Will Nurse rearranging pieces be enough?
When Nick Nurse replaced Dwane Casey as head coach of the Toronto Raptors, there was a lot of bellyaching about how much change could really result from the move.
Well, as Public Enemy said, don’t believe the hype. Change is coming and it will arrive in a variety of ways.
From being more aggressive and physical defensively, to picking up the pace offensively (partly as a result of creating turnovers), to finding schemes that don’t leave big men on an island or guards defending down low, to increased accountability on defence, Nurse has a lot of ideas.
The league has gone smaller, but two of Toronto’s four best players, Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet, stand only six feet tall (if that), which will present challenges defensively.
“I think I’ve got something stirring here in my head,” Nurse said Wednesday.
“Kyle’s going to be on the floor, Fred’s going to be on the floor a lot, so we’ve got to be able to come up with something defensively, where we’re protecting not only them but our bigs. So we don’t end up coming down the floor and just after a couple of (opposing screens or movements) Kyle and Fred are inside and Jonas ( Valanciunas) and Serge (Ibaka) are outside.”
Part of that includes challenging third-team All-NBA guard DeMar DeRozan, by most metrics one of the worst defenders in the league, to at least be passable at that end. Nurse says DeRozan is completely on board and is eager to keep proving the naysayers wrong.
Another issue is some of the duplication across the roster. Valanciunas and Jakob Poeltl are centres only, and Ibaka’s regression, particularly in terms of mobility, makes him a far better option as a centre than a power forward. Pascal Siakam’s rapid improvement and push for minutes also factor in here, as does OG Anunoby’s likely offensive advantage as a power forward.
While firing Casey and handing Nurse the reins were reasonable decisions by Masai Ujiri, making them the only big moves of the off season is simply not enough — even with LeBron James defecting to the West.