One difference between playoff games and regular season games in the NBA is the level of control exerted on a play-by-play basis. In the playoffs, teams will find a weakness and stomp on it until opponents find an answer or say uncle. In the regular season, teams (sometimes) have more mercy or at least shorter attention spans. Yet against the Philadelphia 76ers, the first rematch since the Toronto Raptors’ playoff defeat, the home team was disciplined to the point of absurdity. At the heart of the control, the specificity, was Scottie Barnes.
The Raptors ran six pick and rolls on their first six plays. Barnes was the screener in all six. He created space for Fred VanVleet to drive middle or O.G. Anunoby to catch in the corner and attack. He backpedaled after a screen and hit a catch-and-shoot triple. He slipped a screen for Pascal Siakam to draw both defenders with him, and Siakam drilled the pullup triple. Barnes found weaknesses and stepped on them, play after play.
It was how you’d expect a team to start a playoff game: identify a strength and hit it until the opposing coach reacts. Perhaps the Raptors did so because they faced their most recent playoff foe, thus having some extra demons to exercise. But it wasn’t just the intentionality of Barnes’ screening that gave the Raptors an upper hand; it was the diversity of organizational strengths.
In the second half, the Raptors went away from Barnes as a bureaucratic bastion. He created in a variety of other ways. He received the ball on the nail and handed the ball to Gary Trent jr., running a UCLA top over top. Trent stepped back for a triple. Barnes set a pick for VanVleet. He flashed middle against a zone and buzzed the ball to the weakside for an open triple. He cut baseline on a Siakam post up. Barnes wasn’t always scoring or recording highlights, but his presence was at the heart of Toronto’s success.
His contributions became less singular and more diverse, but they remained as effective. At the core of Barnes’ value is this: the Raptors have a lot of players who can do a lot of things, and they start five of the best together. Sometimes Barnes will be able to set a boatload of screens, but for every screen Barnes sets, that is both a pick and roll he doesn’t run, and it’s a pick and roll that doesn’t see Siakam, VanVleet, or O.G. Anunoby screening (all very capable screeners in different ways). More often, the Raptors will ask Barnes to fill in the gaps in a huge variety of ways. He’s a center on one play and a point guard on the next not just as a means of weaponizing Barnes, but also because so many other players require touches in a variety of ways. Strangely, versatility also breeds its own type of path dependency.
And Toronto’s other core players filled those diverse roles beautifully. VanVleet, whose role has been dramatically different this season, showed enormous growth as a pure point guard. He Nash’d the baseline to draw the defense before looking to cutters — frequently Precious Achiuwa, whose 45 cuts have become a staple of the halfcourt offense. VanVleet used his shooting chops in the pick and roll to put his defender on his back, then drove into the heart of the defense and waited. Waited. Waited. His defender in jail behind him, the center defender engaged in front of him. And VanVleet still waited. Then O.G. Anunoby burst baseline with a cut, and VanVleet immediately led him to the rim for a dunk.
“It looks to me like he’s finding another play when he gets in there,” said Nurse of VanVleet. “Sometimes he’ll sit in there and pass it; sometimes he’ll bounce it back out. Or sometimes he’ll get off it, back out, and go screen again. I think he’s found a next action, or several of them.”
VanVleet could have dominated the ball and created for the rest of the team like so many All-Star guards do, but he often gave up those opportunities and lurked instead in transition and as a second-side attacker. Diversity of role remained the priority; the only constant was variability itself. Anunoby created quite well with his dribble, proving the value of his offering more than just shooting on the offensive end. Trent, asked simply to shoot sharply, went supernova. Cutters whirred and opened the floor for everyone.
“You can’t really draw it up, but [the spread-out success was] just a product of taking what’s there,” said Nick Nurse after the game. “It was a little bit of everything tonight that was there. We just took what was there, and a lot of guys stepped in and made shots, and the combination of running a bit, cutting a bit, and spreading it out a bit was a nice mixture.”
Ultimately, the bureaucracy simplified at the end. As it should be. The ball found VanVleet and Siakam for every play, as VanVleet hit a pullup triple, then a catch-and-shoot triple created by Siakam. The stars became the stars, and variety wilted. That’s how a healthy ecosystem works, though; Barnes’ screening, and Precious Achiuwa’s cutting, and all the other tidbits that built Toronto the lead folded into the system and vanished at winning time. Then the stars won. The supporting cast didn’t fade away entirely; Barnes still cut the baseline for a dunk, and Trent still hit catch-and-shoot jumpers. But the supporting cast supported as the leaders led. Toronto’s modern, positionless, experimental system became quite orthodox, indeed.
Toronto is toeing a fine line as far as structure goes. A motion offense like Toronto’s gives everyone a relatively equitable chance to create plays or finish them, which benefits a team with so many ambitious players. But it also takes the ball out of the hands of surefire stars on various possessions. The Raptors found the perfect balance for one night.
As a result, the Raptors recorded 32 assists on the night. (It helped that they hit 16 triples, shooting 43.2 percent from deep.) They only finished five games with 30 or more assists in 2021-22, and Toronto won all five. Hitting shots is nice, but structure catalyzes such success.
The Raptors don’t have a team built like any other in the NBA. Their best player is a rangy forward who sometimes plays center and sometimes plays guard and is most comfortable in the post. Oh, and that equally describes their ultra-versatile young big, too. Their starting point guard doesn’t pressure the rim, and their starting bigs don’t pressure the 3-point arc. Successful structures within those constrictions are hard to find; the heliocentric, 100-pick-and-rolls-a-night offensive setup that works across the NBA doesn’t work for Toronto. So the Raptors bend the system to fit the team, finding advantages in a variety of setups. It requires more thought, more effort, more attention to detail. The versatility of the system matches the versatility of the players. And for one night, the Sixers were dismantled as everything fit together.
