https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4GORR0YJIY&ab_channel=NBAPlayoffs2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg6GX5W3f3o&ab_channel=TinGayTo
Scottie Barnes is your Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month for March+April
— Blake Murphy (@BlakeMurphyODC) April 11, 2022
Here’s how I voted for NBA Rookie of the Year:
1. Scottie Barnes
2. Evan Mobley
3. Cade Cunningham pic.twitter.com/mCFbQn6LOT— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) April 11, 2022
My All-NBA votes:
1st
C: Nikola Jokic
F: Giannis Antetokounmpo
F: Jayson Tatum
G: Luka Doncic
G: Devin Booker2nd
C: Joel Embiid
F: Kevin Durant
F: LeBron James
G: Ja Morant
G: Steph Curry3rd
C: Karl-Anthony Towns
F: Pascal Siakam
F: DeMar DeRozan
G: Trae Young
G: Chris Paul— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) April 11, 2022
Raptors-76ers Series Preview: Two polar-opposite foes renew rivalry – Sportsnet
The Thybulle Factor
About those non-Embiid minutes: Well, their depth will take an even bigger hit in games in Toronto, as Matisse Thybulle is ineligible to play due to his vaccination status and current border restrictions. (Note: This applies to Raptors entering the U.S., too. They are fully vaccinated as a team.) Philly moved Danny Green into the starting lineup for the team’s recent visit to Toronto, then kept him there, likely because it will be too disruptive to change their starters game-to-game in a playoff series.
Even if you think Thybulle’s impact as an all-defence, no-offence piece is limited in a playoff environment, a team that runs about six players deep losing one of those six is troublesome. Thybulle was fifth on the team in minutes after the Harden acquisition and the team had its best net rating with him on the floor. Georges Niang and Shake Milton aren’t ready for primetime post-season roles beyond potentially getting hot on offence here and there. Who guards Gary Trent Jr., and how that ripples to the rest of the matchups, is a major decision on Rivers’ plate.
Editor’s Note: The COVID-19 situation, in sports and around the world, is constantly evolving. Readers in Canada can consult the country’s public health website for the latest.
The Other Thybulle Factor
When Thybulle is available, he becomes a fascinating basketball philosophical: How good do you have to be defensively to justify playing time when you are a complete non-factor on offence? That’s not an exaggeration. On March 29, the Bucks basically just didn’t guard Thybulle whatsoever, and he made them pay with one shot attempt in 21 minutes. He took a whopping 13 attempts over the 71 minutes he played against the Raptors this year, admittedly scoring 19 points but not scaring anyone. Given the aggression of Nurse’s notorious star-stopping defensive gameplans, it stands to reason that Thybulle will be welcomed to have a usage rate of 100 per cent in this series, should the 76ers so choose.
Guarding Embiid
Thybulle’s presence (or absence) won’t necessarily mean a strategy change for Nurse’s defence. Even with better shooting around him, the Raptors are willing to send multiple bodies to Embiid to make life difficult. This isn’t just about trying to stop Embiid. It’s about exacting a physical toll on him over the course of a game and series. Expect just about everyone to get a chance guarding him and using their six fouls as required, with plenty of physicality to force him away from the paint before the catch, plenty of collapsing into the paint when he penetrates, and double-teams and dig-downs from all sorts of angles, both on the catch and on his first dribble. Embiid has a stable argument as a top-three player in the world right now; the Raptors will treat him as such.
Guarding Siakam
Back in 2019, the 76ers deployed what was, at the time, the best strategy for the Raptors’ ascendant No. 3: Put him against size and dare him to drive into it, betting he wasn’t comfortable enough with his three-point shot or mid-range package to adjust. Even through a calf injury, Siakam averaged 19.4 points on moderate efficiency, turning in only one bad game (one where it was a surprise he suited up).
