From spectator to key Raptors’ defender
After a lot of bench Time last year, Johnson earns his minutes
Chris Boucher may already have Most Improved Raptor of 2020/21 locked up 11 games into the season, but if there is to be a battle for the non-existent award, his main competition is shaping up to be Stanley Johnson.
Johnson isn’t having the overall impact Boucher is at this point in the season, but from where he was a year ago to now, the distance is vast, the improvement immense.
Consider Johnson, who signed a two-year deal as a free agent with the Raptors heading into the 2019-20 season, wound up playing a total of 150 minutes for his new team all of last season.
Other than a groin injury in November that cost him 17 games, Johnson was not on the injured list again. Thirty times he was listed as Did Not Play, Coach’s Decision.
That means that over the course of the 72-game regular season Johnson was a spectator for 3,306 minutes of playing time or 23 times the amount he was on it.
Johnson’s run did improve somewhat once the team arrived in the bubble in Disney following the restart, but even then, he only appeared in eight of 19 games in Orlando with only a handful of meaningful minutes in the 11-game playoff run. Most of his minutes came in garbage time.
But through it all, Johnson didn’t just hold his tongue and play the good sport, he was working behind the scenes toward the minutes he’s getting right now.
Nick Nurse, the man who doles out those minutes, was very impressed with this aspect of Johnson’s relatively lost year.
“The important quality is that he’s maintained, I think, a really strong work ethic day in and day out, which isn’t easy to do for somebody who’s been in the league for a while when you’re not hitting the court for really long stretches of time,” Nurse said. “He’s been able to summon up the energy and work ethic, whatever you want to call it, to get out there and stay with it.
“And, I think as well, closely related to that, he’s always kind of remained upbeat and positive,” Nurse added. “Hasn’t hung his head and hasn’t complained; he’s been very professional in his approach.
“So, I guess it’s always good to see a guy that hangs in there getting a chance and then opportunity has presented itself and … right now he’s doing a solid job of making the most of his opportunity.”
So, give Johnson a ton of credit for sticking with things, but while you’re doing that don’t forget to serve up a little credit for Nurse who makes his charges earn their minutes.
Nurse and the Raptors’ veterans have set a standard for the level of defence they expect from everyone who steps on the floor. Nurse is the gatekeeper. He decides who has reached that level and he makes no exceptions.
Rondae Hollis-jefferson wasn’t there initially last year and he didn’t see minutes until he proved that he was. Johnson took longer than Hollis-jefferson but toward the end of the year he started proving himself as well and got a little more run.
This year newcomer Aron Baynes has yet to find his footing on the defensive end and his minutes have declined steadily. Were there an alternative on the roster, the one glaring hole that needs to be remedied, Baynes might have already joined Alex Len, another centre that didn’t work out, and found himself on the waiver wire as of yesterday.
Johnson, in a bit of an odd post-game interview following the win over Dallas on Monday night, didn’t want to take credit for his role in limiting Luka Doncic to just 15 points but he willingly admitted he wasn’t ready for minutes last year because he couldn’t get his head around the way this team plays defence.
Even the most fringe of Raptors followers understands the team’s success is built around its defensive concepts that take away the paint from opponents (or at least tries to) and then recovers to outside shooters to make those shots difficult. It’s far more complex than that, but that is the basic formula. It asks a lot of all five men on the floor not just in terms of energy and effort but demands that they be tied together tightly and reacting to what the other four teammates on the floor are doing at all times.
Again, it’s not easy but it has proven effective and Johnson admits he is only now feeling comfortable playing in it.
That has been apparent since Johnson started coming off the bench and hitting double-digits nightly in minutes played going back 21/2 weeks now. In his minutes hounding Doncic Monday night, Johnson was relentless and while starting forward OG Anunoby deserves plenty of credit for his work on the Mavs leading scorer too, Johnson was an instrumental part of the overall plan to blanket Doncic and keep him as far removed from the play as possible.
Nobody is saying the Raptors have reached their peak defensive level yet this season, but they are certainly at least starting to look like the team a year ago, and the one the year before that which could lock on to an elite scorer and limit him with sound execution of their team defence.
Johnson is a part of that now and that’s why his days as a spectator appear to be over.