Leonard, Raps working on closing out games
The play that will live on in infamy from last Friday’s win over the San Antonio Spurs is the DeMar DeRozan turnover with 17 seconds left, the one in which Kawhi Leonard stole the ball for a breakaway dunk that turned a Raptors loss into a win.
On a night warmed by the love for DeRozan, the moment coldly displayed why Toronto traded him: too often, he made the wrong play at the exact wrong moment.
That was the Leonard-DeRozan exchange boiled down to its essence: the former is a player who can create a shot against just about anyone, the latter is a great scorer who struggles against high-end defenders. The Raptors had seen too many playoff series go south because of it. And yet, less than a minute before that disastrous turnover on DeRozan’s homecoming night, the roles had been reversed. The Spurs guard, driving toward the basket and attracting defenders, dished to Marco Belinelli, who canned an open three-pointer to give San Antonio a two-point lead. That basket came not long after Leonard had grabbed a rebound, took the ball up the floor, and clanked a mid-range jumper.
It was not an unfamiliar sight for Toronto fans: as much as Leonard has shown that he is an elite two-way player in his brief time with the Raptors, it is also true he has not always been a killer closer. There have been times when — an overtime loss to Boston in November comes to mind — Leonard has been asked to win the game late, created his own shot, and missed it.
The Raptors have their offence, with the floor spread and the ball moving to find open shooters, and then they also have the Kawhi offence, where he gets the ball and does his thing. Head coach Nick Nurse has said a few times in recent weeks that they need to make the second offence function more like the first one. It will be of particular importance in the playoffs: Will Leonard take over games late, or will he trust his teammates enough to find them if his only shooting option is a bad one? Tuesday’s game against the Celtics at Scotiabank Arena seemed like it would be a good testing ground. It was not. Boston, which remains talented enough to be an NBA East favourite, is in some kind of funk, and Leonard was resting comfortably on the bench for the fourth quarter of Toronto’s 118-95 win. Still, there were moments when Leonard and his teammates operated in concert. He had four assists in just 25 minutes, and Nurse said after the game this was not by accident: the Raptors have worked a lot over the past month on making sure they aren’t just standing around and watching when Leonard goes to work. “Because, you know, we all know that late-game, crunchtime situation, he’s probably going to have the ball,” Nurse said.
“And he’s not always going to be able to shoot because of different defensive schemes. So we’ve worked hard at that.” Nurse said Leonard raised his game against a rival Tuesday against Boston: “He was just going to take it where he wanted to take it tonight, and there wasn’t anybody going to do anything about it.”
In the post-season, though, somebody will do something about it.
And what the Raptors’ new closer does in response will say a lot about how far they go.