This wasn’t supposed to happen again this season.
The Toronto Raptors put their faith in center Jonas Valanciunas with a four-year, $64-million contract extension this summer. The deal was a clear statement of belief in the 23-year-old’s continued growth and in his ability to clean up the areas of his game that rendered him a core-piece-in-absentia in the fourth quarter of many tight games.
In years past, head coach Dwane Casey has lacked the confidence in Valanciunas late in games, unable to trust that the Lithuanian will capably protect the rim and anchor the defense. Last season, it was Amir Johnson sliding over to the five in most close endgame scenarios, with Valanciunas averaging 5.1 fourth-quarter minutes, ninth on the team. That was a step down from the 6.7 he averaged the season prior (sixth on the team) and less than in his rookie season, though Valanciunas sat for many full quarters as a freshman, skewing the average. In any case, 2014-15 was a step backward in Valanciunas’ development insofar as it pertained to his ability to make an impact outside of the first three quarters.
Part of his late struggles could be attributed to Casey and teammates. The prior defensive scheme was a poor fit with a center who plays like Valanciunas. He’s a strong defender on the block, a good help defender at the rim, and a great defensive rebounder. What he’s not is a good decision maker, and he lacks the requisite footwork on the defensive end to swiftly move in three directions. Casey’s ultra-aggressive system from a year ago, employed in large part because of the team’s dearth of perimeter defenders, put far too much pressure on Valanciunas to help from different angles, spanning 180 degrees along the baseline. That’s not an excuse for occasionally poor individual defense, but it’s a reality of the player within the system. Offensively, his teammates treated him as an afterthought, with Valanciunas getting a paltry 1.3 field-goal attempts in his 5.1 minutes.
The net result was mostly disastrous when Valanciunas did play, with the Raptors being outscored by 8.2 points per-100 possessions, by far the worst mark of any player who was regular fourth-quarter run. Given how they tasked him with too much defensively and didn’t give him any touches to make up for it on the offensive end, his limited role and limited success in fourth quarters could be viewed as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Raptors didn’t expect him to play well, so they treated him as if he wouldn’t, and then he didn’t.
This season was supposed to be different.
Valanciunas is off to a great start to his fourth campaign, showing marked improvement on both ends of the floor. He’s carried the team offensively at times, his post offense – his overall effectiveness on post-ups is actually down and yet he remains in the 57th percentile among qualified players – helping cover up a six-game stretch of horrid outside shooting for the Raptors. He’s proven more dangerous as a roll-man (69th percentile) and he’s 12-of-17 from beyond 10 feet, not only by far the best he’s shot from out there (in an admittedly tiny sample), but also the most willing he’s been to let it fly. That’s made his patented pump-fake more effective and makes teams think harder about how to defend dribble hand-offs with Valanciunas at the elbow. He still can’t pass but his offensive rebounding rate is up, his turnover rate is down slightly, and he’s scoring at the most efficient rate he ever has, even with a career-high usage rate.
Defensively, it’s been night and day to last year. Casey simplified his schemes in large part to better suit Valanciunas’ strengths and hide his weaknesses. The team has a far better group of perimeter defenders this year, which alone would have made Valanciunas’ job easier. But Casey also has him dropping back on pick-and-rolls rather than hedging hard on guards, which allows Valanciunas to use his length to contest pull-ups or protect against drives without asking him to leave his man, recover, and then still help. There’s less to think about and less ground to cover, and that simplicity is helping Valanciunas thrive.
He’s looked far more comfortable, and keeping him close to the rim has helped the team’s overall defense – Valanciunas is contesting 45 percent of opponent shots at the rim, saving the Raptors an estimated 4.6 points per-36 minutes, per data from Nylon Calculus. The contest rate is sixth among qualified bigs, and while opponents are shooting an uncharacteristic 56.8 percent against Valanciunas contests, that number figures to regress so long as he keeps contesting aggressively. Staying nailed to the paint also serves to make Valanciunas one of the league’s best rebounders so far, and the Raptors as a team grab 79.1 percent of contested defensive rebounding opportunities when he’s on the floor (at the individual level, he ranks 11th in total rebounding rate and 12th in rebounds per-game).
Whether as a result of being more comfortable close to the rim or by improvement on his own, his individual post defense has been better, too, and Valanciunas ranks in the 96th percentile for post-up defense. Opponents are 3-of-17 posting up Valanciunas, and even with a fair number of fouls, they’re averaging just 0.45 points per-possession, less than half of what Valanciunas is scoring at the other end.
