More from Gasol? It’s worth a shot
Marc Gasol and the Raptors will face bigger threats at centre beyond the first round.
It’s a good guess that it’ll be hard to frame anything as a crisis in Raptorland during the first round of these playoffs.
Among the top handful of upper-tier seeds in the NBA playoffs, the Raptors’ early moments in the playoff bubble have been uniquely uneventful. They’re carrying a 2-0 series lead into Friday’s Game 3 against the not-so-scary Brooklyn Nets. And they seem healthy and happy enough that it makes you wonder if a former acquaintance named Kawhi Leonard, silently observing Luka Doncic’s prodigiousness and teammate Paul George’s playoff demons, ever kicks himself for choosing the West’s decidedly rougher road.
But if Toronto’s NBA team has been gifted with the luxury of what’s essentially a round-one warmup — especially now that Brooklyn’s top shooter, Joe Harris, has left the bubble for personal reasons — certainly there are those among them who ought to be thankful for the much-needed runway. Pascal Siakam still apparently needs time to find the right gear. Ditto Toronto’s dueling big men.
Serge Ibaka and especially Marc Gasol have been less than impressive in the opening couple of games, which is perhaps only notable because their top Brooklyn counterpart, Jarrett Allen, lies a class below some of the best centres and power forwards employed by the handful of potential Eastern opponents that could stand in Toronto’s way of a title defence. Both of Toronto’s potential second-round foes, the Celtics and Sixers, have tougher matchups in Daniel Theis and Joel Embiid, although Gasol’s reputation as the Embiid limiter bodes well.
Those are concerns for another day, for sure. But it’s not exactly comforting to know that Gasol, at age 35, went scoreless in 17 minutes in an out-of-sorts Game 2. In 85 career NBA playoff games, it was the first time the Spaniard has put up a goose egg, according to Basketball-Reference.com.
“Marc had a tough one” is how Nick Nurse, the Toronto head coach, summed it up.
At least Ibaka, after a 22point performance in Game 1, scored eight points on nine shots in Game 2, after which the head coach praised Ibaka for being “energetic,” if not efficient.
“I mean that’s the nice thing about having them (both),” Nurse was saying on Thursday. “That’s kind of my job, is to figure out who’s got it on the night and who to have in there … This is the playoffs. It changes every game.”
That’s the positive way to spin it, for sure. If we’re using last year’s results as a harbinger of near-future performance, then it’s worth betting on the imminent arrival of something the Raptors came to expect during their 2019 run to the championship — specifically, the Gasol bounceback game. The mercurial centre had his share, probably the most dramatic of which came at his team’s neediest moment of the Eastern final against the Bucks. Gasol, if you’ll remember, shot a combined 3-for-20 from the field in the opening two losses, scoring just two points in a dismal Game 2. But he helped save the season with a strong performance in a vital Game 3 win, going a crucial 4-for-8 from three-point range en route to 16 points — a bit of production that helped spread out Milwaukee’s defence and unlock some much-needed space for Toronto’s slashers.
Indeed, while it’s in Gasol’s nature to be a pass-first facilitator, it’s still important for him to look for his shot — especially when the defence is blatantly giving it to him. To do otherwise is to bog down the offence.
The book on guarding Toronto’s bigs hasn’t changed. Allen is sloughing off his man in favour of packing the paint, which at times is seriously inhibiting Toronto’s drive-andkick game. And in Game 2, Gasol played into Brooklyn’s hands by attempting just two shots from the field, a career playoff low.
“No matter who he’s guarding they send him to protect the basket, because they understand without him we’re gonna have a lot of easy baskets out there,” Ibaka said. “... I think all you have to do is read the way they’re playing us and use that as a weapon.”
The way to use the Nets’ defence as a weapon against them, of course, is for Ibaka and Gasol to be more aggressive in firing up jump shots. If they’re making even a modest percentage, after all, it would figure to keep Allen more honest, and create more opportunity for teammates. But therein lies the perpetual question: How do you get an unselfish playmaker to make some plays for himself?
As Nurse said last post-season during another moment when Gasol was struggling: “He’s just too talented of a scorer to not put up a few more points.” That is, of course, what the Raptors would love to be able to believe. And given Gasol’s track record, a bounceback game is the most likely scenario.
“Days like (Game 2) can happen to anybody,” Ibaka said, “and I’m sure Marc is gonna come and play better for the next game.”
That’s a decent bet. Still, Gasol is coming off the worst regular season of his career, wherein he averaged a careerlow 7.5 points while missing 28 of the 64 pre-shutdown games with hamstring problems. So it’s possible the days of expecting him to carry a significant scoring load are nearing their end, or at least fewer and farther between.
Not that it’s likely Gasol would buy into such an argument. As the Spaniard insisted during last year’s run: “I read somewhere, you don’t stop doing things because you get old; you get old because you stop doing things. And I truly believe that.”
Not that it’s a crisis, but with that in mind it’s safe to say the Raptors would chime in with a simple request to an esteemed sportsman: Don’t stop shooting. Or rather, feel free to start.