Raptors lose slugfest to Rockets | Ujiri is a giant of a human
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giemSybKdbo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT5e_iRhvS0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbPzHcO2BtY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GMdXti4Lb8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MlFC_p9R5Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N7eg6QrK98
10 things: Raptors roll the dice and lose to red-hot Rockets – Yahoo!
Five — Strange: The Rockets took the opposite approach on defense against Pascal Siakam as they were willing to play him straight-up and often allowed weaker defenders to switch onto him. Siakam did take 22 shots, but he was weirdly passive as he didn’t take most of the opportunities that were given to him. In times where he had point guards on him, Siakam would still reverse the ball and reset as if denying the mismatch for the sake of politeness. Siakam was also nowhere to be seen in crunch time as he failed to score on Harden in the post (that’s his only strength on defense) and generally did not look to demand the ball. Siakam needs to realize that as the leading man, he must rise to the challenge and become more assertive in crunch time. There is no more Kawhi Leonard to bail him out.
Nick Nurse and Mike D’Antoni are exceptionally practical, not mad scientists – The Athletic
Well, since calling the zone sub-optimal, Nurse has leaned on it, or similarly gimmick-adjacent defences, a hell of a lot. Heading into their game against the James Harden-led Rockets on Thursday, the Raptors had used zone on 4.5 percent of possessions, third-most in the league, via Synergy Sports. They allow 0.88 points per possession when playing zone, the best mark for any team that has used it for more than 25 possessions. It is unclear how much that includes the aggressive double teams that the Raptors have sent toward star player after star player, leaving three defenders to guard four players, with those three players having to make savvy decisions in real-time about which shot to surrender.
The latter was the option, taken to the Nth degree, that Nurse used in most of the Raptors’ 119-109 loss to the Rockets. It worked in its primary goal — getting the ball out of Harden’s hands. He took just 11 field goals and six free throws, ending up with just three 3s. The Raptors lost the game, and you can pin some of that on what the defence allowed after the double teams, but more of it on bad rebounding (a secondary effect of the scheme) and the Raptors’ poor offensive effort. The Rockets turned the ball over 23 times yet won the possession battle. Not ideal.
With Harden, the primary defender, generally either OG Anunoby or Norman Powell, face-guarded the Rockets star. If Harden had the ball two dribbles beyond the half court, a second defender, usually Fred VanVleet, came toward him and forced the ball out of his hands. It was then on the Rockets to move the ball quicker than the Raptors, and particularly VanVleet, could recover.
“I’d never run that scheme before, at all,” Nurse said. “There’s probably a lot of polish we could put on it to make it better. But it was interesting, interesting.”
That is the right word for it. It wasn’t necessarily fun, or entertaining, but it was intellectually stimulating, like a chess match. Is that what we want basketball to be, though?
Raptors’ high-risk experiment to contain Harden backfires against Rockets – Sportsnet.ca
The Raptors largely contained Harden, as he scored “only” 23 points on 11 shots, by routinely sending a second defender to him the minute he crossed half and almost always having one defender stand by him long after he moved the ball.
And he willingly moved the ball and his teammates took advantage as Houston shot 22-of-55 from three. Containing Harden wasn’t the problem, but when Rockets not named Harden make 19 threes, you’re going to have an issue, particularly when the Raptors shot just 12-of-39 from deep.
Pascal Siakam led Toronto with 24 points, but he only scored four after halftime on 2-of-8 shooting as the Rockets fed him a steady dose of PJ Tucker and a variety of help defence too.
Harden and the Rockets adjusted and Siakam and the Raptors didn’t.
“We’ve seen it all at this point,” said Rivers, who made three triples and counted five assists in 28 minutes off the bench for Houston. “We’ve been saying for weeks that if teams do that we’re going to make them pay, you know what I mean. I hope teams keep doing that because we have plenty of shooters. It’s very simple to figure out, it’s grade school stuff. Someone flashes to the middle and then they find an open shooter from there. It’s either a lay-up or a three.
“It was an interesting experiment to see it play out,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “I think it was pretty good. It wasn’t great, but it was pretty good. We just weren’t good enough in some of the other areas. I talked about that in pre-game. Against this team, 50 threes are going to go up. What did they shoot, 55? There are 33 long rebounds there. … We’ve got to race those down a little bit.”
But the Raptors’ defensive approach was an extreme response to an extreme basketball event.
Harden is averaging an NBA-leading 24 field goal attempts a game and is on pace for league records in three pointers (14.3) and free throws (13.1) attempted per game as well.
Four out of every 10 Rockets possessions Harden is on the floor for end with him shooting, passing for an assist or drawing a foul. He dribbles the ball more than anyone in the game — often while stationary — and it makes for a lot of standing around for everyone else.
