flat-footed defender or launch uncontested 3s from the top of the arc. They tweaked their pick and roll and dribble handoff scheme so that Gasol offered little to no help on the ballhandler, which allowed Josh Richardson to have a strong night from midrange but limited Embiid’s utility on the role, where he’s normally a threat to score, establish deep post position or kick out to shooters.
Embiid becomes latest victim of Raptors’ star-stopping defence – TSN.ca
Embiid is just the latest victim. The Raptors have held the 12 all-stars they’ve seen this season to a total of 174 points – nearly 100 fewer than their combined season averaged – on just 34 per cent shooting, down from their season mark of 47 per cent.
In the span of four days over their Western Conference road trip earlier this month, the Raptors limited LeBron James (13 points on 5-of-15 shooting), Leonard (12 points on 2-of-11) and Damian Lillard (9 points on 2-of-12) to 34 total points on 24 per cent shooting.
In two games against Orlando, they’ve held Magic centre Nikola Vucevic to eight points on 2-of-20 shooting, though he left the second meeting early with an ankle injury.
Even Doncic, who managed to score 26 points in the Mavs’ mid-November win over Toronto, did most of his damage from the line and shot 5-for-14, well below his season mark of 49 per cent.
The only established star to really go off against them to this point is the reigning NBA MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo, who had 36 points on 14-of-20 shooting when the Bucks defeated Toronto in Milwaukee at the start of the month.
With the exception of Antetokounmpo, the Raptors have managed something that every team goes into every game trying to do, but few are able to execute successfully.
There’s a select group of players that – as the old adage goes – are too talented to stop, that you can only hope to contain. The goal is generally to make life as difficult as possible on those players, challenge them, and hope to limit the damage they cause. But, more often than not, Toronto has actually shut those players down.
That’s a credit to Nick Nurse and the coaching staff for the game plan and preparation, as well as the personnel for going out and executing it.
Nurse and his Raptors shutting down opposing stars | Toronto Sun
As head coach, Nurse gets the lion’s share of the credit for these schemes. One morning sports radio host dubbed him the “Eliminator” for the Raptors ability to erase an opponent’s most productive player on a given night.
And Nurse certainly has plenty to do with these schemes. But by no means is he doing this alone; he has three lead assistants who he considers head-coaches-in-waiting in Adrian Griffin, Nate Bjorkgren, and Sergio Scariolo.
Nurse was quick to bring them into the mix when the plaudits started flowing yesterday for the team’s defensive dominance.
“I’ve said it many times and I should probably say it more often, as far as a coaching staff goes, those guys are big time,” Nurse said. “All three of those guys — Adrian, Nate and Sergio — they are all head coach-level guys and they take these game plans and they dig into them. They eat them up and spit them back out to our players in an incredible way, an incredible format and they are really good.“
But without buy-in from the players, none of the best laid plans mean a thing. And Nurse knows this.
“Give guys all the credit, they’ve gone out there and executed the stuff,” he said. “And played hard, right? They’re playing hard, man.”
Nurse, Raptors coaching staff getting the most out of shorthanded roster – Sportsnet.ca
We’re talking about this because Monday’s 101-96 Raptors victory over the 76ers brought a fresh example of the high-level defensive game planning Nurse is referring to. Philadelphia posted a season-low point total, had its second-worst true shooting percentage night of the year (50.5), and was held to six fewer points per 100 possessions than it was averaging coming into the game.
Neither Tobias Harris nor Al Horford could get going. Ben Simmons, Philadelphia’s long, versatile point guard, was bottled up all night by a combination of OG Anunoby and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, finishing a season-low minus-eight. Joel Embiid, a perennial all-star and MVP candidate, had perhaps the worst game of his career.
Blanketed by Marc Gasol — plus the swarming help of Pascal Siakam, Anunoby, Hollis-Jeferson, and others — Embiid didn’t score a point, suffering a similar fate to several stars the Raptors have slain this month. LeBron James, Damian Lillard, and Nikola Vucevic weren’t nullified to quite the embarrassing extent that Embiid was. But they were far from themselves. And like Embiid, their teams lost.
