Raptors win battle of elite bench men
• Jamal Crawford came into the NBA hoping to be a starter. Teams usually do not spend lottery picks on players that they think will come off of the bench, and Crawford was picked eighth overall in 2000. In his fourth and fifth seasons, Crawford started 140 of the 150 games that he played. In his eighth and ninth seasons, he did not come off of the bench once.
At that point, Crawford’s job in the NBA changed. He was sent to Atlanta in time for the 2009-10 season, and he immediately won the sixth man of the year award. He effortlessly picked up the necessary mentality to be an elite bench player. From that point on, he has been a designated gunner; his job has been to prop up second units offensively. The green light to shoot never turns to amber.
“The thing about being a sixth man is that you have limited time,” Crawford, the Clippers’ guard, said before his team lost 123-107 to the Toronto Raptors. “That’s why coaches and those guys want you to be aggressive, because in the back of their heads they know that you have limited time as well. And to get the most out of what you’re bringing, you need him to be aggressive.
“It’s not like you’re playing 36 minutes a game to feel your way through it.”
His is the same role, in broad strokes, that Lou Williams fills for the Raptors. They have remarkably similar shooting percentages — Crawford is shooting 39.3 per cent from the field, with Williams having him beat by three-tenths of a percentage point — with assist rates very low considering how often they have the ball.
For the Raptors, Williams has been excellent. The Raptors outscore opponents by 8.3 points per 100 possessions when Williams is on the floor, and he has proven integral to their success. Following Friday’s game, the Raptors are 17-6 when Williams scores above his season average of 15.2 points, and an ordinary 17-11 when he does not. When Williams is good, the Raptors are very good.
When he is bad, though, it is ugly. In losses against Milwaukee and Brooklyn earlier in the week, Williams a combined 2 for 23, 16 of those attempts coming from three-point range. Yet, he played 50 total minutes, and kept shooting and shooting and shooting. And, well, missing and missing and missing, with no second thoughts.
“You have to live with some of his shots,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. “That’s who he is. He was that way in Philly. He was that way in Atlanta. Again, he just has to be smart in those situations, which he is, and make good decisions when teams are trying to take the ball out of his hands.”
Against the Clippers, he ignited the Raptors after a horrendous start in which they fell behind by 20 points in the first 9½ minutes. Williams found Amir Johnson twice for dunks in the second quarter, and drew a help defender — something Crawford discussed while speaking about Williams — on a floater. The shot missed, but Johnson easily collected the rebound, since his man had abandoned him, and scored an easy bucket.
He had 18 points and five assists against the Clippers. Along with James Johnson, who was awesome in his return from a hamstring injury, Williams helped turn a potentially embarrassing loss into a convincing, galvanizing win.
It was a better balance for Williams, but the process was not dissimilar to what it has been in the past. He took some questionable shots but made some of those looks, too.
“For his role, his team and his coaches, they expect him to do the same thing every single night,” Crawford said. “You can’t really turn it off to that degree, because then you’re not being who they want you to be and who you are. He’s an aggressive scorer. He’s a great scorer. He’s one of the best scorers off the bench in the NBA. He’s going to have moments when he struggles. That’s part of it. More times than not, he’s come through big for those guys.”