VanVleet adjusts to bigger role
Guard entered Monday averaging a career- high 21.1 points per game
There was always going to be a bit of newness to Fred VanVleet’s role with the Raptors this year because it is in some ways a new team.
With the loss of the offensive production supplied by Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol, those points had to be replaced from somewhere and VanVleet, one of the team’s best three- point shooters, was going to be asked to contribute just a little bit more.
He has. And then some. Going into Monday’s game in Portland — the end of a fourgame western road trip for Toronto — VanVleet had been the best and most consistent scorer on the team.
He is putting up career- best numbers right across the board and, most important, he is more than filling the frontcourt void.
“I think the game is just really slow for him right now and that’s a good thing,” VanVleet’s backcourt mate, Kyle Lowry, said Sunday night.
“I think he’s very confident and he knows what he is going to do every single night. He knows we need him to get 20 points a night and I think that is a big thing, him understanding we need him to get those 20 points.”
VanVleet’s scoring numbers are, for him, eye- popping.
In Toronto’s first nine games, while playing exactly the same number of minutes as he did last season, VanVleet has improved right across the board.
He is averaging 22.1 points per game, up from a career- high 17.6 last season.
He is taking 9.2 three- pointers per game on average and converting at a 40 per cent clip. He took 6.9 per game last season and shot 42 per cent from beyond the arc.
He is taking a career- high 17.8 shots per game, an increase from 14.3 last season. á He is also averaging 5.8 assists per game, down slightly from 6.6 last season but still the secondhighest mark of his career.
“There’s a lot of times when he’s floating around out there with the ball, they mess up a switch and, boom, he’s squatting down there and shooting a 25- foot three and keeping the offence rolling,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said. “He’s been playing great. Just in all phases.”
VanVleet has assumed a greater, more vocal leadership role as well, buoyed by the four- year, $ 85 million ( U. S.) commitment he got from the Raptors as a free agent about two months ago.
It has emboldened him, And increased a sense of responsibility that was always there.
“I think, as a leader of this team, that’s something that I’m disappointed in myself — just not keeping the guys, I guess, not bringing the fight a little bit more,” he said earlier this season.
VanVleet’s comfort level in a leadership role has taken a big step, with the blessing of his coaches and teammates.
“He’s just competing, competing his butt off, there’s no discouragement in him at all,” Nurse said. “He hates to lose, he’s competing — every possession. He’s making big plays too.”
VanVleet has improved his offence without losing anything from his defence, which has been as good as ever this season. He helped harass Stephen Curry into a 2- for- 10 night shooting from three- point range on Sunday in San Francisco, and he always gets the best scorer in any opponent’s backcourt to cover.
“I think he could have made first- team- all defence last year, and I think he has a right to it this year,” Lowry said. “I think he’s smart. He understands what he has to do. He understands how to play and the kid is just getting better every single year. It’s from the hard work he puts in every single year and the belief that we all have in him.”