If that didn’t work then, it’s hard to see it working now, even with the ability to give Siakam the attention of a No. 1 scorer. Siakam’s become adept at not only reacting to opposing defences but seeing one step ahead of them, emerging as a 92nd-percentile passer among forwards, per Cleaning The Glass. He’s also developed an elite floater-range game, ranking in the 99th percentile for volume from 4-to-14 feet and in the 84th percentile for finishing there. He’s also shot nearly 40 per cent on true mid-range jumpers.
Put it all together and Siakam looks like a player far more comfortable attacking whatever’s thrown at him, whether it’s posting up a smaller player (Thybulle), attacking size (Tobias Harris) or countering a dropped back big inside (Embiid).
How Pascal Siakam reclaimed his place among the NBA’s elite – Sportsnet.ca
hat Siakam got to this point — the engine on a team that has exceeded any external expectations, his game better than ever, and back to playing with the kind of joy and passion that was a hallmark in the first few years of his career — didn’t come by accident, or through talk alone. Even as he grinded his way through rehab and listened to his name being kicked around in trade rumours, Siakam was doing the work needed to make sure his basketball identity crisis didn’t go to waste. In just 10 short years he’d turned himself into a world-class basketball player, but he still had plenty to learn about managing the expectations that come with that status.
“There was a lot of times where if you didn’t do well or things didn’t go your way, or things happened that was out of your control, all you wanted to do is question everything and try to understand why it’s happening to you,” he says. “And I think going through that, the growth that I had, obviously with COVID and thinking more and having this time to sit with yourself, I’ve just learned a lot of different things — about myself and about life in general.”
Siakam began a discovery process. He met with a sports psychologist. He re-examined his relationship with social media. He looked for insights on podcasts and TED Talks. He’s not a big reader, but among his favourite video resources are motivational speakers, Les Brown and Inky Johnson. Each of them shares a message that resonates with Siakam, who left home at 12, left Cameroon at 18 and lost his father at 20: Challenges and negativity are opportunities for growth, and dwelling on things that have already happened or seem unfair can only harm your ability to deal with the next challenge or hurdle. It’s a useful perspective, whether trying to shake off a bad half, a losing streak or things bigger, more personal and important.
“Being in the NBA, every day we have a game and it’s so easy to forget things that are really important. It sounds cliche, but it’s just the truth.”
“I know that when something happens to me, I have five minutes to get mad, scream and do everything, and then I tell myself, ‘I can’t change it,’” says Siakam. “And that’s just the reality of it. There’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is continue to move on and try to get better. And I think that’s just the mindset that I have with the experiences that I’ve been through.”
There have been other factors. In the off-season, the Raptors added Earl Watson to their coaching staff. Watson earned a reputation as a high-IQ player as he carved out a 13-year NBA career as an undersized second-round pick. It was a hire advocated by Siakam’s agent, Ramasar, who played with Watson at UCLA. Watson’s wisdom has been recognized by Nurse, who has the former Phoenix Suns head coach sit beside him during games, and Watson has served as a conduit for Siakam, an arrangement not uncommon with stars across the league, where a specific coach becomes a sounding board.
“He’s family to me and I think that just him being willing to kind of like come and help out with me and when I was [recovering from] surgery and working on different things, there’s a bond,” says Siakam. “He knows the game and he’s been around some of the best. So just picking his brain, working on different things on the court and also just having someone in the staff that I felt like I was connected with … it’s been a great part of my journey and I’m definitely grateful that he’s here.”
13. Scottie Barnes | SF | Toronto Raptors
Age: 20.7
2021-22 stats: 15.3 PPG | 7.5 RPG | 3.5 APG
Last year’s ranking: NR (rookie)Barnes is the definition of positionless basketball as a 6-foot-7 savant who can defend 1 through 5 in a pinch, bring the ball up the floor like a point guard, play out of the short roll like a center and do pretty close to everything in between while at times looking like a mini Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Among rookies, Barnes is the only player to rank in the top five in points, rebounds, assists, minutes, steals and blocks, joining Ben Simmons, LeBron James, DeMarcus Cousins, Vince Carter and Chris Webber. While I gave Mobley the slight edge over Barnes on my list given his size and length, Barnes is clearly one of the best in this class.
