YOUTH SERVING THE RAPTORS WELL.
TORONTO RAPTORS’ YOUTH MOVEMENT SETS BAR HIGH WITH GAME- CHANGING PLAY
Sometimes you just gotta trust in what you have. Coming into the season the Toronto Raptors were doing just that. Whether it was out of necessity or a conscious choice — only Masai Ujiri and his management team led by Bobby Webster know for sure — but the Raptors opted to roll the dice with youth and it’s worked out very well.
PJ Tucker, Patrick Patterson, Cory Joseph and DeMarre Carroll — all major pieces in last season’s squad — left. CJ Miles was the lone asset returning that was able to help in 2017-18. The Raps allotted a huge chunk of their payroll to keeping Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka in the fold, so letting the others walk was a necessity unless they wanted to go into the luxury tax.
But as early as Ujiri’s postseason breakdown of last season there were indications youth was going to get its turn.
For one thing that group along with a handful of G- League players as well as Norm Powell spent the majority of the summer training together.
The group included Fred VanVleet — the No. 16 man in terms of minutes a year ago for the Raptors, Jakob Poeltl — No. 14, Pascal Siakam — No. 13, and No. 12 man Delon Wright to fill out the Raptors bench.
That quartet along with the previously mentioned Miles have formed what Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens called Tuesday night one of his favourite groups to watch in the NBA, high praise indeed from a man who has a reputation for being a great talent evaluator.
Good basketball men trust their eyes and that was certainly the case here. Of that second unit only Wright and Poeltl came with what anyone would dare suggest was much of a pedigree, Wright, the Raptors’ first overall pick at no. 20 in 2015 and Poeltl the 2016 first round pick from the same school, and ninth overall.
Siakam was a second- round pick, as was Powell while VanVleet somehow went undrafted all together.
But together that group is not just holding its own, it’s changing games to the point where the expectations have grown so just matching other bench units is no longer sufficient.
“I think a lot of teams when their bench comes in they kind of sustain or go in there to just try and buy the starters minutes,” DeMar DeRozan said of Toronto’s bench. “Our second group comes in with a lot of energy and they are liable to win games for us like ( Tuesday vs. Boston) and the last game (vs. Memphis). They come in with that energy and that tempo and we encourage that. Every time they go in there they can win a game for us.”
Toronto’s starters do not play at a slow pace by NBA standards but compared to the young guys that come in behind them and get up and down the court, that first unit is snail-like.
VanVleet is normally the guy pushing that pace and he does so with a very specific result in mind.
“Our job is to not have any drop- off when we sub,” VanVleet said. “That’s the problem that a lot of teams face in the NBA is that when they take their main guys out, there’s a drop- off there. When we’re really rolling, there’s no drop- off when we sub. We try to take the lead in the other direction.”
There was a time this season when this group could sneak up on opponents but those days are over.
Stevens has clearly spent plenty of time studying and apparently enjoying them but even Kyrie Irving was giving Toronto’s second unit its props after Tuesday’s game calling Toronto’s subs the best second unit in the NBA.
The thing is this group is still getting better.
Come playoff time it’s not hard to envision a scenario where it’s the second unit breaking games open for this team.
Certainly, no one considers this particular youth movement a gamble anymore.
OUR SECOND GROUP .. ARE LIABLE TO WIN GAMES FOR US.