Raptors’ bad start transcends normal ‘it’s early’ narrative – The Athletic
“It’s definitely (tense) in the locker room,” Alex Len said. “Nobody likes losing.”
“Like tonight, for example, I thought we fought pretty hard, we played well enough to win in spurts, not in the entire game,” Fred VanVleet said after Saturday’s loss in New Orleans. “But we’re in a hole, so this one hurts a lot more than it would if we were 4-0 or whatever our record is. You know what I’m saying? If this was a regular road loss, we would just shake their hands and get on the plane. But once you get in that hole, each one (loss), you feel it more and more.”
That is the closest any of the Raptors have come to expressing the reality of the situation and striking an unhappy medium between mild concern and outright panic. There are a few reasons the tone is tending toward the latter, the most obvious of which is unfamiliarity. There are too many stats to choose from that say the same things: The Raptors have not been in this position since before they traded Rudy Gay in December 2013. That is the last time the present felt so shaky, even if the seven-year playoff streak that followed has been dotted with moments of regular-season uncertainty, particularly in the winters of 2015 and 2017.
Greater distress should be reserved for the how, not the what. VanVleet said that he felt like the offence was ahead of the defence, but that is just not the case. Heading into Sunday, the offence ranks 28th in points per possession, while the defence ranks sixth. Early-season caveats apply, as Van Gundy said. You can expect some of that to right itself, as the Raptors currently rank 30th in the league in points per transition attempt, after spending the past two years near the top of the league. The half-court offence is 24th, though, which meshes with how poorly the Raptors are playing in crunch time. Combined with Pascal Siakam’s continued struggles, the Raptors’ over-reliance on 3-pointers, which makes them prone to dry spells, and no obvious leap offensively from OG Anunoby, a lot of what is going on is distressingly familiar. If assistant Chris Finch is working on changing how the offence works, we haven’t seen much of it yet. Additionally, the Raptors are grabbing just 62.2 percent of available defensive rebounds when Chris Boucher is on the floor, problematic since he’s been the most productive centre from an offensive perspective by quite a bit.
Yet, if those 14 minutes had gone notably better, all of the above would be things to monitor and not bright-red warning signs. There are not-insignificant reasons for optimism: Norman Powell will not be this bad at the rim, and Siakam cannot possibly be this bad all year long. Some members of the back end of the rotation will improve, while others will be flipped for players who produce more.
Things will almost certainly get better than this. Still, the Celtics loom Monday, followed by a four-game trip out West. It is definitely still early, but a few more losses and it ceases to make sense to aggressively attempt to improve the roster if it means sacrificing future assets.
How should you feel about the Raptors’ start? Just listen to the Raptors themselves.
Siakam, Raptors have plenty to figure out as early slump continues – Sportsnet
It was in Toronto’s second-round, seven-game loss to the Celtics that Siakam’s poor play became too obvious to ignore.
That his game doesn’t seem back to his pre-hiatus standards — even after a carefully calibrated off-season regimen — has to be a concern.
And Siakam’s woes continue in lockstep with the team’s. He finished with 10 points, four rebounds and three turnovers, while foul trouble limited him to just 25 minutes before ending his night for good with 8:30 to play in the fourth quarter.
It was his decision to leave the bench and walk to the locker room after fouling out against the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday that prompted his benching by Nurse – with approval from management.
The details around the decision remain slim, other than there is no dramatic backstory, sources insist. Siakam stayed on script when he spoke to reporters Saturday for the first time since being held out of the lineup.
“I talked to the team, talked to [Raptors general manager Bobby Webster and president Masai Ujiri], talked to my teammates, I think we’re just going to continue to talk about and we’re just trying to figure out a way to continue to win,” Siakam said. “We’re a winning team and losing isn’t acceptable. I think that’s what we focus on right now and just try to continue to get better as a team. For me, everything was talked about and we’re moving forward.”
There were no fireworks on Saturday night, but Siakam’s performance still left plenty to be desired.
“He struggled, no doubt about it,” Nurse said. “I thought he had a few decent plays and a few good drives in there, but he obviously struggled, [was a] half-count off rhythm there at both ends a little bit, which is getting him in foul trouble and not letting him be able to finish some plays at the offensive end as well.”
