Valanciunas unfazed by lack of attention
More interested in winning than getting ball on offence
By Game 3 of the Raptors’ secondround playoff matchup with the Miami Heat, Jonas Valanciunas was well on his way to officially arriving.
While the all-star backcourt of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan couldn’t find their scoring touch consistently, Valanciunas had found that and a little more. Ten games into the playoffs, he looked comfortable in his own skin, averaging 15 points and 12 rebounds per game on cleanup plays under the basket and on a developing 15- to 18-foot shot. He had averaged 1.4 blocks per game in the first round against Indiana and opened the second round with a three-block game in an overtime loss, battling Miami centre Hassan Whiteside.
That10th game saw the series take a strange shift. Whiteside left the game in the second quarter with knee issues. Valanciunas was gone in the third with what turned out to be a high ankle sprain. It cost him the next eight games.
“Before he got hurt I thought he was playing some of his best basketball,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. “He can score and he can rebound, those are two things he does. Being consistent defensively I think is what he’s striving to get as much as anything else.”
At the start of his fifth season, Valanciunas is in an interesting place in his career. His improvement has been gradual, but that could also be due to being part of an offence that’s dictated by Lowry and DeRozan.
They put up a combined 36.4 shots per game last season, almost half of the team’s 81.4 per game. Valanciunas is next in line, at 10 shots per game, but it’s a steep drop-off.
You could argue that if he got the ball more, his stats would be better, and with more opportunities he’d become a better player, too. On nights when the guards aren’t shooting well — and there were more than a few in the playoffs — voices in the stands and on Twitter beg for the seven-foot Lithuanian to get more attention.
But Valanciunas isn’t one of them. “I want to win,” he said. “I don’t want to do crazy things, I want to win.”
Casey has spoken often about how young this Raptors team is, with Lowry the oldest player at 30, and many young players with untapped potential. Valanciunas was one, he said, who hadn’t reached his peak yet.
“Sky’s the limit,” Valanciunas said. “I think everyone has room to grow. I think you know, every area can be better.”
With the three-pointer becoming more important to teams, Casey sees that addition somewhere near the top of the ceiling for Valanciunas, who is still just 24.
“No, he’s not there yet,” Casey said, noting that he heard a gasp from the crowd when Valanciunas put one up at this month’s open practice.
“But there’s going to be a day when that should be his shot. I don’t know if it’s right now, but it definitely should be a part of his repertoire.”
Casey mentions Luis Scola, who added the three to his arsenal last year for the Raptors at 35.
“When I’m 39 years old, I’m not going to be that physical. So I’m going to sit in the corner and shoot threes,” Valanciunas joked.
“There are a lot of areas I can get better at. One is the three-point shooting.” When it comes to taking direct praise, Valanciunas seems to bristle somewhat. Asked if he thought he was playing his best basketball as a pro in the playoffs until he got hurt, he tried to turn the tables.
“I don’t know. You tell me,” he said.
Told that his coach and many others would say that he was, Valanciunas nodded.
“Let’s stick to that,” he said.