Mad scientist time for Nurse
With almost a full roster, coach gets the chance to mix and match lineups
It’s time for Nick Nurse to get back in the lab.
Having shown an entirely unexpected new look to start their last game, the Raptors coach may now enter an all-out experimental stage with the lineups he trots out each night.
The relatively gigantic starting five of Kyle Lowry, OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam, Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol that played Wednesday night in Oklahoma City may give way to a more guard-dominated group Friday at home against Washington, and who knows what that group will look like Saturday evening in Minneapolis.
“I really think you are going to see us shift the lineups around over the course of the next 10 games,” Nurse told reporters in Oklahoma City, before the Raptors beat the Thunder 130-121.
Having almost a full roster at his disposal for the first time since early December gives Nurse the chance to mix and match and see what works against which teams. Siakam, Gasol and Norm Powell are all back from injuries and operating at near-normal levels, and the expectation is that Fred VanVleet will return from a hamstring injury in the next game or two.
Getting VanVleet back will help is so many different ways and fix some creeping issues that need to be addressed.
All season, Nurse has relied heavily on a backcourt of Lowry and VanVleet on the floor together for long stretches. Most important, at least one of them
is directing traffic basically every minute of the game.
It’s not to say that backups such as Pat McCaw and Terence Davis and, to a lesser degree, Powell can’t handle the ball and the responsibility of getting the Raptors’ offence organized, but none of them has the experience running the team that VanVleet does.
His on-court leadership might prevent the late-game issues Toronto has had in three of its last four games. VanVleet knows how to set or dictate the pace the team needs. And having one more healthy body should lighten enough loads that the formerly injured players won’t have to push themselves.
The coach pointed to exhaustion as a factor in fourth-quarter failings that cost them games against Portland and San Antonio, and almost cost them Wednesday’s game against the Thunder.
“I just think we are playing extremely hard in stretches, especially at the start, and then it seems to me more like we rev our motor really high and then they come back at us, or halftime comes and then (that revving motor) just goes all the way down and we can’t quite get it revved up to the same extent,” Nurse said in a post-game scrum on Wednesday. “That has to do with conditioning and recovery. I just have to be a little more careful with the stints and how long they are, so they don’t go past the exhaustion point.”
More bodies will give Nurse a chance to establish some of the flexibility that he so craves. It’s not that he prefers one group over another. It’s that he wants to make sure all eventualities are covered when it’s most important.
“I think it’s time to start honing that in a little bit, and I think it starts with a lot of experimenting,” Nurse said. “And I think we want to be flexible.
“It’s not easy to do. Everybody wants to start and all that kind of stuff, but we want to be flexible. Again, you get into one (playoff ) series and you are going to go one way, and you get into the next and you are going another. I don’t feel that is the time to start being flexible. I think we have to build some of that in now as we go.”