The locker room went berserk. Yeaaahhh, you could hear across the hall. Jakobbbb! He had just finished obliterating the Orlando Magic, sending the Toronto Raptors to the All-Star break on perhaps the highest note of the season. The locker room keeps its doors closed at the very end of the game, and the interview room is across the hallway. It’s extremely rare that we can hear a single word from the locker room sitting in the interview room waiting for Nick Nurse to join us. But we could hear a whole lot of words coming from the locker room tonight, all of them celebratory.
Toronto has had a hole on its team for two-and-a-half seasons. A big hole. A 7-foot-1 hole, on both ends. There’s a hole on the defensive end when the team plays manic, heavy-rotation schemes and then has no big into whom it can funnel drivers. There’s a hole on the offensive end when the team runs little pick and roll and has no big able to score highly efficient points around the rim. That lack has been eating away at Toronto’s performance, record, and joy all season long.
It’s got to be a relief to finally fill the gaping hole in your roster. Nick Nurse and Masai Ujiri both admitted so after the deal. Even Poeltl, diplomatic as always, said as much.
“I think that was the goal of the trade,” mused Poeltl (after I forced him by asking about it). “I can fill that true center position.”
Defensively, the team just hasn’t had anyone to defang the pick and roll. He does so much: eats up space, protects the rim, and cleans the glass. The eating space thing is important; Toronto has a bevy of long wings who can contest shots around the rim, but none have the mass and power to actually keep opponents from attempting good shots. Maybe they miss them, but the shots are still good. Poeltl is the only player who forces bad shots from opponents when they drive at him. (And then he’ll block them anyway.)
He finished with six blocks against the Magic, all coming in the second half, and five coming in the final frame. He had blocks in every situation: as a help defender from in front and behind, chasing down his own man (multiple times), tipping away scoops, and walling off drives. He blocked some shots into teammates’ hands, and he pinned some off the glass. It was a block party hosted by Clue, each one coming in a different room with a different character of its own.
Offensively, the Raptors have been starting five players who often look to get their own in terms of usage. There are passers, to be sure, and great ones. But all of Fred VanVleet, Gary Trent jr., O.G. Anunoby, Scottie Barnes, and Pascal Siakam can tend towards higher-usage, star role play. (Not star value – star role.) Poeltl is a supporting offensive player, even when he leads the team in shot attempts and scoring.
“I’d argue I was still in the support role,” said Poeltl after the game. “I was just getting a lot of passes out of the pick and roll. It’s about reacting to the defense; they trapped Freddy a bunch of times, so I’m comfortable catching the ball at the top of the key and trying to make plays.
“I feel like I was looking for the pass a little bit early on, and then I noticed they were backing off, so I was able to look for my own shot a little bit more. I think Fred did a really good job in the pick and roll finding me and it was just about finishing those off.”
It wasn’t just VanVleet with whom Poeltl dominated in the pick and roll. He also screened for Siakam, particularly to close the game. On two consecutive possessions, the friends showed their chemistry. On the first, the Magic blitzed Siakam, who lofted a pass over the top to Poeltl, who did the rest. The next time down, Siakam rejected the screen, turned the corner on his defender, and threw a lookaway dump-off pass to Barnes lurking along the baseline.
“He sets good screens,” Siakam said of Poeltl. “He’s a smart basketball player, and with guys like me, Freddy, we know how to communicate with him; we’ve been together; we know each other.”
When the Magic tried to get the ball out of the handler’s hands, Poeltl made plays on the short roll. When they stopped him from passing, he simply scored. When they let the ballhandler create, Poeltl created oodles of space with his Godzilla screens. And even when the Magic tried to switch, Poeltl simply buried the small in the post and tossed in hooks.
“Well, it’s smart,” said Nurse after the game of Poeltl’s annihilation of switches in the post. “Looks easy. I don’t think it’s that easy. We maybe made it look easy tonight.”
“There’s two ways you’re gonna beat teams that switch: the big guy is going to go bury somebody inside or the big defender is going to have to guard somebody on the perimeter that can get by him or shoot a three,” said Nurse. “So having both of those makes it… you’ve got to probably not switch as much, especially if we’re getting inside buckets. Nobody likes the feel of a switch, throw it inside, get overpowered for a layup [for] very long.”
As a result, the Magic were left without answers defending any action with Poeltl involved. They simply had to give up and lose with grace.
It turns out, the Raptors look pretty good with some roster balance. Missing two of their three best 3-point shooters, and outshot from deep, they beat the Magic with ease. The starters won their minutes by nine and are now up to a net rating of plus-24.4. Poeltl finished with a behemoth 30 points, nine rebounds, two assists, six blocks, and a steal, and the Raptors won his minutes by 18 points. His game was worth celebrating in the locker room.
And not the smallest side effect: The Raptors are happy. Siakam has his best friend back. The two shared a powerful hug at the end of the game. The vibes were mighty in the locker room. Chris Boucher and Precious Achiuwa — self-titled Shawn Michaels and Triple H, one half of D-Generation X — sang together after the game. Toronto has now won five of six. (It would be six in a row if it weren’t for an almost inexplicable fourth-quarter collapse against the Utah Jazz.) The team gets to rest now, which Nurse admitted was crucial before the game.
“I think guys need a breather,” he said.
They might need a breather, and to get healthy, but the Raptors have finally found a breath of fresh air in Poeltl.
