LESSER-KNOWN RAPTORS FLEX MUSCLES
Leonard has plenty of help on the floor as Toronto posts impressive win over Cavs
The Toronto Raptors’ depth is getting a good workout these days and it’s answering the call.
With Kyle Lowry, Danny Green (for the first time all year), Serge Ibaka and Jonas Valanciunas all sidelined with various injuries and ailments, the door has swung wide open for some of the lesser known and less-used members of the team.
So while Kawhi Leonard is still the focus of everything the Raptors do and will be regardless of who he shares the floor with, Friday’s 126-110 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers provided an opportunity for guys like OG Anunoby and Norm Powell to flex their muscles a bit and spread their wings a little.
Anunoby in particular enjoyed the extra run and the extra freedom with so many veterans sidelined to expand on his game.
He was still a strong presence on the three-point line, where he hit three of his first four before finishing up 3-of-7. But like rarely before, Anunoby was forcing the Cavaliers to defend him in an attacking mode and they had no answer once he got started to the basket.
Anunoby finished with a career-high-tying 21 points and a career-high-matching eight rebounds in 22 solid minutes of work.
With the Raptors deciding to go small and put Pascal Siakam at centre to start the game, Anunoby got a rare start himself and took full advantage.
Powell, who has had some of the worst injury luck in a Raptors uniform over the past three seasons, is back and healthy after a month-long absence, and even coming off the bench he got 26 minutes of run and set a personal season high with 11 points while adding three assists and three rebounds.
Leonard, though, was the steadying force, matching his season high with 37 points that included a season-best 11 free throws and 12 free-throw attempts, something head coach Nick Nurse has recently been harping on.
Without Lowry and Green, Nurse elected to go with a twopoint guard starting five with both Fred VanVleet and Delon Wright in there. VanVleet had another solid all-around night with 14 points, eight assists and five boards.
The Raptors now close out the pre-Christmas portion of their schedule with a game Saturday night in Philadelphia, where they are once again expected to be short-handed.
NEW TEMPORARY LOOK AT CENTRE
It’s not that Greg Monroe and Chris Boucher didn’t have their moments as the two shared the centre spot in the win over Indiana on Wednesday. Head coach Nick Nurse just didn’t like the defence they provided, so Friday night, he went another way.
Nurse started Pascal Siakam at centre and brought Monroe off the bench.
It sounded like the move was as much as what Nurse felt he could get from Siakam as it was that he wasn’t so thrilled about Monroe or Boucher’s game.
This was Nurse’s pre-game review of the time Siakam spent at centre (or the five) on Wednesday: “Excellent. Really impressed,” Nurse said. “I wouldn’t have known that he knew everything we were doing at the five. I was super impressed. Even today, we’ll look at that lineup obviously. We ran a whole bunch of sets and out-of-bounds (plays), and he knew them all.”
As for Monroe and Boucher, they know exactly what they have to do.
“(Monroe) actually played pretty good offensively the other night, he was really good offensively and he’s a decent defender, but he made a few mistakes that he probably shouldn’t have made,” Nurse said.
“Him and Chris both did it, we noticed when we watched the tape back that they both were out of coverage a lot. It’s kind of big for both of them. All of a sudden Greg’s starting after not playing, Chris is playing in an NBA game for the first time ever and they both contributed offensively, which is great, but I think they both have a little improvement they can make defensively. We certainly showed them the film and went though some things that we need to have.”
ADVERSITY HANDLERS
Having come through probably the toughest 11-game stretch the schedule can hand the team starting with that Nov. 29 win against Golden State and ending with Wednesday’s win against Indiana, the Raptors have to be at least mildly pleased.
The record wasn’t overwhelming, winning six of those and losing five, but there were some extenuating circumstances.
The Raptors played six of those games without either Kyle Lowry or Kawhi Leonard. They lost Jonas Valanciunas for the final 3½ games.
Serge Ibaka was out for two games, while Siakam and Fred VanVleet each missed one.
To say that Nurse had his hands full coming up with a lineup on any given night is not stretching the truth.
But to get six wins with the level of competition the Raptors were facing and with the constant change in terms of bodies available suggests how successful this team can be this year.
Danny Green began Friday as the only player to have started every game for the Raptors this year, but his streak came to an end as he sat out Friday’s game because of a left knee bruise.
Two of the 11 games in that stretch came against teams that the Raptors dominated from a talent standpoint. That would be the Brooklyn game, which they somehow lost, and the Cleveland game, which they won handily without Lowry.
The other nine games were all against top-notch competition and the Raptors did not take a real step back in any of them.
All the injuries have played havoc with on-court chemistry. Often the Raptors have gotten by on pure talent.
The point of all of this is the Raptors got through this despite injuries that would cripple most NBA teams.
That they stayed afloat and managed to win more than they lost bodes well for this team going forward.
QUICK HITS: Again the Raptors are reluctant to be very definitive when it comes to Leonard and their plans for when he will and won’t play, but the expectation going into the Cleveland game was that Leonard would play both ends of the back-to-back. “As of now, yeah,” Nurse said before Friday’s game.