“I give credit to our guys to go out there and put the work in. Take [Monday] night, for example. Marc Gasol, he’s as good as it gets, man, as a big-man defender. Combination of size, physicality, IQ, effort — you start listing all those things and your defensive mentality becomes pretty good. And it kind of spreads a little bit, I think,” Nurse said. “That’s where it starts — some willingness, some buy-in, some effort. And then there’s some schemes that you’re using, too. Some of those schemes are really good.”
Some of Toronto’s most effective star-stopping schemes this season have been modifications of zone coverages, not unlike the box-and-one strategy Nurse famously utilized against Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors during the NBA Finals. Three or four Raptors will hang back in assigned areas around the paint, while one or two of their teammates chase around the opposition’s primary threats, trying to force the ball out of their hands or deny it to them altogether.
That’s what worked against Simmons, who the Raptors frequently picked up and pressured in his own end, taking away the runway he likes to use to build momentum and get going downhill. Meanwhile, Toronto’s collapsing zones eliminated Embiid’s time and space, forcing him to work through traffic towards the basket and try to navigate his way out of traps and double-teams.
With each win, the Raptors are proving last year’s success wasn’t because of one man. The title run never happens without Leonard, that much is obvious, but it’s also becoming clear it wouldn’t have been possible without guys like Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet and Marc Gasol as well.
Most of the talk at the start of the season centred around the inevitable rebuild. Siakam was locked up as the cornerstone of the franchise, a building block for the next era of Raptors basketball. OG Anunoby was considered another valuable piece, but outside of that there didn’t seem to be much reason to hope, even in a conference that was there for the taking.
Well, what a difference a few weeks can make. The Raptors are not only surviving without Lowry and Ibaka, they are thriving. The season is barely a month old and already Toronto has signature victories over the Lakers and Sixers, with narrow losses to the Celtics, Clippers and Bucks on the road. The overall record of 12-4 is good enough for fourth place in the conference. A perfect 7-0 mark at home matches the franchise record set last year.
There’s a lot to like about this current roster and yet it’s clearly not getting much respect. In ESPN’s latest power rankings, Toronto wasn’t even included in the top 10 despite its strong start. The underdog status isn’t going away any time soon, despite being the reigning NBA champions, but at least some people have started to take note.
“They’re a good team,” Sixers star Joel Embiid said after being held scoreless for the first time in his career on Monday night. “They’ve got guys that can do a lot of things on the basketball court. They’re well-coached and they do their jobs and they made sure that they stuck with the plan they had, especially taking me out of the game. Defensively, they’re everywhere. They’re so long and they make sure they pack the paint.”
The Raptors Are Doing Just Fine Without Kawhi — For Now | FiveThirtyEight
As a whole, Toronto has dipped from its fifth-ranked perch on offense a year ago. But it still ranks eighth in efficiency this season, despite having to adjust to Leonard’s absence. One of the factors offsetting Kawhi’s irreplaceable shot-creating skills has been a change in shot selection. Leonard is one of the league’s foremost midrange artists, taking roughly half of his shots from there over the past two seasons (according to data from CleaningTheGlass.com), and he’s so good at making them that it works for him as a sustainable strategy. But dealing with more mortal talents, the post-Kawhi Raptors have gone back to being one of the league’s most midrange-averse offenses, just like they were before Leonard arrived. According to Second Spectrum’s quantified shot quality metric, only three teams (the Bucks, Suns and Rockets) have had a higher expected value on their average shot this season than Toronto, up from 17th place last season. If you’re wondering how a team can lose a future Hall of Famer like Kawhi and somehow improve from an effective field-goal percentage of 54.3 last year to 54.6 this season, getting better shots is a big part.
