Fred VanVleet becoming Damian Lillard with elite defence was pretty unexpected. Meanwhile, Siakam playing better than ever. https://t.co/IaYYsAIwzo
— Ryan Wolstat (@WolstatSun) January 10, 2022
Thriving in tandem, VanVleet and Siakam becoming one of NBA’s most prolific duos
To VanVleet’s point, as part of the six-game winning streak the Raptors have enjoyed, he and Siakam have combined to average 74.5 points, 30 rebounds and 15.7 assists per games on 46.4 per cent from the field and 40 per cent from three-point range.
A stretch of games that perfectly encapsulates the way the two have managed to play off each other, with what appears to be times in games where the two take turns dominating.
“It’s fun,” Siakam told reporters of playing off VanVleet after he helped the Raptors to their sixth straight victory Sunday. “It definitely reminds of us of old times, just being on the floor together and the bench mob and, obviously, winning the championship. It feels good, and I think when we’re all rolling and playing well. It’s fun.”
Even more fun, there doesn’t appear to be any ego between VanVleet and Siakam over who’s getting more touches and shots up. As their coach tells it, the fact that VanVleet has been putting up more shots of late has more to do with matchup than anything else.
“A lot of the volume of shots is dependent on what we’re seeing defensively,” said Nick Nurse. “We’ve had a couple games in a row where we’ve played against two bigs and it’s a dribble-handoff game or a ball-screen game a little more than whatever.”
Regardless of who ends up taking the shot or how many shots they take, an awful lot of those shots are finding the bottom of the hole for both of them and that’s what matters most for the Raptors. With Siakam and VanVleet playing the way they are, and doing it in tandem at that, it makes Toronto a very difficult basketball team to beat.
“I think they’re in a good connection level right now. I think it’s kind of come back. They’re both in rhythm individually, and now they’re in sync together,” said Nurse. “There are a lot of combinations of things they can do together. They’ve kind of always had it. Now it’s at such a different volume because of their status as a team on our roster. We used to kind of use them as unexpected guys to work together when you had a bunch of guys there. Now they’re the main guys, and that’s why the volume has gone up so much.”
Added VanVleet: “Like, 99 per cent of the time I know what he’s gonna do and I’m pretty sure he feels the same about me. So, it’s like we kind of know each other pretty well by now.”
“I’ve been getting a lot of attention,” VanVleet said Monday. “Face guarding, we’ve seen a box-and-one at least a couple times. “It’s ironic, for sure … but it’s been fun, it’s been a challenge to learn and to adapt and have to stay locked in.”
The box-and-one, the unconventional defence the Raptors threw at Curry with VanVleet drawing the “and-one” part of it, is hardly surprising given what VanVleet has been doing of late. He has averaged 31.6 points per game over the last six games, shooting 44 per cent from three-point range and 47 per cent overall from the floor while dishing out 40 assists with only six turnovers.
Not only did it earn him the league’s Eastern Conference player of the week award Monday, it’s made him the focal point of every opponent’s defence. That means Nurse is going to have to find creative ways to free him from the various schemes he will face.
“The biggest thing is we’ve just got to keep working on all the different coverages he’s seeing,” the coach said. “He’s becoming a primary, primary scorer and so now we’ve got to figure out ways to make sure we can get him the ball. Make sure we’re all set to play when they blitz against him, which we’re going to see more of, I’m sure. Things like that. That’s what we’ve been trying to do on our off days.”
It helps tremendously that the Raptors are developing a handful of alternative ballhandlers who can get the team organized in half-court sets and work effectively in transition. Pascal Siakam and Scottie Barnes are the de facto backup points guards now, and OG Anunoby can get the ball and go. That not only eases VanVleet’s responsibilities, it allows him to play off the ball more often and take advantage of his prodigious shooting skills.
“It certainly helps,” VanVleet said. “It’s helping my scoring right now, to be honest, to be able to play off the ball … It’s a different type of responsibility (than) coming up the court, having to run a play or get everybody in the right spot, make the play every single time whether that’s a shot for myself or for a teammate.”
Siakam has been the beneficiary of VanVleet’s offensive explosion and the attention the guard has been attracting. Siakam is averaging 23.6 points on 48.5 per cent shooting from the floor during the six-game streak.
In Toronto’s six-game winning streak Fred VanVleet is averaging 31.6 points per game, shooting 44 per cent from three-point range, 47 per cent overall from the floor while dishing out 40 assists with only six turnovers.
“With the way that I’ve been shooting the ball and scoring, I think we’re helping each other. And him being a playmaker and handling the basketball, I think it’s helping my offence,” VanVleet said. “(It’s) just trying to play off each other, trying to set the tone. I think this is kind of the way that we envisioned that things would go.