Finding more consistency as a defender and improving his shooting (29.3% from 3) could catapult him into the top 10 of next year’s list.
— Schmitz
This week: 9
Last week: 11Weekly slate: Win over Hawks, Win over Sixers, Win over Rockets, Loss at Knicks
First-quarter grade: C- | Ranked 21st
Second-quarter grade: B | Ranked 17th
Third-quarter grade: B+ | Ranked 15th
Final regular-season grade: ASeason takeaway: If people weren’t paying attention to how good this Toronto Raptors team has been since the start of December, they’re about to find out how dangerous it can be in the playoffs. The Raptors started the season 10-13 and went 38-21 after November was over. Pascal Siakam has played at an All-NBA level, but he has bigger names to get in the way of that honor. Scottie Barnes has played like the Rookie of the Year, but Evan Mobley’s first impression might have ruined that. But the Raptors continue to out-scheme and out-execute teams most nights. Now they head into the playoffs as the No. 5 seed and looking to add another difficult chapter to the Philadelphia playoff story.
What’s next for the Raptors? They face the 76ers in the first round. Nick Nurse has a good history of scheming Joel Embiid into some difficult situations. They won’t have to worry about Matisse Thybulle for games in Toronto. And the Raptors play the exact type of basketball you’d want against this Sixers team. However, if Embiid just decides to be Godzilla, there might not be anything they can do.
The Raptors should be confident. The Sixers are beatable | The Star
“I don’t want to sound (arrogant) here, but I was expecting to be sitting here,” Nurse was telling reporters this past week after his team had punched its playoff ticket. “When we started the season and everyone picked us 11th, I was like, ‘No way, this is a playoff team.’ … I expected to be a playoff team. But I don’t expect to just be here.”
Nurse isn’t merely a chronic optimist caught in a delusional dream: There’s a real chance the Raptors can win this series.
Some of that comes down to his team’s unusual makeup and his renowned knack for throwing strategic sideline curveballs that flummox opponents. And a lot of it comes down to the enormous pressure that’s been placed on an opponent whose key players have a lot more to prove than anyone on the Raptors payroll.
Nurse’s counterpart, Doc Rivers, is less than a year removed from infamously scapegoating ex-point guard Ben Simmons after the Sixers lost to Atlanta in last year’s second round — never mind Rivers’s underwhelming record as a post-season tactician. And while the Sixers have played well since James Harden arrived in February in the long-awaited trade that sent Simmons to Brooklyn — among Eastern teams, only the Celtics have been better as measured by net rating — it’s easy enough to be skeptical of Harden’s fit.
Joel Embiid and the 76ers will tangle once again with Pascal Siakam and the Raptors in Game 1 of their best-of-seven playoff series, Saturday in Philadelphia.
Not only are there question marks about Harden’s diminished athleticism — in a recent five-game stretch, he coughed up more turnovers than he made field goals — there’s Philly’s overreliance on going to the free-throw line. Teammate Joel Embiid leads the league with 13 free throws a game; Harden ranks third at 8.9. As Raptor fans of the DeMar DeRozan era can tell you, it’s an approach that doesn’t always translate to playoff success.
Certainly Embiid, though he’s been one of the best players on the planet for a few years now, hasn’t enjoyed much: winning a grand total of three playoff series in the past four years combined. Toronto, of course, has met Embiid in the post-season once before, in 2019. And when Embiid was on his game — like when he went off for 33 points on 18 field-goal attempts in a Game 3 win that gave the Sixers a 2-1 series lead — he looked like the one-man juggernaut that might dash Toronto’s championship dream. When he wasn’t — like when he averaged nearly six turnovers from Games 5 through 7, this while shooting a dismal 38 per cent from the field — he was blaming any number of hardships. On one night it was diarrhea; on others, it was a bad night’s sleep or a common cold. In the end, Embiid’s career ledger is rife with more post-season excuses than successes.
So there’s a lot riding on this run in Philly. And Embiid, to be fair, has evolved into an even better player.
