Can Raptors keep winning with such instability at center? – The Athletic
If there’s one silver lining in so many close games for the Raptors, it’s that they’re getting ample opportunity to sharpen themselves in high-leverage situations. The Raptors have had four consecutive games end within a one-possession margin, giving them seven “clutch” games already.
“We’re getting a lot of practice at our end-of-game strategies,” Nick Nurse said. “There is really no way to re-create those in practice, so every night out we are getting seven or eight situations at both ends of the floor to work on and work on.”
The Raptors are 2-5 in those games with a minus-70.7 net rating in an incredibly noisy sample, so there’s some work to do still. You have to at least like coming away with the last two after the Raptors missed potential winning shots in consecutive losses earlier in the week.
Saturday night’s win over Charlotte provided a perfect example of the Raptors lurching from good play to bad play, and why they’ve been unable to put teams away despite double-digit leads in almost every game they’ve played.
They started slowly, were tremendous for the last 15 minutes of the first half, slumped again late in the third quarter, and for bits of the fourth, before hanging on to win on two perfectly played defensive possessions in the final 30 seconds.
“(We’ve) just got to keep learning and teaching. We’ve got to show the film and try to fix the mistakes,” coach Nick Nurse said after the club improved to 4-8. “We did a better job, I thought, on the switching — blown communications tonight, we didn’t have as many as those — and then when you switch good, it becomes (a matter of) guarding the ball and I don’t think we guarded the ball nearly good enough.
“That’s what we’re going to have to polish up, that’s again taking time.”
With 60 games left in the regular season and the Dallas Mavericks paying a visit to Amalie Arena on Monday night, there is time for the Raptors to find a way to limit the moments when games get away from them or get too close for comfort.
The promise of the good parts — like when they hit 13 of 19 three-pointers in about a quarter and a half of their second straight win over Charlotte — is reason for optimism for the rest of the season. But until players get more consistent and better at closing games, the up-and-down ride will continue.
Some of it is attributable to playing different roles than they are used to. Chris Boucher, as good as he’s been, seldom closed out close games in his first two seasons in Toronto. OG Anunoby was guarding wings in the same situations last year, but now some centres after the free-agent departures of Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol.
There are a lot of familiar names on the court, guys who have won a ton of games, but what they are being asked to do is new — and takes time to get used to.
The same is true early in games, when the Raptors tend to give up 10-point leads rather than extend them to 16 or 20 and take the pressure off.
Time will help.
Angst lessened, but Raptors still have improvements to make | Toronto Sun
Some consistency is back as well, in the form of rotations both when guys come in and who those guys are.
Head coach Nick Nurse continues to hope time will get Aron Baynes on track but he’s not giving him much of a leash to show him and with eight losses already racked up, who can blame him?
But Nurse is committed to this much: Baynes will start and if he has an impact or at least isn’t part of a huge early deficit, he’ll remain on the floor. Beyond that Nurse isn’t making any promises.
Nurse did say prior to Saturday’s second consecutive win over the visiting Charlotte Hornets that it’s looking more and more like this team will rely on a small-ball lineup for the time being to cover the majority of games, but that, too, can switch as soon as, or if,Baynes or possibly Alex Len prove to be at least a medium-term answer at centre.
What Nurse appears to have settled on is a second unit rotation that starts with Norm Powell and Chris Boucher and includes Malachi Flynn and Terence Davis, though at the moment that appears to be an either/or situation.
Flynn got run in both wins over the Hornets while Davis got minutes in both one-point losses in Portland and Golden State.
Defensively when Nurse goes to his bench it’s either Stanley Johnson or Yuta Watanabe getting the call.
For now that leaves the likes of DeAndre Bembry, Matt Thomas and Paul Watson hoping for some garbage-time minutes if they are to see the floor and it has been five games since that happened.
Powell, who is coming off a 24-point night against the Hornets, believes the bench is coming into its own just now because they needed some time to adjust to the new faces.
“I think we’re starting to just understand what we have to do,” he said. “I think guys are starting to get a little bit more comfortable with the flow of the game — offensively, defensively — what we need to continue to execute out there. I think that guys are starting to find their way throughout the season. It’s always trying to build up and you’re not going tobe perfect. Early on you try to build and go for the long haul and I think we’re starting to do that.”
One major question for each Eastern Conference team – Liberty Ballers
Toronto (er, Tampa Bay) Raptors — Are you guys okay???????
They finally got off the schneid with a 111-108 win over Charlotte to improve to 3-8 on the season, but the south has not been kind to the team of the north. They’re not as bad as that record indicates, as the Raps sit 17th overall in Net Rating per CTG, which is more indicative to long-term success than pure win-loss results, but that still seats them as a fringe play-in team rather than an Eastern Conference contender. Aron Baynes and Alex Len are giving them next to nothing at the moment, Pascal Siakam is still being asked to be a primary when he fits tertiary creation responsibilities much better, OG Anunoby hasn’t taken the super leap some hoops nerds predicted, and what’s left is a team that’s contention window is closing. It’s hard to ever count out a Kyle Lowry-led squad, but I’m on the brink of doing so.
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