RESILIENT RAPTORS RISE TO THE OCCASION
LOWRY, IBAKA HAVE ELEVATED THEIR GAMES DURING 9-1 START
Through 10 games of the Toronto Raptors season, it’s tough to choose the most impactful development of this season.
This, of course, is minus anything to do with Kawhi Leonard.
Is it Kyle Lowry’s rush to lead the NBA in assists or is it Serge Ibaka’s renaissance?
Both have played a huge role in the Raptors’ 9-1 start.
Lowry is averaging 11.6 assists per game, easily the most in the NBA and well beyond the likes of Chris Paul, Rajon Rondo, Russell Westbrook and James Harden in that category.
It’s a 10-game sample size, but Lowry has never in his 12 previous seasons averaged more than 7.4 assists per game. That was in 2013-14, his second year in Toronto when he began the season as the full-time starting point guard.
Lowry refuses to get caught up in the numbers.
“Just taking what the defence is giving me,” Lowry said in a quiet moment Sunday after the media scrum had moved on.
Asked specifically if he was making a conscious decision to be even more of a distributor than in the past, Lowry shook off the suggestion.
Lowry revels in the successes of his teammates and those of his fellow Philadelphians, but getting him to talk about his numbers, particularly this early in the season, is like going up against a brick wall.
With eight consecutive games of double-digit assists he has broken Damon Stoudamire’s franchise record of 10 or more assists in consecutive games. Stoudamire’s mark had stood since the franchise’s first year until Lowry put up 15 dimes in Los Angeles to help beat the Lakers.
His low-water mark for assists in a game this year is six in a win over Boston in the second game of the season. His high is 15, set in L.A. and a week earlier in a loss in Milwaukee.
Twice in his career he has had 18-assist games, but never in a Raptors uniform. The last time he did it was against Atlanta on New Year’s Eve in 2011. He was a member of the Houston Rockets then.
His 11.6 average through 10 games would give him the highest league mark since Rondo averaged 11.65 with the Sacramento Kings in 2015-16. If he somehow manages to increase that average to 12 or better over a full season, he would become the first to average that many assists per game since John Stockton in 1994-95.
But if the Lowry assist binge isn’t the most impactful non-Leonard development of the season to date, then it is almost assuredly the development of Ibaka as a centre.
With each game, Ibaka seems to get more comfortable in the role, dwarfing any scoring numbers he put up as a power forward going back to his Oklahoma City days.
His career best 34-point effort Sunday in Los Angeles was just the latest eye-opening performance from the starting centre.
The move from power forward to centre was not one Ibaka made easily, but it is one that has worked out probably even better than he could have imagined.
In order to do so he had to basically take the majority of the starts at centre away from Jonas Valanciunas, a player he has probably spent more time with than any other player on the roster. It was head coach Nick Nurse who was with Valanciunas in Lithuania in past off-seasons working on his quickness and footwork. Nurse was with him in Serbia for the world championship as well.
But knowing Valanciunas to be the ultimate team player and knowing in his heart that Ibaka would be far more effective as a centre than a power forward, Nurse made the move.
But it’s not just his scoring that has seen a definite uptick since the move. Ibaka is more of a force on the boards and back to being the rim protector he was in the past because the move has forced him to be around the basket.
“Yeah, it is putting him in a lot better positions to get offensive rebounds because he is not floating on the perimeter and spacing up. But he’s also rolling a lot, rim running a lot in transition, so, yeah, it’s putting him down there and right now it looks really good,” Nurse said.
Nurse tied the Lowry assist bump and Ibaka position switch together.
“Kyle’s assist numbers are off the charts and I would bet a lot of those are going to Serge,” Nurse said.