With Malachi Flynn out with injury, Nick Nurse and the Toronto Raptors opted to rest the team’s only real point guard on the night, and they made the most Raptors’ choice possible in his replacement: the team’s only 7-footer. Toronto sat its smallest player to start its tallest one. Who needs Vision 6’9 when you can have Power 7’1? And Christian Koloko came out of the gate against the Houston Rockets like a house on fire.
He grabbed an offensive rebound on Toronto’s first offensive possession. Forced a few misses on the following defensive stand. Sometimes it’s very, very useful to be tall. Even more significant, Koloko is tall and graceful, and he’s able to shift his momentum with relative ease for a man his size. That on its own makes it fairly easy to impact the defensive end. And impact he did, collecting four blocks in his 17 minutes while forcing a variety of misses without blocking the shot.
The Raptors had a dire need in that exact area last season. Despite rostering a variety of individually talented rim protectors, including Pascal Siakam, Precious Achiuwa, Chris Boucher, and O.G. Anunoby — all of whom were statistically impressive at forcing misses around the rim — the team was lacking. The Raptors finished 22nd in opposing accuracy at the rim, which is extraordinary considering the level of rim-protection talent on the team. But really it just goes to show: Sometimes it’s easier to let tall guys protect the rim than ask your giant wings to protect as a collective. Or put another way: Don’t make the easy stuff hard.
Koloko makes the easy stuff easy.
But he did more than that against the Rockets. He turned a postup into a nifty hook shot — something he’s done a few times now during preseason. Koloko may be a behemoth, but the Raptors aren’t going to give him postups except on the rare occasion. Still, it’s useful that he can convert. If teams switch a Koloko-as-screener pick and roll, knowing the rookie big can throw in a hook shot or two is a great counterpunch to defuse that defensive tool. Moreover, in the first few games of preseason, he showed great pick-and-roll chemistry with Siakam and Flynn in particular.
Maybe a 7-footer throwing in a hook shot or setting a screen isn’t that complex, but Koloko did yet more. At times he even switched out onto the perimeter, swiveling his hips, keeping his hands high, and shadowing dribble moves to keep the ball out of the paint. That’s all bonus — the Raptors have plenty of bigs who can switch onto the perimeter. That Koloko can do that is nice but not crucial. The easy stuff, not the hard, is what matters. And in that regard, Koloko offers something new. Starting alongside the mainstays, he looked eminently playable. The Rockets tried to pick on him. He was unpickonable, in a variety of situations.
That doesn’t mean Koloko is guaranteed to contribute this season. In fact, to expect him to follow in the footsteps of other developmental outliers like Siakam or Achiuwa is folly. And Koloko has a deck stacked against him. The Raptors start small, and with VanVleet and Siakam the stars, Anunoby crucial on both ends, Scottie Barnes the future, and Gary Trent jr. a knockdown shooter in a contract year, there’s no wiggle room in the starting group. So there goes a bunch of minutes that would include a big.
Then down the depth chart the Raptors have increasingly more bigs who demand time. Achiuwa is a shooter, one of the team’s best finishers on the move, a demon in transition, can create for himself, and — oh yeah — is maybe the team’s most impactful defender. He needs to play, as much for Toronto’s success in the present as its ceiling in the future. Chris Boucher is a phenomenal defender, rebounder, cutter, and finisher. And he just wins his minutes, consistently, no matter the situation. Khem Birch looks revitalized this preseason, and when healthy he was always going to be a positive and impactful player. Now he looks healthy. Thad Young can be effective as a center, perhaps, as can any of Anunoby, Siakam, or Barnes in transition groups that want to run and gun.
Those are three veteran bigs who help the team win, as well as a variety of small-ball options. There are a lot of mouths to feed at the big and forward spots in Toronto.
Where does that leave Koloko? For now, likely on the bench to start the year and with the Raptors 905 at times when their season starts. He can block as many shots as he wants before the games matter, but he’s not unseating Toronto’s incumbent bigs during preseason. He still may get a shot at some point, when injury or other such unhappy circumstances press gang him into the lineup. That always happens at some point during a season.
Perhaps at that point he simply offers the Raptors too much to keep him off the floor. The team just doesn’t have another player like him. And they struggled without a traditional center last season — in rim protection, in finishing at the rim, in creating shots in the paint. So many of Toronto’s struggles could be pinned on a lack of real size. Koloko has that, and he’s graceful to boot.
Those are a lot of ifs, of course. Koloko is a rookie, and he can be expected to make rookie mistakes. Opponents will likely bait him into fouls when he switches into space, and teams will force him into space on offense and ask him to shoot. His transition to NBA basketball will certainly involve more bumps and bruises than did his transition into NBA preseason basketball.
But eventually the team will need Koloko or at least another player like him. Whether that gets him on the court this season or not, it won’t change the fact that Toronto has weaknesses. And it’s increasingly clear that Koloko in some ways addresses them, at least theoretically. The Raptors may have lost to the Rockets, but the win of realizing Koloko’s value far outweighs a preseason result.