Which doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of reasons to believe in the Raptors, not the least of which is that Matisse Thybulle, who frequently starts at shooting guard for the Sixers, doesn’t figure to be eligible to play in Toronto in Games 3 and 4 (and 6, if necessary) on account of his vaccination status. Thybulle isn’t a star, by any means. But he is Philadelphia’s best perimeter defender.
Another reason: The chronic underestimation of Toronto in NBA circles.
Raptors Nick Nurse Proves He’s Among NBA’s Best – Sports Illustrated
“(He’s a) mad scientist. That’s all I can say,” Raptors president and vice-chairman Masai Ujiri said of Nurse back in February. “Every day he’s thinking. He lives, he sleeps, he drinks the game. Always thinking of all the things that, hopefully, can give us an edge to win.”
That’s why opposing players hate to play Toronto. Nurse keeps you up at night, as Brooklyn Nets superstar Kevin Durant put it in November. Players of that caliber know when they take on the Raptors, they’re going to face a handful of crazy defensive schemes whether it’s Nurse’s renowned box-and-one that he rolled out against Trae Young earlier in the month to any of his high-pressure pick-and-roll coverages or post-up stoppers.
“He always has some junkyard defense to throw my way and make things difficult,” said Bradley Beal after playing Toronto in early November.
“That’s what Nick Nurse does. That’s who he is,” Beal added in January. “Every time I play him, he’s making it tough, he’s trying to get the ball out of my hand.”
Defensively, this Raptors roster has been everything Nurse could have dreamed of from a versatility perspective. Its size allows everyone to switch across positions without allowing teams to find mismatches. How, for example, are you going to beat a lineup with Scottie Barnes, Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby, Precious Achiuwa, and Chris Boucher on the court together? That specific lineup held opponents to 38.8% shooting and was plus-eight in 25 minutes together this season.
Offensively, there’s no doubt the roster construction was problematic at times. Going with so many similar defense-first forwards forced Nurse to get creative. This wasn’t a team that could space the floor and win with a deadly pick-and-roll attack and three-point shot. Instead, Nurse found advantages elsewhere: the possessions battle.
By no means are Sixers a great draw, but Raptors do seem to have their number | Toronto Sun
The Sixers enjoyed a better 2021-22 season on paper and have the higher seed because of it, but down the stretch and really since the calendar turned to 2022, the Raptors have been the better team.
ADVANTAGE RAPTORS
As it stands now, Matisse Thybulle is definitely out for Games 3 and 4 of the series in Toronto because his vaccination status makes him unable to cross the border.
Needing just two weeks clearance there would still be the chance for Thybulle, who has been vaccinated once to get his second one in time to play in Game 6 should that be necessary, but in talking with reporters, he didn’t sound like a guy who was willing to do that.
“This was a decision I made a long time ago,” Thybulle told reporters Sunday I was raised in a holistic household, anti-vax is not a term that was ever used … we grew up with Chinese medicine and naturopathic doctors.” Thybulle revealed that he received the first vaccine shot with the idea that it would prevent him from getting or spreading the disease, but when that wasn’t true, he felt comfortable handling COVID holistically. “I didn’t see any benefits outweighing what I could seek from alternative medicine,” he said.
A season ago this would not have been the big deal it is now, but Thybulle’s gone from defensive standing coming off the bench to a defensive stalwart in the starting lineup.
Since mid-December, the 76ers have opted for Thybulle’s consistent defence in the starting five ahead of veteran Danny Green who brings both shooting and some defence to the table though the shooting wasn’t always great during the year and the defence is a step down from what the younger Thybulle brings.
The Sixers spent the final few games of the season getting Green re-acquainted with the starting five for those games in Toronto.
Green responded with 18 points in a loss in Toronto and then 15 in a win over Indy.
He spaces the floor better than Thybulle but in a playoff series that is expected to be won or lost on the defensive end, losing Thybulle for two or three games in the series is going to hurt the Sixers significantly.