Freeing up Fred paying dividends for Raptors | Toronto Sun
Head coach Nick Nurse and his staff noticed how effective Siakam was in the game basically playing point forward for much of the night with Malachi Flynn the only true point guard available that evening.
A game later only Scottie Barnes remained sidelined. At times, Siakam was used both with VanVleet on the floor and with him off the court in more of a point guard role bringing the ball up and getting the team into their sets.
When Barnes returned the following game Siakam and he both spent time in the role of point guard freeing up VanVleet to play off the ball and perhaps focus more on scoring.
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The discovery, and the desire to stay with it for now, has served the Raptors in a number of ways.First it frees up VanVleet to be more of a scoring threat while taking off some of the burden of setting up the offence.
It’s no secret that VanVleet’s minutes are high, bordering on unsustainable though you would never hear the man himself say that. He leads the league in minutes per game averaging 37.5, a few ticks more than forward Kevin Durant who already three times in his career has led the league in that category.
VanVleet’s conditioning has never been in question but it is pretty clear such a heavy workload is not conducive to getting optimal efficiency out of the Raptors main cog.
VanVleet hasn’t been overly fatigued on many nights but there have been exceptions.
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“I usually just go on how my body feels because sometimes, like the other night, that third quarter I had against, Utah, that was probably a harder 12 minutes than any previous night or anything like that,” he said. “Sometimes you could play 45 minutes and don’t feel bad and sometimes you can play 33 minutes and feel like you just ran a marathon. I go off how my body feels.”But if the plan is to have VanVleet remain one of the team’s two main scoring threats alongside Siakam, finding him respites in the game is going to be a must and this provides that opportunity.
The other positive to come out of this discovery is a more dependable and so far consistent second unit.
Now when VanVleet rests at the beginning of the second and fourth quarters, Nurse goes with a group that often includes all of Siakam, Barnes, Chris Boucher and Precious Achiuwa. That group has length and athleticism in spades and at least recently it’s not just maintaining whatever lead the starters have managed but has been adding to it.
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“So far, so good,” Nurse said of the improvement from that second unit with Siakam, and sometimes Barnes, running the show. “He’s doing a great job. The hardest thing is when there are set pieces that we’re running, he’s now playing a totally different position, so that means he’s understanding the entire play and all the reads from a different look. He’s done good with that. Hopefully we can keep that going.”
RAPTORS BLOG: Long-standing Pascal Siakam-Fred VanVleet chemistry paying big dividends | Toronto Sun
How is it exactly that VanVleet has morphed into Damian Lillard with elite defence?
Even the biggest VanVleet supporter couldn’t have seen this coming. He can hit from anywhere on the floor and has unlimited confidence.
Add in Pascal Siakam playing the best basketball of his career (yes, even better than his All-NBA second team season or in the playoffs on the way to the NBA title), OG Anunoby’s strong two-way play and a bench that is finally producing and all of a sudden, the Raptors are a team nobody really wants to meet in the playoffs.
The Siakam-VanVleet partnership is so natural. As VanVleet said, they almost always know what the other wants to do or is about to do on the court. But even when they’re apart, they’re thriving. Remember all those Draymond Green with more athleticism comparisons a young Siakam used to get when he was first breaking out a few years ago? Well, all of a sudden Siakam is playing the point-centre role Green has flourished in when VanVleet goes to the bench.
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The increased playmaking load agrees with Siakam. He’s having by far the most efficient offensive stretch of his career and his turnovers aren’t really up.Advertisement
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Siakam has spent 47% of the season at centre, according to basketball-reference.com. Last year the number was 18% and it was 9% the two years prior. He might not have the bulk to bang with the biggest centres, but there aren’t a lot of those guys left. The rest of the time Siakam looks like a matchup nightmare for other centres.
Inside the Raptors’ turnaround, built on honesty and respect | The Star
“So, if you’re not giving effort, it’s going to look whatever way it’s going to look, and I think we just don’t take it personally. Man, it’s basketball. You’re trying to win games.”
The responsibility for speaking the truth falls on every member of the team, another factor in the level of maturity among the core group. VanVleet might be the most obvious one to speak up, but Siakam said it could be him or OG Anunoby or Gary Trent Jr. or even rookie Scottie Barnes.
“There are just different dynamics and we have to hold each other accountable, but at the same time you’re not going to attack anyone,” Siakam said. “You just want it to get better and stay together as a team, because … there are times teams are going to come out and score and we have to be able to be calm and continue to work the game.
“As long as we try to do better and do the things that we know we’re supposed to do by following the game plan, we always think we have a chance to turn it around. Obviously it’s not our objective to go out there and be down. It happens.”
