Siakam has been pleasant surprise
It is the long game that intrigues the Raptors and, notwithstanding the nightly entertainment quotient they provide for fans, it will be the way the season is ultimately regarded.
That, however, is months away from being determined. Today, as Nurse said, the issue is getting by, getting better and getting ready.
“It’s normal things. Some nights our rim protection isn’t as good as we’d like it to be. For some reason we are just not rotating quick enough or our screen setting isn’t as good or we are not coming off ball screens with enough pace. There are many areas that you kind of flow in and out of. One game we did it this way. We didn’t block out well enough that game. Whatever. There are many areas. We try to level off and prioritize some of those things a little bit.”
The most pleasant surprise of the first half of the season has been Pascal Siakam, the thirdyear forward who blitzed the Bucks for 30 points on Saturday night, the fifth time the season he’s established a new personal single-game scoring mark.
The six-foot-nine native of Cameroon has been given more leeway than imaginable by Nurse, encouraged to grab a defensive rebound and take off with the ball in transition, using his speed, athleticism and quirky spin-move-with-seemingly-no-plan to finish at the rim.
He’s given the Raptors another ball-handling creative force, much needed in the NBA of this era.
“He’s commanding the ball against certain matchups, telling those guys give me the ball because I’m taking this guy and he gets the ball and he takes it and scores it, gets an and-one thrown in here or there,” Nurse said.
“Obviously we’ve let him handle it in the open floor a lot more. It’s not like super unique, they’ve got guy (in Milwaukee, Giannis Antetokounmpo) that does it pretty well, Blake Griffin does it.”
But while Siakam has been the most welcome surprise, there have been disappointments through the first half and turning them around will be paramount to continued secondhalf success. OG Anunoby, of whom so much was expected going into his second season, has scuffled all year and his inability to grasp akey backup role has hampered the bench production all season.
While still a promising youngster, the 21-year-old is shooting just 33 per cent from threepoint range and an abysmal 32.1 per cent from the foul line through 35 games.
Nurse has touted him as a potential starter later in the season and the coach is intrigued by an athletic frontcourt grouping of Kawhi Leonard, Anunoby and Siakam, but that’s not going to happen unless Anunoby becomes a more consistent offensive force. He remains an above-average defender but has to at least become a scoring threat to keep opponents from completely ignoring him.
Bench play has been an issue all season, perhaps the most troubling aspect of the first 41 games.
With a team in perfect health, the starters would be Kyle Lowry, Danny Green, Leonard, Siakam and Serge Ibaka with Fred VanVleet and Jonas Valanciunas bookending the backup unit.
But finding two or three consistent players to round out a second group has been impossible. Picking from the group of Anunoby, Norm Powell, Delon Wright and C.J. Miles to fill the remaining two or three secondunit slots might be the biggest task of the second half of the season.
That inconsistency has been irksome.
“Defensively we’ve had some steps back some games, and some times we show phases of where we do well and phases of where we don’t do well,” Green said. “Offensively, the same. It seems as if, watching some of the film, we’re going through the motions a little bit, not being sharp, not coming out the way we needed to or not coming out ready.”
Injuries have been a large part of the story and the troubles.
Lowry’s back, Valanciunas’s thumb and the desire to perhaps sacrifice a game here and there to keep Leonard healthier for the late spring have denied Nurse a chance to truly massage the rotation. But that may be a temporary thing. And once everyone is healthy, 20 or 25 games should be enough time to get everyone on the same page.
So the halfway mark has come and gone and the Raptors have been outstanding except when they haven’t been. A half-season of ups and downs and good and bad and lurching from one supposed crisis to the next.
And when it’s looked at from a step or two back, with the Raptors in a tense battle for No. 1 in the league, the first half has to be deemed a success.