But guess what? It works, even if it’s miles from the up-tempo, sharp-passing, cutting and ball movement D’Antoni introduced with the Steve Nash-era Phoenix Suns that helped usher in the ‘space-and-pace’ approach which has come to dominate the league.
Rockets survive second-half collapse, beat Raptors 119-109 – The Dream Shake
This game was very uncharacteristic to the Rockets we have come to know throughout the first quarter of the season.
For the first time since opening night, someone not named James Harden led the team in scoring. It was in fact Ben McLemore who had the team-high with 28 on 9-18 shooting.
The 28 points are a season-high for McLemore, just three points shy of a career-high. McLemore took all but one of his 18 shots from behind the arc and the team kept rolling with him as he had the hot hand. The plan definitely worked, as Harden garnered much of the attention, leaving McLemore wide open in the corner for most of the night.
It was also the first game back for Danuel House Jr., who came off the bench after missing the past two games with an illness. House scored 14 of his 16 points in the first quarter, taking a lot of pressure off of James Harden and Russell Westbrook, who played 48 minutes each just 48 hours prior to tipoff in San Antonio.
For Westbrook, the fatigue showed as he shot an abysmal 7-27 from the field. He still came out with a triple-double with 19 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists.
In Harden’s case, he looked tired but he had one of his most efficient games of the season, scoring 23 points on 7-11 shooting. Harden shot a season-low six free throws, a far cry from his 24 in the last game. Despite the volume shrinking, the efficiency grew, which is a plus for Harden and the Rockets.
It might have been an unorthodox Rockets game, but they went on the road to defeat the defending champions two days after playing a double overtime slugfest. This is no small feat and it should be celebrated. Perhaps the team could learn from this method of winning and translate it to fit their more common style.
With Harden’s excellent offensive season stealing all the headlines, Raptor fans were quickly reminded that noted Raptor killer, Russell Westbrook is also a Rocket. Harden started the second quarter on the bench, which only opened up the floor for Westbrook to operate. All told, the Rockets grew their 6-point first-quarter lead to a 13-point advantage. By the end of the half, Houston was able to get 10 three-pointers from Danuel House, and a pair of former Raptors, Ben McLemore and P.J. Tucker.
If the first half was characterized by Toronto’s scrambling defense leading to open Houston threes, the third quarter was the desired result of that defensive tactic — shots from anyone other than Harden and shots not falling. With the Rockets’ shooting coming down to Earth, and the Raptors’ outside shooting also still relatively poor, Toronto went to the paint. Lowry, Siakam, and Anunoby all took turns attacking the rim with continued success.
So far this season, Toronto has the number one net rating in the third quarter. That showed for most of the frame, as the team’s defense finally got a handful of stops to gain some much-needed momentum. A 14-1 run in the middle of the quarter gave the Raps their first lead since early in the first.
Although Toronto built a small lead in the third, Houston managed to close the quarter with a couple of triples, sparked partially from a ridiculously early 2-for-1 three-point attempt by Fred VanVleet — one which actually led to a successful Rockets 2-for-1.
In the 4th quarter, Houston’s offensive counter to Toronto’s doubling of Harden started paying off again. Threes started falling and the Rockets built a comfortable 2-3 possession lead. As they showed against Miami, Toronto’s defense ratcheted up a notch, keeping the team in striking distance. The offense just couldn’t convert on enough chances to break through. Siakam was stifled on a few possessions, as Harden’s underrated post defense led to more Spicy misses.
In the final two minutes, with Toronto in transition and down six, Austin Rivers fouled VanVleet on a three. Scotiabank Arena was rocking and momentum was on Toronto’s side.
Until it wasn’t.
Nurse’s plan for Harden works … to a degree | Toronto Sun
Nick Nurse always has a plan.
Without spelling it out, he sounded like he had something special cooked up for James Harden last night.
Nurse was asked if he was going to break out his now-infamous and tremendously ‘janky’ — according to Steph Curry — box-and-one defence with Harden in town.
“It could, it could be, it could be,” Nurse said, stalling while he decided how much he was willing to share. “I think just throw it out there, it’s a night for a box-and-one, it’s a night for a triangle-and-two against (Russell) Westbrook and Harden, maybe some variations of something else we haven’t used yet, too, might appear. We shall see what it feels like.
Then came the real tease.
“We’ve got an idea of something we’re gonna try,” he said. “We’ll see if we have enough guts to go with it and we’ll see how it goes once we do go with it.”
Nurse apparently had the guts.
Harden got picked up by multiple defenders as soon as he crossed the logo at halfcourt who trapped him hard forcing the ball out of his hands.
Blanketing the Beard was an ‘interesting experiment’ for the Raptors — but it blew up | The Star
“James, he’s seen it all,” D’Antoni said.
