https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psFmOPMy65w
Raptors’ starting five is better than ever with Marc Gasol healthy – Yahoo!
Gasol is the most underrated member of the starting five in large part because he refuses to score. Some have even argued that Serge Ibaka, who averaged 18 points and 10 rebounds in 27 starts, should replace him in the starting five. That ignores the stark difference in the overall numbers: The starters with Gasol are plus-108, whereas the same group with Ibaka is minus-4.
That’s not a knock against Ibaka, so much as it is a reflection on how much Gasol impacts the game despite not appearing on the scoresheet. Gasol is the glue that holds the starters together, as his game complements the other four, without ever taking any concessions for himself. His role is to anchor the defence, set solid screens, direct traffic with his passing, and to hit enough threes at the top of the arc to pull the opposing centre out of the paint on defence.
To compare it to soccer, Gasol is a defensive midfielder. His job isn’t to finish, he is responsible for linking the play. He has chemistry with everyone. Gasol is a popular pick-and-roll partner for Lowry, VanVleet, and even Siakam when the matchup permits, because he creates space for others to attack. He’s either popping out to the three-point line to clear traffic in the lane, or he’s getting the pass at the elbow, drawing a second defender, and kicking it out to the perimeter for an open shot. And even with Anunoby, the least offensively skilled of the five, Gasol has a knack for spotting his cuts to the basket.
Defensively, Gasol is the Raptors’ best rim protector by a long shot. Toronto is allowing just 98 points per 100 possessions with Gasol on the floor, which ranks a full four points better than any other starter. That mark is also six points below Milwaukee’s defensive rating, and the Bucks only have the best defensive rating of any team in the last five seasons.
Once again, it’s hard to find Gasol’s defensive impact in steals or blocks, because the bulk of what he does is as a helper. Against the Lakers and Heat, it wasn’t Gasol with the primary defensive assignment on Anthony Davis or Bam Adebayo. Instead, the Raptors had him on less dangerous players so that he could freely clog the lane against Jimmy Butler and LeBron James. And of course, there is no better low-post defender in the league than Gasol to neutralize the likes of Joel Embiid and Nikola Vucevic.
Toronto is the best help-and-recover defence in the league. Nurse likes to swarm and overwhelm opponents, especially on drives to the basket. The main piece of that scheme is Gasol, who not only directs traffic as a backline communicator who organizes the play, but he is also a massive 7-foot, 260-pound bear of a man who absorbs and negates all contact at the basket.
Ten things I like and don’t like, including the most exciting nerd thing in the NBA – ESPN
Nick Nurse’s funky zones get the attention, but Toronto’s base defense is one of the best night-to-night shows in the NBA. The Raptors in full flight are beautiful.
They make stuff like this look routine:
The Raptors give up the most 3s in the league, and the most corner 3s in NBA history. Opponents have hit a league-low 33.4% from deep. Toronto has gotten a little lucky, but the Raptors are also dictating the terms of engagement.
They sell out to make sure your best players do not get their favorite looks. That leaves shooters open, but Toronto is better than anyone at closing space. Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby are long, fast, and hoppy enough to help and recover without requiring any rotations. When the Raps do toggle assignments on the fly, there are no hiccups. No one pauses to think. Each player knows what he should do, and has a deep, unspoken faith each teammate will shift accordingly. It is the rarest kind of team mind-meld — the sort of shared knowledge and profound confidence players, coaches, and GMs spend careers chasing.
They discriminate in real time between so-so shooters and those who require constant attention. They are willing to live and die with role players shooting semi-contested 3s late in the shot clock.
And just when you think you have them figured out, Nurse injects matchup chaos. Against Miami this week, he had Marc Gasol defend Jae Crowder on the wing — leaving Anunoby on Bam Adebayo, and Siakam on Jimmy Butler. Nurse picks defensive assignments by skill set as much as position. Gasol was fine chilling on the wing, waiting to pounce on drivers or jog at some Crowder non-corner 3.
That randomness can throw off opponents for two or three possessions — enough to swing a quarter. It’s wild to you, but not to them, and great power lies in the difference.