This is all to say that Valanciunas has been very good. At both ends of the floor. The Raptors are outscoring opponents by 13.6 points per-100 possessions with Valanciunas playing, the best mark on the entire team. The Raptors give up 96.6 points per-100 possessions with him on the court, much better than they perform without him and, yes – small samples and quality of teammate minutes caveats apply some – better than Bismack Biyombo (103.8 D-Rating, -7.7 net).
Biyombo was brought in as the team’s backup center exclusively for his defense, and it’s worthwhile to get him run. He adjusts shots and drives and disrupts baseline cutters, covering a nice circumference around the rim. But there’s no world in which he should be playing crunch-time minutes over Valanciunas like he did in Sunday’s loss to the Sacramento Kings.
Valanciunas had an off night, to be sure. He finished 2-of-9 from the floor, good for four points and five rebounds in 20 minutes, and the Raptors were outscored by five when he played. He was also getting roasted some by DeMarcus Cousins, because Cousins is an absolute beast who nobody can guard. Cousins finished with 36 points, 10 rebounds, three assists, and three blocks, nailing triples in triplicate, shooting 12-of-22, and generally being the impossible human he is. Some of that is on Valanciunas, who didn’t answer the call opposite his contemporary.
It was a marquee matchup and Valanciunas was losing. But Luis Scola was responsible for checking Cousins for some of those minutes and Biyombo wasn’t actually doing a good job himself. Biyombo played 11:34 of Cousins’ 10-point fourth quarter while Valanciunas watched from the bench as the Raptors’ offense continually floundered down the stretch.
Biyombo is a nice complementary piece, solid depth behind Valanciunas and a nice secondary look to throw at a team on the defensive end. When he’s on the floor, the Raptors just happen to be playing 4-on-5 on offense. Teams don’t guard Biyombo at all, letting them load up against ball-handlers. They don’t even mind him as a dive-man, and one play late Sunday saw Kyle Lowry trapped by a triple-team as the Kings completely ignored Biyombo. When the Raptors get him the ball, he’s as likely to kick it out of bounds as catch the pass. On Sunday, he completely negated the benefit of playing Cory Joseph alongside the starters and shifting to a smaller look, generally the team’s most effective lineup iteration. The Joseph-Lowry-DeMar DeRozan-DeMarre Carroll foursome that has torched almost every opponent so far was rendered ice cold against a mediocre defense, getting outscored 13-4 in four minutes, because Biyombo is a complete non-factor at one end of the floor.
Casey opted not to go back to Valanciunas save for nine seconds of the quarter as the lead evaporated and the offense dried up. No, Valanciunas probably wasn’t going to be able to stop Cousins any more than Biyombo was, but he would have at least made him work at the other end of the floor instead of giving him the entire quarter off on defense. He also would have stood as an option to goose a stagnant offense, or at least be a threat to catch the ball and finish in the pick-and-roll.
In general, too much blame can get assigned to a coach in individual games. Casey’s refusal to play Valanciunas late wasn’t, in and of itself, the reason the Raptors lost. The team shot 9-of-21 in the fourth, DeRozan flipped a switch and turned what had been his best game of the season into one of his worst fourth quarters in memory, and the team’s hot shooting dried up with a 1-of-7 mark from outside. And nobody could stop Cousins, because nobody can ever stop Cousins.
Still, the idea that Casey would again go away from Valanciunas late, even for a game, is troubling. Valanciunas is averaging 5.1 fourth-quarter minutes this season, eighth on the team and 1.5 less than Biyombo. Only 11 games into the season, that’s skewed some by blowouts against Miami and Philadelphia, but it’s definitely something that warrants keeping an eye on. The Raptors have been very good when Valanciunas is on the floor in fourth quarters – they’re outscoring opponents by 26.7 points per-100 possessions, nearly 0.4 points per-possession better than with Biyombo on the floor late.
It’s one game, or one week, or one potentially skewed 11-game sample. It can’t continue. Valanciunas has been great for the most part, responding exactly how the team would have hoped following his extension and system tweaks designed in part to help keep him on the floor. The team’s been far better with him on the court, even late, and the lone disparate option has been ineffective, his complete lack of offense more than discounting his defensive contribution.
There’s not really a matchup or scenario that warrants benching Valanciunas in the fourth quarter because he’s been one of the team’s best players. The Raptors can’t afford to not play him in high-leverage situations.
