No time to rest in the second half
With 35 tilts in 66 days, Nurse hopes to give stars a night off here and there
The condensed NBA regular season will be harried for the Raptors in the second half.
Toronto will play 35 games in 66 days, barring any postponements, from March 11 to May 16 after playing their first 37 in 72 days when the first half winds up March 4.
“Looked like a lot of games. Felt like a (minor-league) USBL schedule,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said. “You used to say, ‘Oh you’ve got a back-to-back here in a couple weeks,’ and now you’ve got one every week, so that thought can go past your head.”
The final portion of the schedule, released by the NBA on Wednesday, includes for Toronto:
á 19 home games in Tampa and 16 road games;
» A late-April, early-May trip of four games in six nights to play Western Conference powerhouses Denver, Utah and both Los Angeles teams;
» Eight back-to-back sets, including three on consecutive nights in Tampa;
» No two-game “series” like Toronto just came through with the Philadelphia 76ers.
» A five-game homestand from April 13-21. The longest road trip is four games.
The Raptors have been among the most fortunate teams in the first half of the season, as they have not yet had a single game postponed because of COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
And barring any of their final five games being postponed — Wednesday at Miami, games in Tampa against Houston, Chicago
and Detroit and a road game at Boston — they will have only the expected 35 games to play in the second half of the season.
The Raptors began play Wednesday in fifth place the Eastern Conference, only three games out of third but also only three games out of 12th in the tightly packed standings.
They had overcome a terrible 2-8 start to get back to .500. Still, they know how quickly things can turn and their participation in the playoffs for an eighth straight year is not guaranteed.
But even with their future not at all secure, Nurse knows there will be times when his players need rest rather than another game. It will take a delicate balancing act but he’d like to find times to give his heavily used veterans a night off here or there.
Fred VanVleet is third in the NBA in minutes played, averaging 36.6 per game before Wednesday and has played in each of Toronto’s first 32 games. Pascal Siakam averages 36.2 minutes per game, sixth in the NBA, and Kyle Lowry is in the top 30 at 34.4 minutes per game.
None of those are exceptionally arduous in the context of their careers — VanVleet averaged 35.7 minutes last season, Siakam was at 35.2 and Lowry 36.2 — but the compacted nature of this season exacerbates the heavy load.
“I haven’t done it yet, but thinking about managing that,” Nurse said before Wednesday’s game in Miami. “I think that maybe getting more guys on the floor in certain situations and maybe using a deeper roster in some fashion or other.
“I’m kicking those ideas around in my head, or I’ll start to. I’ll probably leave that for a few days.”