The matchup juggling confuses opponents in transition if the Raptors get a stop: Do we find our normal assignments, or stick with this bananas setup? Any hesitation opens a window of space somewhere, and those windows are oxygen for Toronto’s transition attack — the best in the league.
The Raptors are one of only two teams in Orlando — Dallas is the other — that entered the bubble in the same condition in which we last saw them: same health, same starting lineup, same rotation.
It shows. These guys are ready. They are real. They have emerged as the biggest threat to Milwaukee in the East, and they are a legit threat — not a token, cutesy one. They do not fear the Bucks.
At some point, they will have to prove they can score enough in a slowed-down game — they rank 15th in points per possession in the half court — but they face that question knowing their opponents must pass the same test against their own defense.
As the Raptors and Grizzlies prepare for a throwback, where is the Naismith Cup? – The Athletic
The Naismith Cup now belonged to Maccabi Tel Aviv.
“It’s very interesting how this all develops, and it revolves a lot around Anthony Parker, you know, the fact that he made that last shot,” said Tal Brody, the Ambassador of Goodwill for the State of Israel, a 10-time Israeli champion with Maccabi Tel Aviv, a 1977 FIBA European Cup champion, a former No. 12 pick in the NBA Draft and a member of the first non-U.S. basketball team to be honoured in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
“We practically played in the U.S. every NBA team, so it was perfect to play in Toronto. Plus we knew in Toronto, we’ll probably have a full house, which I think (MLSE chairman) Larry Tannenbaum might have realized it, but the coaches didn’t realize,” Brody continued. “The fans, because, you know, sentimentally they’re all Toronto fans, but the team coming in from Israel, we’re the underdogs and everything, so it was interesting the environment at the game, the fact that the Jewish community came out in full force and there was an exciting game. I think everybody in Toronto, really, I mean from the basketball point of it, they were very happy because it was a good game.”
By the time the 2006 preseason rolled around, the Naismith Cup no longer had roots in the Raptors front office as Bryan Colangelo was now in charge. The event was quietly shelved. Bryan Colangelo — who did not respond to a request for comment for this story — did however continue the Raptors’ tradition of expanding its brand across Canada and internationally, with the Raptors playing games in Edmonton, London, Vancouver and Montreal (twice) during his tenure, while also visiting Italy and Spain in 2007 and later hosting Lithuanian club Zalgiris and CSKA Moscow.
Early in Colangelo’s Raptors tenure, he placed an emphasis on signing overseas players that delivered terrific value. One such import had caught Colangelo’s eye when Maccabi upset the Raptors prior to his arrival.
“Colangelo wasn’t there during the time Maccabi played Toronto,” Parker said. “But he did tell me later on that he saw the game and started following me and all those things. So it didn’t hurt, but it certainly wasn’t what sealed the deal.”
Raptors’ no-frills formula could take home another title – Sports Illustrated
Indeed. The Raptors are good because they have Pascal Siakam, the reigning Most Improved Player and 2019 playoffs breakout star, who has ratcheted his game to yet another level. There are traces of Leonard in Siakam, embers from a season-long education that remain. Teammates describe Siakam as a workaholic, driven to be great, empowered by head coach Nick Nurse to be the playmaker few saw when Siakam was an undersized center at New Mexico State. Siakam has built upon a breakthrough third season, becoming a more willing three-point shooter.
They are good because of Fred VanVleet, the fourth-year guard enjoying a breakout season of his own. Defense has keyed Toronto’s success, and VanVleet has emerged as an integral part of it. Once something of a liability, VanVleet leads the NBA in deflections and ranks in the top five in steals. Inside the Raptors locker room, everyone knows: If you don’t defend, you don’t play.
“You look bad when you don’t play defense,” said VanVleet. “You stick out like a sore thumb … you don’t want to be that guy.”