It’s a big problem. Siakam is being counted on to be at worst the Raptors’ second best player after Kyle Lowry on most nights. It’s a tall order, but he’s well-compensated for the trouble, and what’s concerning is his performance through his past three games – 15.3 points on 36 per cent shooting, with 10 turnovers and only six trips to the free throw line – is all too similar to how he performed after the restart, and in the playoffs for Toronto and against Boston, especially.
The pressure mounts.
“It’s not just him, it’s the entire team,” said Raptors guard Fred VanVleet, who led the team for the second straight game with 27 points and five assists. “And it’s just the feel of this team is … like tonight, for example, I thought we fought pretty hard, we played well enough to win in spurts, not in the entire game, but we’re in a hole so this one hurts a lot more than it would if we were 4-0 or whatever our record is. You know what I’m saying?
Toronto Raptors’ Pascal Siakam still trying to find himself amid struggles – TSN.ca
Even on nights when his jumper isn’t falling or he’s not getting the benefit of the doubt from the officials – and those nights have been frequent dating back to last season’s restart – the expectation of Siakam, as a young leader and max contract player, is to find other ways to impact winning. That means sticking to the game plan, making good decisions with the ball and on defence, playing with energy, and rallying around his teammates.
It doesn’t come from a bad or knowingly selfish place, but when he allows his frustration to get the best of him, as he did on Tuesday, the Raptors feel like he’s putting himself and his own play ahead of the team. The message that they’re hoping to send is that they expect more of him.
Siakam spoke to team president Masai Ujiri, general manager Bobby Webster, and his teammates following Thursday’s benching and told them he’s ready to move forward and focus on winning. However, his performance in Saturday’s 120-116 loss to New Orleans wasn’t the response he, or the team, was looking for.
There were occasional glimpses of the old Siakam – the version that, prior to the pandemic, was one of the league’s brightest young stars. He’s shown flashes at various points throughout the early part of this season. He’ll string together a few strong defensive possessions, or shake off a defender with his signature spin move, like he did in the third quarter of the Pelicans game. But those moments are few and far between. They’re overshadowed by the defensive lapses, careless turnovers, missed jumpers, and negative body language.
One of Siakam’s goals during the off-season was to rediscover his joy for the game – something that he noticed was absent when he re-watched games from the bubble. He felt good coming into the new campaign and, by all accounts, he’s looked like his old self off the court and in practice. The problem is there’s been little joy in the way Siakam or the Raptors have started off the year.
“That’s the toughest part of it,” said Siakam, who finished with 10 points, four rebounds and one assist against New Orleans. “Being out there, when you’re not winning, obviously it’s hard to be out there and smile and be happy.”
On Saturday, he was too passive – kicking the ball out instead of attacking mismatches and looking to get to the rim, or to the free throw line. The whistle didn’t do him any favours, to be fair. He attempted just two free throws before fouling out in 25 minutes. After averaging 5.1 free throw attempts per game last season, he’s taken eight total in four contests this year.
“That’s a great question,” said Siakam, asked what he could do to get to the line more often. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m trying to figure that out. I watch a lot of games and I watch a lot of other teams, and it’s tough when you go out there and don’t feel like you’re getting the whistle. But I got to finish through contact, continue to get better at that, being stronger at the rim. I don’t control the whistle, I don’t know what’s happening there, but I got to look at myself and find a way to get better at finishing at the rim and drawing two or three people and making the right pass.”
The restart exposed some glaring holes in Siakam’s game, which wasn’t unexpected given that it was his first post-season experience in a new and expanded role. How he came back from it was always going to be more telling.
Boucher — for the last two games at least — has spent a fair amount of time on the court with one of the centres, Aron Baynes and Alex Len, and it has been a revelation to Nurse and his staff.
“We really need some depth there, so it’s good to see that he’s been able to make a transition, kind of on a need basis,” Nurse said after Boucher poured in 24 points in Toronto’s 120-116 loss the Pelicans in New Orleans on Saturday night. “Now it might be something we can count on.”
It’s not as if Boucher and Baynes, or Boucher and Len, are going to remind anyone of the old Twin Towers, Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson with the Houston Rockets. But using a combination of those two in the times when Siakam is either resting or disqualified after picking up six personal fouls does give the Raptors a boost in size and versatility that they need.
“As far as the way Chris has played with those guys in two games, it’s been pretty good at the four,” Nurse said.
Boucher has been a bright spot for most of the season, even if his individual success has to be tempered by Toronto’s 1-4 stumble out of the gate.