The emergence of Siakam as a legitimate star is another. The versatile 25-year-old forward already had an intriguing set of potential career paths laid out in front of him, but his development as a major scorer has been a pleasant surprise for Toronto this year. Siakam’s 24.7 points per 36 minutes ranks 20th in the league among qualified players, with a usage rate (29.7 percent) approaching what Leonard had last year. That expanded role extends to other areas of the game as well: Siakam has a higher assist rate (with a lower turnover rate) and rebound rate, and an overall RAPTOR wins above replacement mark (1.6) that also ranks 19th in the NBA this year. Along with OG Anunoby and rookie Terence Davis, both of whom have low usage rates but are among the most efficient offensive players in the NBA, Siakam’s improvement has helped Toronto survive offensively without Leonard.
Perhaps even more remarkably, the Raptors have also weathered the loss of Kawhi without really missing a beat on defense. Leonard is known as one of the premier wing defenders in basketball, capable of shutting down any assignment when needed, so it’s surprising that Toronto has improved its shot defense (from an opposing effective field-goal percentage of 50.9 to 47.4) while blocking more shots and fouling less — and forcing basically as many turnovers — without Leonard. It’s been a total team effort, with six of the seven common regulars4 between the 2018-19 and 2019-20 Raptors seeing their RAPTOR defensive rating either stay the same or substantially improve. (The only exception is 34-year-old center Marc Gasol, who is in the midst of a very down year.)
Raptors proving they don’t need point guards (for at least 10 minutes a night) – The Athletic
VanVleet cannot play all the time, though, and the Raptors have no true third point guard behind the two starters. So with Lowry out of the lineup and VanVleet on the bench, the Raptors have three main options to act as the offensive hub. The first is Marc Gasol, the best passer on the team, full-stop, who regrettably is best advised to not dribble while facing the basket two times in a row, except if he is going to dust Joel Embiid at age 34. The second is Terence Davis, an undrafted rookie who is a combo guard, best suited to play off the ball at this stage of his career, with some unrefined but workable ball-handling skills. Finally, there is Pascal Siakam, who — well, why put limits on Siakam at this point? He’ll probably be dancing, bobbing and weaving before hitting Curryesque 30-footers at this time next year, given his rate of improvement. Still, he is just now figuring out how to handle double teams and navigate the pick-and-roll as the decision-maker. He has a pedestrian 1.42 assist-to-turnover ratio.
That is why Nick Nurse wants to keep VanVleet on the floor as much as possible. Since Lowry got hurt, VanVleet has averaged not even 10 minutes of bench time per game. And while the Raptors looked lost on offence without him early, their offence with VanVleet on the bench is now scoring 124.2 points per 100 possessions, which is astounding.
The conclusion is obvious.
“What are we playing Fred for?” Nurse said. “Get him off the floor.”
OK, so Nurse was joking, and he is obviously correct to lean heavily on the team’s one healthy point guard, even if you can quibble with the precise number of minutes he is playing. Still, even though the 74-minute sample size is small, and even though the level of competition varies and is never against teams’ best lineups, it is just another example of how the Raptors have managed to figure things out this year.
“I’m really just trying to get through those moments, to be honest. I’m not saying it’s survival mode, but you got to get him off the floor some and rest him some, and rest Pascal some,” Nurse said on Tuesday. “I know I’m not doing it too often, but I’m just trying to piece it together so it continues to flow and there isn’t a total breakdown out there. And it’s been good.
Pascal Siakam Out-Trolled Super Troll Joel Embiid – The Ringer
On Monday, Siakam continued to show his worth, dropping 25 points on 9-for-19 shooting with seven boards and two blocks. It was a strong performance, and one made even more impressive when compared to his countryman and fellow ascendant Eastern Conference big man, Joel Embiid. As Sports-Reference’s Mike Lynch pointed out, Embiid became the first player in at least 35 years to go scoreless despite taking at least 10 field goal attempts and three tries from the free throw line. The result was the worst game of Embiid’s young career: zero points on 0-for-11 shooting, zero blocks, 13 rebounds, four turnovers, and five fouls. And to make matters worse, Embiid—the Patron Saint of Opponent Trolling—could only watch helplessly as Siakam yammed and set Scotiabank Arena ablaze. As of press time, Embiid had yet to post anything on the ’Gram.