The Raptors are good because of Kyle Lowry, the stalwart, Mr. Raptor, arguably the greatest player in franchise history and the tone setter for this group. A competitive fire still burns inside Lowry, the same flame that pushed him past the blacktops in North Philadelphia to Villanova, to the NBA, to an eventual NBA championship. Up 16 points against Orlando, Lowry is barking at Evan Fournier at the free throw line. Up double digits in the final minutes, Lowry is battling Nikola Vucevic on the offensive glass.
What we’ve learned about the Toronto Raptors’ rotation through three games – TSN.ca
If there was ever any doubt – and there shouldn’t have been – Nurse’s plan is to stick with his original opening night starting lineup of Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet, OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam and Gasol.
With VanVleet hurt and Norman Powell playing the best basketball of his career just before the season was put on hold in March, Nurse left the door open for a change. Would he platoon the two guards once VanVleet returned? Had Powell shown enough to supplant VanVleet altogether?
Then, there’s Nurse’s fascination with the so-called “jumbo lineup” that he was experimenting with in practice last month. The Raptors even started their final two scrimmage games with Gasol and Serge Ibaka in the frontcourt, shifting Siakam to the three and Anunoby to the bench. Would that stick?
Nurse’s preference has always been to keep his options open and remain flexible and fluid with his lineups, but he knows what he has in his original group of five. No need to get cute or overthink it, just start your best unit. And this is unquestionably his best unit.
Lowry, VanVleet, Anunoby, Siakam and Gasol played a team-high 280 minutes together before the hiatus, but they hadn’t shared the court since Jan. 28 because of the injuries to Gasol and VanVleet. Still, they haven’t missed a beat.
Through three games in the bubble, the Raptors have outscored teams by 37 points in 56 minutes with them on the floor. They’re holding opponents to a ridiculous 72.5 points per 100 possessions and 30 per cent shooting. On the season, their net rating of 15.4 ranks fourth in the league among five-man units that have played at least 200 minutes together.
It’s not hard to see why they’ve been so successful. Lowry, VanVleet and Gasol are among the NBA’s smartest and craftiest players. Siakam and Anunoby are versatile and athletic. All five can shoot, they can all handle and pass the ball, but most importantly, they are all plus-defenders. That’s what makes them truly special.
Toronto Raptors are primed for another NBA Finals run in the bubble- Sir Charles in Charge
How have the Toronto Raptors been so dominating?
The heart of the Raptors this season hasn’t been any single player, but the man on the bench. Head coach Nick Nurse has proved this season that he is one of the best head coaches in the league, guiding the Raptors throughout all the team’s various injuries.Nurse is simply a tactician. He’s a film junkie and a true student of the game and he brings his addiction to basketball to sidelines with the Raptors. Every game the Raptors can come out and play a different style, one that is all based on neutralizing their opponent.
The Raptors are playing the Heat, no problem Nurse plays a versatile lineup where he gets the switching he needs to stop Miami’s motion offense. Suddenly, the Raptors have to matchup against the mega-sized Milwaukee Bucks, Nurse will unleash a jumbo-lineup of his own.
Yes, the versatility of the Toronto roster needs to be accredited to executive Masai Ujiri, but Nurse knows exactly which buttons to push and when to push them in the game against any opponent and that’s an x-factor not all NBA teams have.
It goes beyond just personnel though, Nurse is an X and O’s guy who has already become on the league’s best tacticians on the bench. The Raptors have the second-best defense in the NBA and it goes beyond just a single system.
Toronto has a disciplined veteran roster and Nick Nurse has been able to use a variety of defenses to become one of the league’s best defenses. Against a team like Philadelphia, the Raptors have run 2-3 zone defense to stifle them, then playing the Rockets with isolation star James Harden the Raptors used a box-in-one defense as they did against Stephen Curry in the Finals.
In the Bubble though, the Raptors have been so dominating thanks to their offense. Call it “summertime” not because the Raptors are one of the team’s playing still in August but because Nurse now has the Raptors offense playing like the famous 2014 San Antonio Spurs which Gregg Popovich famously compared to summertime breeze due to strong ball-movement.
In Orlando, Toronto has figured out their offense and played like a complete healthy unit with absolute unselfishness. Key players Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, and Marc Gasol have been primary facilitators. That ball-movement was even seen against the Magic when both Lowry and VanVleet dished out 10 assists.