He’s been more attentive to detail on defence and his usual active self on offence, averaging 13.4 points, six rebounds and 2.2 blocked shots while playing about 20 minutes each night.
“There’s a lot of work that I still have to put in, but when it comes to helping my teammates, playing defence and running the floor, and bringing energy, that’s something I can do every day,” he said. “So I try to focus on those things.”
Playing alongside another big man should help the six-foot-nine, 200-pound Boucher expand his game and increase his contribution. He’s a bit too slight to bang with bigger centres — the Raptors used the bigger Len ahead of Boucher against both Steven Adams of the Pelicans and Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid — but Boucher’s tendency to gamble on defence could very well work in his favour with another centre on the floor with him.
Raptors have issues, but defence tops the list | Toronto Sun
“Listen, it’s just something we’re trying to work out here a little bit and work it out early in the season and not let it prolong and, again, more just an expectation of how we want to play, not individually how anybody wants to play,” Nurse said in response to a question about Siakam.
“But there’s certain standards we want to set and he just needs to get on board with those. And he can do it …”
After the game Nurse said it was clear to him that Siakam struggled but the Raptors head coach did not come across as overly concerned about his scoring power forward.
“… Half count off rhythm there at both ends a little bit which is getting him in foul trouble and not letting him be able to finish some plays at the offensive end as well,” Nurse said.
Siakam is a worker. We know that. He’s a guy, who when things get tough and he struggles, he goes to work and fixes the issue. That has been his approach since he came into the league.
His experience in the bubble was different of course. He came in without having been able to work and never did find his game in Orlando.
He has already talked about the strong off-season he had since then and how much better he feels. Siakam does not feel like one of these problems we are going to be talking about for long.
The issue that needs to be rectified first and foremost is the Raptors’ defence.
“I think, just as a defensive guy, we’ve got a long way to go in that regard — just like slides and paying attention to the game plan and things that we’re not executing, keeping teams off the foul line,” VanVleet said. “You know, we’ve got a lot of work to do, man. We’ve got a lot of work to do and we’ve just gotta keep being accountable and look ourselves in the mirror and just try to get better each day. I thought the Knicks game was a step in the right direction, I thought (Saturday against the Pelicans), had we won this game, it would’ve been a great step in the right direction. We played pretty well in spurts but we’ll go back to the drawing board and lace ‘em up again on Monday.”
It’s not that there aren’t shortcomings on the offence too. It’s just that the Raptors know that if they can be the kind of defensive team they believe they are capable of, any offensive shortcomings can be overcome with stops at the other end.
Normally defence is ahead of offence at this point in the season, but that has not been the case for the Raptors.
Raptors Plagued by 3-Point Reliance – Sports Illustrated
The problem for the Raptors is two-fold. For one, they’re shooting just 36.4% on “Wide Open” 3s, per NBA Stats, a pretty pedestrian number. Secondly, they rank 29th in the league in free throw attempts per game with 17.8. For as much as analytics have done to make the 3-point shot more appetizing these days, the free throw is still the best shot in basketball.
While the Raptors got to the line a little more against the Pelicans, shooting 27 free throws, it was nothing compared to the 47 free throws New Orleans attempted.
“I thought we did a better job of attacking the rim,” Nurse said after the game. “Probably deserved to go to the line a lot more than that considering how tightly it was being reffed tonight. But we’ve gotta play through the hits if we’re not getting calls, and we’ve gotta finish those. And as far as the number of threes, there’s always, in that many attempts, there’s always four or five that you probably say were a little too quick or a little too guarded or went up late in the shot clock or something that aren’t the best.”
In terms of those early 3-pointers, the Raptors currently lead the league in 3-point attempts taken with 15 to 18 seconds remaining on the shot clock. They’re averaging 10.2 so-called “Early” shot clock 3-pointers per game, according to NBA Stats, but they’re only shooting 31.4% on those shots. Considering you should only be taking the best shots that early in the shot clock, that 31% is pretty unsettling. It ranks 27th in the NBA in that category.
The Raptors appear to be a team that’s willing to live and die by the 3-point shot this season and right now it’s killing them. Some more calls from the refs would certainly be nice, but whining about calls isn’t going to help you win games. Go attack the rim if you want calls and attack with force. Nurse knows it, he said it himself. Now it’s time to make it happen.
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