The Toronto Raptors have spent much of the season taking on water, plugging holes in the boat, and finding two more spring anew for every one solved. There has been a broken defense, starters who don’t fit together, stars who don’t fit together, lack of effort, lack of shooting, lack of rim pressure, and lack of bench support. (Did I miss anything? Almost definitely.)
It’s hard to win when something is always going wrong. Oh, and the team has had virtually no time, until recently, with a healthy rotation. Plus the most important offseason acquisition has contributed nothing.
But most of those issues have, slowly, been fading into the distance. The defense has ranked a solid 11th since the trade deadline, when the Raptors acquired Jakob Poeltl to fill a Jakob Poeltl-sized hole on the defensive end. The starters have dominated. (More on that in a moment.) The team is playing harder. Poeltl is finally giving Toronto some efficient offense around the rim. Fred VanVleet, O.G. Anunoby, and Gary Trent jr. are all shooting significantly better than they were to start the season — positive regression for the win! Things are coming around.
And finally, the bench is starting to win its minutes. There’s talent there, but most of the bench players need conducive context to play at their best. Nick Nurse is figuring out how to offer that context across entire games. Most importantly, there need to be at least two starters on the floor at all minutes to boost the bench players and allow them to thrive in specific roles. What those pairings should be is increasingly clear.
Fortunately for the Raptors, with only two pairings having any real success together, they only need to use two such pairings. There’s some logic to the success of Pascal Siakam-Anunoby and VanVleet-Scottie Barnes. These pairings ensure there’s always one of Toronto’s shooters from the starting lineup joining the shooters from the bench (namely Trent, and sometimes Will Barton as well). In VanVleet and Siakam, one of Toronto’s two primary shot creators will be on the floor at all times. Also, quick victory lap: I wrote in great depth in November why Toronto should use VanVleet-Barnes and Siakam-Anunoby as the starter pairings in transitional lineups. It seems Nurse has (for now) come around to the idea.
Against the Thunder, the Raptors played VanVleet and Barnes together with three bench players — Chris Boucher, Trent, and Christian Koloko (!) — for four minutes, which Toronto won. Siakam and Anunoby played two minutes together — with Barton, Trent, and Koloko — for two minutes, which Toronto also won. Success came in many forms, which has not been something you could say about Toronto for most of the season.
The two groups combined to shoot 8-of-12 from the field and 2-of-4 from deep. The defense was less spectacular, but it wasn’t problematic, at least. Koloko especially was great. Every player fit into his role well. Boucher attacked the glass relentlessly and dashed around the court on defense. Trent scored. Koloko protected the rim. Barton launched shots. With role players knowing when and where their minutes will come, and alongside which starters, it’s much easier to perform. They are playing positions that they’ve played for most of their careers. And the starters know what’s expected of them as well, with VanVleet-Barnes sharing initiating duties, and Siakam looking fantastic as the initiator with Anunoby spacing the floor and finishing plays.
There’s another benefit to Toronto using two-starter groups in great depth. As the team trickles its starters back into the game, it gives an opportunity for extra rest to major players. In the second quarter against the Thunder, the Raptors in the first half ran Siakam alongside the bench for extended minutes. (He finished with 33 minutes played, the 10th-lowest mark of his season.) To buy him extra rest, Trent remained in the game as the starters ended their rest, and lo and behold Toronto had a lineup with everyone playing his natural position. VanVleet-Trent-Anunoby-Barnes-Poeltl won their five minutes by seven points, with six of their seven field goals coming from assists. In the second half, Trent replaced Anunoby with the other four starters on the court, and they won their six minutes by six points, again collecting six assists on seven field goals. Those were Toronto’s two most successful lineups, and that 13-point total difference proved to be the difference between a blowout and close contest.
The Raptors have a net rating of 11.8 with four starters in the game, the fifth-best mark in the league. There’s some logic there, as the team starts three forwards (in addition to a center), so finding positional balance with a guard replacing a forward would help catalyze successful minutes — particularly against other team’s benches. There’s more spacing. Four-starter groups are the only ones that have found consistent success for Toronto all season (although if the starters continue to play the way they have been together, the all-starter group will quickly join four-starter units as huge positives). Yet the Raptors have only used four-starter lineups the 13th-most in the league. Finding extra minutes for two-starter units — and thus extra rest for the three starters on the bench — allows the Raptors to mix in four-starters (usually with Trent) with more consistency.
Even more helpfully, Precious Achiuwa will return to the rotation at some point. It’s probably clear that Toronto’s defense requires a paint protector, someone who forces bad shots rather than contests good ones. Compared to Achiuwa, Koloko and Poeltl are holding opponents to much lower efficiency marks within six feet. Achiuwa may be best employed as a wing on the defensive end, where his switchability, strength, and ability to move his feet makes him an elite individual stopper rather than a defensive general that the center position requires. (As an isolation defender, for example, Achiuwa holds opponents to the lowest efficiency marks on the team.) Indeed, when he’s played center, Toronto’s defense has given up 120.2 points per 100 possessions. When he’s played alongside another center, Toronto’s defense has conceded only 109.4 points per 100 possession. There’s a clear strength and weakness there, and Toronto can play to one and avoid the other.
That means Achiuwa may have to slot in with the starters as an early sub alongside Poeltl. (Those groups, which started when Anunoby was out injured, were particularly dominant — with a 100th-percentile offense.) Then Achiuwa could remain on the floor when Koloko replaces Poeltl, alongside VanVleet and Barnes perhaps, as well as perhaps Trent for floor balance. Of course, it gets tricky when you try to fit Boucher in there. (Toronto really has a lot of power forwards.) But there is increasingly clarity on what will work as far as rotations and what won’t. Toronto has the players to consistently throw 48 minutes of proven lineups on the floor. Perhaps Boucher and Achiuwa won’t play all their minutes together, and won’t play as much as expected (especially with Koloko in the rotation), but the goal is to maximize the team.
Of course, the most important lineup of all is the starting group. And since Toronto’s starters have all been healthy, the starting group has played the second-most minutes (163) of any lineup in the league and won those minutes by the second-largest margin (58 points). That is a reliable source of success for approximately 20 minutes a night. Two-starter groups can play 10 minutes a night, and four-starter groups another 10. Then transitions between those units (for example, midway through the second quarter, when a third starter (Poeltl) joins VanVleet and Barnes alongside two bench players (Trent and Achiuwa)) can smooth the connections and easily fill the remainder of the night.
There are paths to sustained success over 48 minutes for Toronto. No starter has to run ragged by playing 40 minutes a night. And with all of Trent, Achiuwa, Koloko, Boucher, and Will Barton available off the bench, Toronto has different lineups available, big and small, offensive and defensive, to deal with any situation. It’s late in the season, and the Raptors are almost assuredly going to finish in the play-in tournament, but Toronto’s picture is finally clarifying in terms of how game management should unfold.