The team is moving the ball much more than they were during the season with the philosophy that one player may have a shot, but someone else might have a better one. Every player on the court is moving on from their own egos and looking for the best shot.
Raptors’ Gasol: ‘It doesn’t take a genius to know we have a lot of pieces’ | Toronto Sun
Toronto has one of the better home-court advantages in basketball — which could have come in handy against Boston — but of course that’s negated in the bubble.
Still, head coach Nick Nurse thinks there will still be some advantage to being the “home” team more often than not in the playoffs.
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“I’m not sure the home-court thing won’t be a little bit of an advantage, maybe,” Nurse said earlier this week.“It seems like (the NBA is) tweaking a little bit more and more as they go here in the games, as they’re learning things about how to put the game on in this setting,” he said.
“We’re seeing familiar faces on those screens … you can see family members and coaches’ family members and players family members (virtually in the stands), there is a sense of personal touch to it and who knows what it’ll evolve to here two months from now. So I don’t want to discount the home court thing quite yet,” Nurse said.
Nurse was looking forward to matching up with Boston, a team that actually has been given more favourable odds of winning the title this season than Toronto.
“We take the competition seriously. When there’s a game to be played, we try to win it,” Nurse said.
The Raptors have a deep belief in themselves. They didn’t care what the pundits had to say last year and nothing has changed.
“We are a no-excuse team,” said centre Marc Gasol, who has been masterful defensively during the first three games in the bubble.
A bunch of professional basketball players sincerely enamoured of the parts of the game that don’t involve scoring? While it’s lately been taken as a given in Toronto, let’s just say that for the bulk of the history of this franchise, not to mention most others, such a scenario was the stuff of fantasy. But we’ve known for a while that there’s something different about this group, which has been a top-five-rated defence in the two seasons leading up to this one, and it was running second in defensive rating to the Milwaukee Bucks when the coronavirus demanded a different kind of dedicated lockdown.
Just a week into the game’s return, the Raptors have taken their penchant for getting stops to a more impressive level.
“It’s kind of an interesting thing that they got going. They come to the game and they start figuring out how we’re going to stop (the opponent),” Nurse said. “They really try to make adjustments. There’s communication amongst them, each other … They pay attention to the game plans. They’re basketball guys. They watch the other teams, they study them. They like stopping them.”
Indeed, watching this team in action of late, defence seems like more of a joy than a chore. Toronto is making one of the hardest parts of the game look easy. Which is not necessarily a conference-wide phenomenon among Eastern contenders. The Celtics, for instance, rank fifth overall in defensive rating this season. But in their four games in the bubble, they’ve had a difficult time rediscovering their pre-stoppage stopping power — particularly when it comes to guarding in the paint. As of Thursday morning, they ranked eighth among the nine Eastern bubble teams in defensive rating since play resumed.
“Our defence has to improve,” Boston coach Brad Stevens said this week. “Beginning of the year, I thought we guarded with great intensity. We kept the ball out of the paint. We’re not doing as good a job now keeping the ball out of the paint. So, we just got to figure out. If it gets down there, we’re toast. So we have to keep it from getting there.”
Certainly Toronto’s roster continuity is an advantage — a championship unit largely intact beyond the defection of Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard to the L.A. Clippers.
“We’ve been playing with each other long enough now to kind of know when we’re in sync,” guard Fred VanVleet said.
Kyle Lowry Is Making This Weird NBA Season Feel Normal Again | Complex
Of course, this upbeat attitude would be for nothing if he weren’t playing well. But as coach Nick Nurse told the press before the start of the season, these are Kyle Lowry’s Raptors, and he’s been putting in the work to back up the claim. It wasn’t just his impressive 33 points in a decisive offense against Lebron’s Lakers on the weekend. He’s been spectacular defensively, dominating the court despite an obvious size disadvantage and capitalizing on everything. If the Raptors are “a threat to defend their championship,” as Raptors Republic put it earlier this week, Kyle Lowry “is the single biggest reason why.”
