Gameday: Wizards @ Raptors, April 5

If there was ever a game to highlight everything wrong about the 2020-21 NBA season, tonight’s matchup between the Washington Wizards and Toronto Raptors would be it.

Both teams were ravaged by COVID-19 protocols earlier this season, with several players on each side reportedly getting the virus, leading to losing streaks and significant underperformance compared to expectations for both sides. Coming into the season, both teams expected to make the playoffs without a hitch — in a normal season, they probably would have — but instead, the Raptors and Wizards sit 11th and 12th in the Eastern Conference standings, with the Raptors ahead by a game and a half.

More concerning, however, is that both teams are still incredibly knocked up. The combination of Health and Safety protocols (Paul Watson), freak injuries (Kyle Lowry and Thomas Bryant), as well as the influx of muscle injuries due in part to the season being more compact than ever (Fred VanVleet, Patrick McCaw, Rodney Hood and Bradley Beal, Daniel Gafford, and Rui Hachimura), means both of these teams will be without some of their best players. Still, the Raptors will play five games between today (Monday) and Sunday, so there is no time to waste.

The hunt for the play-in tournament starts now, and one player, in particular, will have a large role to play in order to get them there: 22-year-old rookie point guard Malachi Flynn.

Flynn is going to have to step up. Whether or not it’s fair to ask a rookie point guard to run the team and be impactful on both ends of the floor before his 25th NBA game, that is the reality for Flynn and the Raptors. With Lowry out and VanVleet questionable, the Raptors will start Flynn in VanVleet’s place (assuming he can’t play) and ask the point guard to play a big role in this upcoming stretch of play. While Flynn’s defense has been ahead of his offence all season, he had his best offensive showcase of his young career in Golden State on Friday, consistently getting into the teeth of his defence while keeping his dribble alive to find open shooters, and he did a better job using his speed to get downhill and finish at the rim against backtracking big men like James Wiseman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWoyr_eocTE&ab_channel=Z.Highlights

“He’s just got to continue to feel comfortable at the offensive end,” head coach Nick Nurse said of Flynn. “I don’t think he feels or looks that comfortable down there yet. He’s just got to run the team, get us into stuff … (I) would like to see a lot more straight-line driving, harder penetration, pushing up the floor in transition with some speed.

“But I think it’s just a little bit of a tentativeness. It’s almost like rust. We’ve got to knock some of that off there, and that only comes with more minutes.”

If Flynn starts to see his three-point shot go down — he’s just 8-for-44 overall from three-point range this season, but has great form and he shot the ball much better in his eight G-League games — it might help him develop a better shot selection, with more threes and layups rather than relying so heavily on the mid-range jumper, which is where he is most comfortable consistently creating space for himself but is not an efficient place to shoot from in high volume.

“Right now I definitely agree with him,” Flynn said of his offence being behind his defence. “If you’d asked me before the season if that’d be the case, I would have thought you were crazy. Right now, I agree with him. The offence is coming slowly — it will definitely come — but my defence has been pretty solid so far.”

Aside from Flynn, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby will need to carry over their great play as of late. Siakam, in particular, had his best half of the season on Friday, scoring the ball at will and looking more unstoppable than we have seen from him in a long time. He has been averaging 8.0 free-throw attempts over his last six games, doing a great job attacking mismatches and pushing the pace in transition.

Anunoby has been his usual stellar self defensively, picking up the best opposing player while wreaking havoc as a help-side guy. What has stood out as of late has been his increased reps as a ball-handler, even getting screen help to attack in the pick-and-roll, using his strength and pull-up shooting to score efficiently. But only 5.0 percent of Anunoby’s offence comes as a pick-and-roll ball-handler, and he has to improve his balance and make contact earlier on his drives in order to earn more reps and replace some of Norman Powell’s pressure on the rim.

Defensive Impact x Defensive Context
Defensive Context multiplies Matchup Difficulty by Defensive Positional Versatility (both go from 0-100) to calculate a single stat.
RoCo and Gobert, 2 members of our D-LEBRON All-Defensive 1st team, stand out.
Data: https://t.co/pL4CtvkPUL pic.twitter.com/VmTUYztz3A
— BBall Index (@The_BBall_Index) April 4, 2021

Otherwise, the Raptors bench scores almost five fewer points per game than Washington’s, so it will be interesting to see if some of the fringe guys can pick it up with such a depleted roster. And that remains true for both sides.

It should be a fun game between a battle of two teams who are better than their records would indicate. Enjoy!

Game Info

Tip-off: 7pm ET | TV: Sportsnet Radio: TSN 1050

Raptors Lineup

Paul Watson is out under Health and Safety Protocols. Kyle Lowry (toe), Rodney Hood (hip), Patrick McCaw (knee), and Jalen Harris (hip) are out. Fred VanVleet (hip) is questionable.

PG: Malachi Flynn

SG: Gary Trent Jr., DeAndre’ Bembry

SF: OG Anunoby,

PF: Pascal Siakam, Chris Boucher, Yuta Watanabe

C: Chris Boucher, Aron Baynes