Two-headed monster makes big plans easier
Backups Poeltl and Nogueira add spark and fill big shoes when Valanciunas can’t go
CHARLOTTE, N.C.— There’s the bubbly, always smiling Brazilian who has been betrayed by his body more times than he’d like to admit.
There’s the rather laconic Austrian still finding his way in the NBA, a promising youngster who discovers something new every time he steps on the court.
It is an unusual coupling, this twoheaded Toronto Raptors centre monster of Lucas Nogueira and Jakob Poeltl, but it has given rise to optimism around the team that a suitable backup exists for Jonas Valanciunas, and a starter for whenever the incumbent is unavailable.
Coach Dwane Casey is now never certain which one he’ll turn to each night, going by feel in the moment and a sense of matchup and need, comfortable that one of them will figure it out. And it doesn’t matter which one, really.
Poeltl had assumed the mantle of Valanciunas backup and replacement. He started the two games that Valanciunas has missed with a sore knee and acquitted himself well for a first-year player.
But Nogueira came to the rescue Wednesday night in Oklahoma City, recovered from yet another injury — atweaked ankle picked up in the final pre-season game — to provide the front-court athletic spark the Raptors needed to finish out a112-102 win over the Thunder.
“(It’s) matchups more than anything else,” Casey said Thursday. “Speed and quickness. Lucas does a really good job of really getting out on some of the speedster point guards . . . and there’s some matchups on the big guys that Poeltl does a better job.”
The two are disparate personalities with disparate skills that give Casey options. Nogueira can be electric, taking lob passes to finish off screenand-roll plays that energize his teammates and presenting an imposing, if thin, presence at the rim because of his freakish length.
His ability to finish rolls makes him dangerous when teams play off him to pay attention to DeMar DeRozan or Kyle Lowry with the ball. He had three finishes like that in Oklahoma City, including the first that DeRozan could remember ever delivering.
“And honestly, I think in the next couple of games, the same thing is going to happen, because every game (they) are keying on him,” Nogueira said. “They are going to be on him like a blitz situation, so we have to step up, see who is open and help those guys when the blitzes come.”
Poeltl, for a rookie, is polished in many intricate facets of the game. He has a nose for the ball off the glass, generally sets solid screens and doesn’t usually make the same mistake twice. He is not physically developed by any stretch, but his basketball savvy is impressive for a kid who grew up in Austria and played only two seasons of NCAA basketball.
But for Casey, it’s a matter of who can help the most in a hurry.
“I said at the beginning of the year, it’s going to be a nightly personneldriven situation,” the coach said.