It would be preferable, of course, if the Raptors don’t get down 17 or 20 points like they have the last two games before fighting back. But that would be a perfect world and the NBA is far from perfect, so being able to live through bad stretches and come out whole is vital.
Coach Nick Nurse sets the tone in many regards. He gets angry and vocal, but he’s also fair, something the players appreciate and that he uses to his advantage.
“I don’t like it to be confrontational and I think, from their end, they don’t like it, either,” Nurse said. “For me, the real confrontation is: We’re going to give you a chance to go out and do it, and if you don’t do it we’re going to have to try somebody else.
“But then we’re going to bring you back to try you again. But you’ve got to get going and you’ve got to try to find your energy and (fit into) the scheme. And then see it from the bench, and then go back out and execute it.”
This Week: 14
Last Week: 1820-17, +1.4 net rating
Weekly slate: Win over Spurs, Win at Bucks, Win over Jazz, Win over PelicansHow many players signed? 6 (Brandon Goodwin, Nik Stauskas, D.J. Wilson, Juwan Morgan, Tremont Waters, Daniel Oturu)
Biggest takeaway from the hardship era: Don’t look now, but the Toronto Raptors have been surging. Sadly, they’re used to dealing with guys being in and out of the lineup. It helps having OG Anunoby back in the mix, and the core of Pascal Siakam, Scottie Barnes, Anunoby, Fred VanVleet, Gary Trent Jr. and Chris Boucher has mostly played during this 15-game stretch. But it’s VanVleet who is playing at an All-Star level right now. You could make the argument he deserves to start for the East, but the system isn’t likely to be kind to him unless Justin Bieber or Drake gets involved. He’s been absurd during this six-game win streak, and he’s been fantastic all season. During the hardship stretch, VanVleet is averaging 25.5 points on 44.4 percent from the field and 43.4 percent from downtown. The Raptors look like they’ve weathered the storm with the early tough parts of the season, and now they’re in a higher gear. Hopefully they can maintain this and maybe even avoid the Play-In Tournament.
This Week: 14
Last Week: 18That the Raptors, winners of six straight, are now three games over .500 when their best three players — Fred VanVleet, OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam — have played only nine games together is a sign of their upside if they can keep their team healthy over the second half of the season. — Bontemps
Power Rankings, Week 13: Grizzlies take flight as Warriors stay at No. 1 | NBA.com
This Week: 12
Last Week: 18Record: 20-17
Pace: 97.0 (26) OffRtg: 111.1 (9) DefRtg: 109.7 (20) NetRtg: +1.4 (12)It might be time for the Raptors’ broadcast to ease up on their Fred-VanVleet-for-All-Star campaign … so they can launch a VanVleet-for-MVP campaign in its stead. Mr. Bet on Yourself has averaged 31.2 points on 47/44/96 shooting for what has been the league’s third-ranked offense as the Raptors have won six straight games. He scored all 15 points (and was assisted on just one of his five buckets) on a 15-0 run against the Jazz on Friday, and he’s shot 4-for-4 on clutch 3-pointers over the winning streak, with a 34-footer to tie their game against New Orleans on Sunday and a similarly audacious transition 3 to take the lead on the next possession. For the season, VanVleet (11-for-20) is one of two players (Kyle Kuzma is the other) who’ve shot 50% or better on at least 15 clutch 3s. He was 8-for-34 (24%) on clutch 3s last season.
VanVleet still has a huge on-off differential for the season, but their last four wins have come with the Raptors outscoring their opponents by 35 points in his 46 minutes off the floor. VanVleet’s minutes have been staggered with those of Siakam, who’s averaged 23.7 points, 11 rebounds and 6.2 assists over the streak, with 33 points in Milwaukee and 29 against New Orleans. In two games last week, the Raps used a jumbo lineup — OG Anunoby, Scottie Barnes, Siakam, Chris Boucher and Precious Achiuwa — that outscored the Spurs and Bucks by 11 points in 10 total minutes.
The winning streak has taken the Raps from 11th to seventh place in the East, and they actually have fewer losses than the sixth-place Cavs. But they’re set to play three of the best teams in the league — Phoenix, Milwaukee (which has been without Giannis Antetokounmpo in both meetings so far) and Miami — over the next eight days.
This Week: 12
Last Week: 24The Raptors are getting healthy and it shows, as they won all four games this week in impressive fashion. Fred VanVleet has been the head of the snake, averaging nearly 30 points and 6.5 assists this week on 46 percent 3-point shooting. Pascal Siakam has also been excellent, and the potential closing lineup of VanVleet, Siakam, OG Anunoby, Scottie Barnes and Gary Trent Jr. has a plus-8.6 net rating in 25 fourth-quarter minutes this season. It will be interesting to watch that configuration as the season progresses if they can all stay healthy.
