It's Time To Start Norman Powell
Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse is searching for a reliable rotation.
That search has been the story of the early part of the season for Toronto. At first, it was in the backcourt and in the wings where Nurse tried everyone from Matt Thomas and DeAndre' Bembry, to Stanley Johnson, and now Yuta Watanabe and Terence Davis II to get a spark. Then on Friday night against the Sacramento Kings, he decided he had seen enough out of his backcourt and opted to shake things up there, sending Aron Baynes to the bench in place of Alex Len.
"I’m trying to figure out where guys play best and maybe, you know, maybe it changes a look for a guy, coming off the bench he plays a little better, plays a little bit more relaxed, maybe plays better with a different group of guys," Nurse said prior to Friday's game.
Nurse is right. There's a big difference between starting and coming off the bench. It's not just whom you're surrounded by or whom you're up against, but the game feels very different at different spots in the rotation. For some, it's better to come in immediately and set the tone for the game. For others, there's a preference to sit back and watch things develop before bringing a spark with the second unit. The key to coaching is to figure out how to mix and match your player in order to get the most out of them.
"A lot of times I’m searching for, you know, like I always say getting the five best guys who are playing the best out there on the floor," Nurse said Friday afternoon.
If Nurse wants to get the most out of his players and get his five best players on the floor together, than Norman Powell needs to start.
The one trend throughout Powell's inconsistent career is that he plays better when he starts. It was true last season in 26 games as a starter and 26 games off the bench and it's remained true this season. Through eight games this year, he's averaging 19.5 points per game with an Offensive Rating of 132 in his two starts compared to just 7.8 points per game with an Offensive Rating of 86 in his six games off the bench.
The reason for that, according to Powell, is just the way he enters the game.
"When you’re starting the game you can kind of feel how the game is going, the flow of the game early on, where your spots are coming, how the defence is guarding you, the pace of the game," he said Friday night. "When you’re starting, you’re able to dictate and get into a rhythm. Coming off the bench you’re trying to catch the game. You’re trying to watch and study how the defence is guarding us, what they’re doing and how the offence is going, where the shots are going, and you’re coming in trying to pick that up and enhance the energy and things like that. So there’s just a flow and feel thing."
Just a few years ago a starting rotation with three players under 6-foot-3 and a 6-foot-7 centre would have been unthinkable. To some, it might still be. But the Raptors bigs — with the occasional exception of Chris Boucher — have not gotten it done for Toronto. They've been picked apart on defence and a small-ball lineup allows Toronto to switch pick-and-rolls on defence.
"It enables us to switch all the pick-and-rolls which late in games, that’s going down pretty much at both ends, it’s pick-and-roll basketball," Nurse said. "That enabled us to keep the ball in front, not have to worry about the lob or roll threat and then kind of sequence there when that’s happening, guys are having to pull in and you’re leaving the weak side open.
"Secondly, it puts, it almost puts OG and Pascal in the handling and screening situations, which, you know, OG is a good screener and finisher in that stuff. That’s where we got some opportunities the other night. And again, it puts Pascal in those too, we can, if they’re going to stay big, we can put a lot of pressure on their big guy, stretching him out, putting him in pick-and-rolls, making him chase our guys with the ball a little bit."
If the lineup works so successfully late in games, it's fair to wonder why not start games with it? It's possible Nurse isn't ready to committ to such an undersized lineup considering the Raptors are already getting killed on the boards and going small would likely esacerbate that problem. It's also reasonable to wonder if there's a reluctance to take Powell out of the second unit because it may leave that group a little bit offensively depleated.
While Powell isn't necessarily an unbiased opinion on the matter, he certainly thinks a starting small-ball lineup with him in it would work.
As for Nurse's willingness to give it a try, he said he'd consider starting Powell.
"Yeah, I would. I would [consider it]," Nurse said. "He obviously looks - he’s had two really good games as a starter and I would hate to count how many not so good games coming off the bench so I would consider that at this point.”