From the perspective of a fan, however, it’s Lowry’s sense of humour that has proven the most surprisingly invaluable. At a time when professional basketball has never seemed darker or more precarious—as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic looms over the proceedings like an invisible threat, and as the enormous social injustice in the United States has turned the NBA into a forum for political activism—the return of the NBA can sometimes feel difficult to justify. Without a live audience, the energy around the court has felt weirdly drained; for the most part, and for many reasons, it’s been impossible to mistake these games for ordinary bouts of basketball.
Kyle Lowry goofing around has made all the difference. His laughing, dancing, and having a blast on and off the court has given this incredibly strange NBA season a much-needed air of normality—it might sound strange to say, it’s made it easier to love basketball again. Lowry has lifted the gloom that’s dogged the Bubble. And for all of us, not just his fellow Raptors, his humour has deepened the team spirit.
Bubble vs. Reality: Doing the right thing with the Toronto Raptors during a pandemic – Raptors HQ
Take the situation with Terence Davis. He was photographed in the Bubble with a noticeable hole in his face mask. It’s the kind of dumb stunt you’d pull if you were trying to make a point. Looking into TD’s social media feed suggests exactly that, and the point he was perhaps trying to make was just as dumb as the stunt. The second you start hearing an internet personality talking about “boosting your immune system” in the face of a global pandemic, it’s time to start walking the other way. In response to all of this, both Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster were quick to confirm: “Leadership is taking care of it.”
What struck me when I tweeted about it (on both the HQ and my personal account) were some of the responses in support of Davis. Some suggested he was free to make his own choice, others wondered what the big deal was — weren’t the players getting tested constantly? To tackle the first part: yes, Davis is free to think for himself, but so is the NBA. In this, they’ve been clear with the health guidelines to be followed by every player in the Bubble. Don’t like those rules? Davis is also free to accept his fine from the league, or to just leave the Bubble and wait it out. Free choice doesn’t mean free from consequences — for oneself or others.
As for the second part, there’s a touch more to discuss here. Yes, the players are indeed getting tested for coronavirus regularly as part of the league’s mandate to monitor the situation and keep the Bubble as solid as possible. But it’s worth remembering that there is a nation-wide testing shortage in America (thanks to its absolutely bankrupt political leadership). This means every test an NBA player gets is one less available for so-and-so off the street, a person perhaps without health insurance or millions of dollars. Now, I want to be clear, it’s not like the NBA is stealing these tests out of the hands of people who need them. But again: the optics of the situation are not great. And it’s worse still when you consider the Disney World staff (who are not receiving any hazard pay), coming and going from the Bubble without getting regularly tested. They deserve protection too.
So yes, Davis can exercise personal choices, and the NBA can have players competing against each other and getting all up in each other’s business, pandemic be damned. But not everyone gets to make those same choices. Some people have to go back to work, some are just trying to get by, and some — most, in fact — do not have leadership taking care of it.
What happens to them?
We’ve got a bunch of NBA awards ballots. These are the very likely winners | HoopsHype
Coach of the Year: Nick Nurse
Another one we thought would be closer. It was not, with Nick Nurse as the runaway No. 1 choice.
Despite owning the league’s best overall record, Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer came in a distant second in the polling. Thunder coach Billy Donovan, who is in the final year of his contract, guided a team that was projected to begin rebuilding with a lottery finish to the playoffs in the loaded Western Conference. Similarly, Memphis coach Taylor Jenkins embarked on a rebuilding project after taking over a Grizzlies team that failed to make the playoffs the prior two seasons.
POLL RESULTS
1. Nick Nurse (100 percent)
2. Mike Budenholzer (37.8 percent)
3. Billy Donovan (21.1 percent)
4. Taylor Jenkins (7.8 percent)
5. Erik Spoelstra (5.5 percent)
6. Brad Stevens (3.3 percent)
7. Frank Vogel (2.2 percent)
8. Doc Rivers (1.1 percent)
8. Nate McMillan (1.1 percent)
Did I miss something? Send me any Raptors related content: rapsfan@raptorsrepublic.com
