Raptors zoning in on playoff-ready defence
Coach prepares new strategies now to establish a comfort zone in time for the post-season
As the Toronto Raptors finetune themselves for the push to the NBA playoffs, they are finding a comfort level with — and a trust in — all the add-ons coach Nick Nurse likes to have in his defensive schemes.
Much of the first half of the season — which went swimmingly for the team with the best record in the NBA — was spent trying to get as consistent with their basic approach as is possible.
The time is now to find that same comfort level with the extras the team is putting in. Whether it’s more zone defence or the odd double-team or some subtle shift in how they help each other, Nurse is seeing those tweaks pay off.
“We’ve been adding some schemes as we go,” Nurse said here on Wednesday, before the Raptors dropped a 117108 decision to the Celtics. “Lately — probably in the last three weeks — we’ve added a couple more coverages, just to be able to play the different teams, different personnel, different ball-han- dlers on different nights, so we’ve got a little bit more in our toolbox.”
The grand plan is to have myriad defensive looks that can be sprung on a playoff opponent in momentum-shifting moments in truly important games.
“I think we’re talking more on defence. Our defensive rotations have been better,” Raptor Kawhi Leonard said. “Still want to be consistent with it throughout the game, but I think our defence has gotten better.”
Getting to work with that at full speed in regular-season games has been a boon. It’s all well and good for Nurse and his staff to show schemes on video and have the players work through them at practice speed. It’s another thing entirely to see them work in games.
“I think it gives them a comfort level, because there’s nights when you come out and some guy’s giving you problems
and your basic defensive pack- age isn’t quite doing it, and sometimes you say ‘Well, we’ve got to do it harder,’ and sometimes you’ve got to say ‘Wait a minute, it’s the wrong coverage,’ ” Nurse said.
“There’s nights now where we can say, ‘OK, we’re going to try to do it harder first,’ or we’re going to switch the matchup first, or whatever, and then if that doesn’t work we’re going to go to our Plan B. I think that’s given them a little bit more comfort, to know there’s a Plan B that’s not only in place but (one that) we’ve practised. We’ve started to execute it in games a little bit.”
One of Nurse’s go-to schemes to change up the tempo of any particular game is to have the Raptors play a few possessions or a few minutes of zone defence.
Very few NBA teams play zone very often — Toronto and Brooklyn are near the top of the list — but Nurse sees the value in it, to change the flow of a game for a bit.
He also doesn’t seem at all concerned about conventional wisdom that suggests NBA players are too good to not figure out a zone, or too weak individually to play it.
“I think it’s all machismo — ‘Come on, you’ve got to guard your guy, man. If you can’t guard your guy then you can’t play defence,’ ” Nurse said.
“A lot of it is accountability, where you say ‘Hey, you’re matched up with him, go do your job.’ The zone kind of sometimes moves a lot of pieces around. I think that’s just kind of an old coaching thing that just kind of continues to carry on.”