In a game marked by weirdness (see: this Ben Simmons halfcourt 180-degree, game-tying 3-point attempt), Siakam’s continued dominance was a stabilizing force. The forward has now scored at least 20 points in 11 of his 16 games, and has broken 30 six times—one more than he did all of last season—which he did in a win over Atlanta on Saturday. The season is still young, but in its early going, Siakam has been a star, and Monday served as something of a Heisman Moment.
Much like Joe Burrow’s dominant performance over Tua Tagovailoa and Alabama in this month’s LSU-Alabama matchup, Siakam’s showing against an elite defensive team and a star center like Embiid is noteworthy. The MVP award, like the Heisman, is awarded for a body of work and consistent excellence, but that doesn’t mean highlight packages and individual games don’t matter. Siakam was the best player on the floor in Toronto on Monday. His on/off numbers are by far the best on the roster (plus-12.0 points per 100 possessions with Siakam on the floor, minus-8.7 with him on the sidelines), and every Raptors possession is made better with his involvement.
Siakam is still a second-tier MVP candidate thus far, idling in the shadow of former winners like LeBron James, James Harden, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, and fellow fast-rising youngster Luka Doncic. Climbing into that top group will be difficult. But with performances like Monday’s under his belt, it’s only a matter of time.
Why Marc Gasol owns Joel Embiid every time they play – Cl;utch Points
Much of Embiid’s dominance stems from the fact that he is bigger and stronger than just about everyone in the NBA. He doesn’t have the versatile post moves of a Tim Duncan or a Kevin Garnett. He doesn’t have the skill of a Dirk Nowitkzi. He is simply a powerful force who gets a large number of buckets from sheer will alone.
That’s not to say that Embiid isn’t skilled, because he unquestionably has terrific ability, particularly for a man of his size, but the fact that he labors against bigger centers does indicate that his size plays more of a role in his effectiveness.
This isn’t just limited to Marc Gasol, either.
Remember: two years ago in the playoffs, then-Boston Celtics center Aron Baynes proved to be a kryptonite of Embiid, as Baynes is one of the few players in the league who is every bit as strong — if not stronger — than the All-Star. Embiid tried his best to go to work in the post against Baynes, but was either forced into tough shots or was pushed away from the basket, where he had to settle for long 2s and some 3s.
Gasol is a similar deterrent.
He’s big, he’s strong, he’s tough and he’s crafty. This is a former Defensive Player of the Year we are talking about here, and he isn’t exactly fun-sized.
And while Gasol and other bigger centers like Baynes absolutely deserve credit for their tremendous defense, Embiid also needs to shoulder some of the blame here for not adjusting.
Let’s face it: zero points is zero points. I don’t care who is defending you. If you are a superstar and an MVP candidate, you can’t be putting up a doughnut. It’s unacceptable.
Vince Carter reflects on his Raptors misses and Toronto’s surreal NBA title win | Toronto Sun
As much as the famous missed shot against the Sixers still stings, Carter insists it’s just one part of his journey.
He pointed out that he sees the 22 years as all coming together to form a whole, to get him this far. Interestingly, Carter specifically mentioned his ridiculous, clutch three-pointer from the 2014 playoffs as the Yin to the Yang of the Raptors miss. Though the Mavericks would lose the series to Kawhi Leonard and the eventual NBA champion San Antonio Spurs, with just under two seconds left, Carter had given the Mavericks a 2-1 series lead with his improbable shot which followed Manu Ginobili putting the Spurs up by two.
“(There are) lessons that I’ve learned from each decade that I still cherish. I think sometimes we always want the good, but I think we learn a lot from painful situations,” Carter said.
“So each decade has been good and bad, but it’s all worth it. I’ve had things that I’m very proud of, and there’s times that I wish I could take back that shot that I missed, I wish I could have that back. But in my mind I got redemption playing for Dallas when I made the shot against San Antonio. So it’s so many great things, ups and downs that I’m very thankful of. I wouldn’t change a thing because I think going through it all still has me here today and now,” Carter said.
Carter is slated to make two more appearances in Toronto before he finally calls it quits: On Jan. 28 and on April 10, the fourth-last game of his career.