To which Nick Nurse, Toronto’s concocter-in-chief of inventive coverage schemes, might have replied: Yeah, but he hadn’t yet seen us. The Raptors, after all, have been building an impressive resume of star-thwarting defensive game plans this season. They held Joel Embiid pointless and LeBron James to 13 points on 15 shots in wins over the Sixers and Lakers. They held Kawhi Leonard to 12 points on 11 shots in a loss to the Clippers.
And on Thursday they certainly held down Harden, feeding him a steady diet of double teams that largely kept the ball out of the supreme scorer’s hands. Harden didn’t get a shot until the game was nearly eight minutes old. By halftime he’d only found the space for three field-goal attempts — this from a guy who was averaging 25 shots a night. Heck, he didn’t launch a three-pointer until the third quarter. And he finished with a modest 23 points, albeit on an uber-efficient 7-for-11 shooting from the field.
The Raptors weren’t the first to try automatic double coverage this season. D’Antoni figured Harden had been seeing it for most of the past six or seven games. But D’Antoni said Toronto came with an extreme version of the tactic. Not only was primary defender OG Anunoby glued to Harden. Once the second defender arrived, he stuck around.
“We haven’t seen that exactly,” D’Antoni said. “It was like, ‘No, you play four-on-three after that.’”
The problem for Toronto was that while Harden was quiet, Houston’s other three-point shooters were not. They often found themselves wide open as Harden passed out of the double team and the Raptors scrambled to recover. Ben McLemore, who’d never before taken more than 11 three-pointers in an NBA game, went 8-for-17 from behind the arc. P.J. Tucker, the former Raptor, went 5-for-10. Even a dismal game from Russell Westbrook, who missed 20 of his 27 shots, couldn’t waylay the visitors. When has ugliness ever stopped these guys?
As Nurse said before the game: “You’re giving up something by putting two people on the ball.”
Given that Houston shot 40 per cent from deep all told — 22 makes on 55 attempts, both records for a Toronto opponent — well, the Raptors gave up too much.
The Raptors cooled off James Harden, but the Rockets were just too hot | The Star
The Raptors were bound and determined not to let Harden beat them, aggressively double-teaming the NBA’s leading scorer every time he had the ball to set up the Rockets offence. It was a solid strategy — Harden finished with just 23 points and took only 11 shots — but it came with a cost. The scrambling behind the double team left the Rockets with a handful of good looks for three-pointers and they made Toronto pay.
“It was an interesting experiment to see it play out,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said. “I think it was pretty good. It wasn’t great, but it was pretty good. We just weren’t good enough in some of the other areas. I talked about that in pre-game. Against this team, 50 threes are going to go up. What did they shoot, 55? There are 33 long rebounds there … We’ve got to race those down a little bit.”
Ben McLemore had a career-high eight three-pointers as part of a 28-point night, P.J. Tucker made five and Danuel House had three.
It was a case of the Raptors knowing they were going to give up something with their attention to Harden and hoping they could scramble and recover, or not be made to pay too dearly for it.
They paid.
“I don’t think we played offence well enough,” Nurse said. “I thought we missed open shots. We just didn’t shoot it well enough on the back end.
Ujiri’s efforts have African basketball on precipice of breakthrough – Sportsnet.ca
It’s another touchpoint in Ujiri’s endless quest to raise the profile of Africa within the NBA and to use the influence of basketball and the NBA on the continent to create opportunities for young people there.
This past summer, Ujiri and GOA ran programs in six different countries and have a footprint in nine now. The dream is to be present in all of Africa’s 54 countries at some point in the future. In the meantime, athletes he’s had in his camps are following his path, pursuing athletic and educational opportunities — using the game to find a place in the larger sports eco-system.
The latest is Sarah Chan, a south Sudanese refugee to Kenya who worked for GOA and who Ujiri recently hired as the Raptors’ lead scout in Africa and will be sharing her story with a crowd of 500 North York school children at an event Thursday morning.
But Ujiri wants to do more. He’s come a long way from holding out in his contract negotiations with the Denver Nuggets for his first general manager job for an extra $50,000 for his foundation to help fund his camps, but there are still miles to go in his mind.
The good news is Ujiri isn’t so far ahead of the curve anymore.
Africa may be on the verge of having its NBA moment.
In New York this week, the Basketball Africa League (BAL) – a 12-team professional league run as a partnership between the NBA and FIBA and scheduled to tip-off in March, hosted their inaugural scouting combine.
Early expectations are modest – the league is aiming to echo the G-League in North America, except with a distinctly local flavour — in order to build out the infrastructure of the sport in what Ujiri believes to be overflowing with talent.
And not just basketball talent, he emphasizes.
“For me, with GOA, it became how can you create different paths? What opportunity does sports give you? Because sports are growing,” he says. “There is a huge eco-system around sports that is going to grow on the continent just like there is here.
Did I miss a Raptors article or video? Just want to say hi? Hit me up: rapsfan@raptorsrepublic.com
