The most interesting development in the early moments of the Toronto Raptors‘ game against the Atlanta Hawks on Monday night took place midway through the first quarter.
There were five players on the floor, but there weren’t all the same ones.
Why, there was Justin Champagnie! And hey, didn’t Raptors head coach Nick Nurse play some lineups with only two of his regular starters on the floor?
Turns out, there’s no rule against it.
It’s not like Nurse hadn’t telegraphed his intentions to go rogue and veer from his pattern of playing his starters for long stretches with the odd cameo from one or two other players.
“I would imagine you are going to see a lot of guys hit the floor tonight,” he said.
I mean, what choice did he have? The Raptors were 48-hours removed from the “Miami Marathon” – the triple-overtime instant classic on Saturday when Nurse helped engineer a modern NBA record as all five of his starters played over 50 minutes.
The result was an impressive and hard-fought win, but by necessarily torching his starters at the beginning of a stretch on five games in seven nights, there were legitimately some questions about how the Raptors would whether the rest of the week.
Over the last 10 games, Raptors starters rank first, second, third, fifth and ninth in the NBA in minutes played, and that’s before beginning the first of two back-to-backs this week.
So, on Sunday the Raptors slept in, had a quick mid-afternoon flight to Atlanta and then did some more of nothing. They didn’t even watch film. On Monday Nurse wouldn’t let his starters even come to shoot-around the morning of the game, all in the name of saving their legs.
And then after the ball went up, took it a step further. Pascal Siakam was subbed out before five minutes had passed in the first quarter (though his picking up a second quick foul was a factor). Before nine minutes had passed Nurse had gone three subs deep and stayed that way until Fred VanVleet and OG Anunoby came back onto the floor midway through the second quarter.
“We’re trying to conserve as much as we can,” said Nurse.
Well, he didn’t do much of that really. The game was tight. The win was there to be had and Nurse played those he trusted to get it over the finish line. He didn’t make a substitution for the last seven-and-a-half minutes
He was rewarded. In the final moments, VanVleet crossed his man over, got both feet in the paint and spun a hard bounce pass out to a waiting OG Anunoby who calmly drained a three-pointer that gave Toronto a two-possession lead with 20 seconds to play and helped seal the 106-100 win.
There were some nervous moments. Siakam missed a pair of free throws with 14.8 seconds to play. But the Raptors got one more stop and this time Siakam made his two free throws and the work was done.
The win lifted Toronto to 25-23 as they hold on to eighth place in the tight battle for one of the four spots in the play-in tournament, or – even better – the race for sixth place and a guarantee of a first-round series. The Hawks fell to 24-26.
The Raptors needed a spark and got it from Gary Trent Jr. who finished with 31 points to become the fifth Raptor to score 30 points in four straight games as he finished 9-of-15 from deep. Pascal Siakam had 25 points, six rebounds and four assists, along with two blocks and two steals, while Fred VanVleet had 16 points and 11 assists.
Minutes? Well, no surprise they didn’t get spread around as much as all of Nurse’s starters ended up playing between 36 and 41. Nurse went four deep from his bench, but only got nine points in their combined 48 minutes.
The Hawks came into the game as the hottest team in the Eastern Conference having won seven straight, helping them shake off a shaky start to the season. But after their run to the conference finals last season, the Hawks were looking up Toronto in the standings from 10th place. The Raptors caught a break when Hawks star Trae Young was a late scratch with a sore shoulder that put 27.7 points and 9.3 assists a game on the Atlanta bench. The Hawks were also playing the second night of a back-to-back, although both games were at home.
The challenge Nurse has is that going deep into his bench has rarely correlated with winning this season. As a group, the Raptors bench is the lowest scoring in the NBA. On an individual level the Raptors’ performance typically drops off when key players sit – all of the Raptors starters have positive or at least neutral ‘on-off’ ratings (a measure of how the team performs when players are on the floor and off), but after Chris Boucher and Precious Achiuwa, the pickings get pretty slim.
Sure enough, the Raptors had a three-point lead when Nurse went deep into his bench late in the first quarter and were down seven when he came back to his starters. It wasn’t like he got nothing from his sub. A quick rebound and put-back from Justin Champagnie, both a triple and an alley-oop finish from Achiuwa, but not quite enough.
But when Nurse went back to his starters it wasn’t like all his problems were solved. The Raptors reeled off a quick 10-2 run thanks to a pair of VanVleet threes, but then promptly surrendered a 12-2 run the other way as Atlanta led 57-48 going into the half.
The Raptors starters’ minutes were down – Siakam and VanVleet were both under 17 minutes – but predictably, so were the Raptors.
The tide turned in the third quarter and it was the Raptors starters that made it happen, none more than Trent Jr. who has been on fire in his six games after an extended absence with an ankle sprain.
He took a lot of pressure off the rest of the lineup by making almost every shot he took. He punctuated his 17-point third-quarter explosion with a triple from the logo at the buzzer. Prior to that, he’d made four-of-six shots for a total of five threes. Trent got rolling early as part of a 15-2 run sparked by the Raptors forcing the Hawks into three quick turnovers that turned what was an 11-point deficit into a two-point lead. Trent Jr. hit two more late in the quarter as Toronto closed on an 11-2 run that sent them into the fourth leading 80-72.
They survived from there, but will have to figure out what they have in the tank when they host the Miami at home on Tuesday night.
