Malcolm Miller took the floor for the first start of his NBA career and did his job as the Toronto Raptors starting small forward — as narrowly it has been defined these days.
He sprinted to the corners to space the floor as widely as possible for Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. He took the open threes that came to him and moved the ball alertly when he had the ball and didn’t have a clean look. On defence, he stuck closely to his man, the Charlotte Hornets’ Nicolas Batum, and he took a seat when it was time for C.J. Miles to play.
It’s not that complicated a role, but he did fine, in other words.
“It’s a matter of picking my spots,” said the Raptors rookie, who only found out about his start Sunday morning at the team’s film session. “[And] being a good teammate, setting some … screens to get everybody open, space the floor and make the game as easy as I can for them.”
Miller was pressed into service for the Raptors against the Hornets at Air Canada Centre because OG Anunoby, their previous starting small forward – by title at least – missed his third straight game with a sprained ankle and Norman Powell, the first choice to suck up Anunoby’s 20-or-so minutes a game, has struggled to find his footing all season.
Miller was hardly the difference-maker in Toronto’s bloodless 103-98 win – the Raptors have been papering over their small forward woes for several weeks now by giving more minutes to their second unit.
It was enough for Toronto to improve to 45-17 and 26-5 at the ACC. It was its fourth win in a row and 11th win in its past 12 games and gave it a two-game lead for the first seed in the Eastern Conference over the idle Boston Celtics. DeRozan led six Raptors in double figures with 19 while Jonas Valanciunas had 18 points and 13 rebounds.
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The Raptors led by five at the end of the first quarter, nine at half and 13 to start the fourth period but struggled to put the 10th-place Hornets (28-36) away until Lowry and DeRozan hit a pair of contested back-to-back threes to put Toronto up seven after the Hornets had cut Toronto’s lead to two with just over five minutes to play.
There wasn’t a lot of fluid crunch-time offence but the Raptors did hit enough key shots and kept alive possessions with some timely offensive rebounds.
“I would say last year we probably would have lost that game,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. “But we were mature enough to make plays, the right plays. The dog days of the year are right now — you can’t see the end of it. There are quite a few games to go.
“We’re playing like it.”
Toronto held the Hornets to a just one field goal from the 5:11 mark of the fourth quarter until a Kemba Walker triple with 28 seconds to play as the Raptors limited Charlotte to 37.6 per cent shooting on the night and 35 per cent in the fourth quarter. It was a good thing because Toronto shot just 4-of-18 in the fourth quarter, with five turnovers.
Toronto’s tendency to grind the gears at the end of close games is one thing that can’t be laid at the feet of whomever Casey has been playing at small forward.
Miller was – to be honest – a non-factor on the night.
But it’s not like Anunoby has been tearing things up. The rookie is a solid defender but is shooting 23.5 per cent from deep over his last 31 games – an obvious weakness opposing teams can exploit defensively.
Right now small forward is a black hole, offensively, that the Raptors have been playing around with their starting unit as Casey is loathe to do anything to mess up the chemistry his second unit has.
“We could go out there and start you [at small forward],” said DeRozan, talking to a reporter with questionable basketball credentials.
“It wouldn’t be [a good idea] but we could make it work.”
The Raptors need to figure out something. Casey went out of his way to emphasize that he wasn’t holding an open competition for the job, but with Anunoby in a walking boot and with no timeline for his return there is an opportunity to be had.
“There’s no battle for positions. We’re just evaluating,” he said. “There’s no quarterback [controversy]. Somebody else will start next game, probably. OG is our starting small forward.
“We’re just evaluating what we’ve got. … I thought [Miller] held his own. He made the right screens. … he made some good decisions while he was out there [but] here’s no battle or trying to impress the coaches or anything.”
Maybe there should be, though.
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When Anunoby was knocking down 52 per cent of his threes in his first 17 games as a starter no one was looking around for alternative solutions at small forward. Anunoby was so impressive hitting the open floor-spacing shots playing alongside Lowry and DeRozan requires that Powell – who started the first 12 games of the season – never got his job back.
Powell did get the start against the Washington Wizards Friday and some second-quarter minutes in place of Miller last night but whatever funk has a hold of the third-year guard won’t let go easily. After a strong showing off the bench in a blowout win over Detroit last week, Powell didn’t make a shot filling in for Anunoby against Orlando or against the Wizards. In four first-half minutes against Charlotte he missed two wide-open threes and a layup and fouled Walker on a three-point attempt. He didn’t see the floor again.
It’s way too early to judge if Miller is an answer at small forward in any shape or form — he was 0-for-2 in 14 minutes against Charlotte — but he checks a lot of boxes: He’s 6-foot-7 with a 7-foot-1 wingspan, is agile defensively and has shot a very respectable 39 per cent from three on five attempts a game in 79 G-League games after returning from a brief career in Europe.
It would have been a tidy story if Miller had come in against Charlotte and made a bunch of shots or delivered some defensive gems.
Instead he was simply adequate. His best play was a decisive dribble-drive and pitch out to DeRozan that ended up a Valanciunas three. He looked confident stepping into a couple of open perimeter looks but they both rimmed out – par for the course as Toronto shot a miserable 12-of-41 from deep on the night and just 42.2 per cent for the game.
“They rattled in and out,” he said. “They felt good coming out … it’s all good.”
In the second half Miller fumbled a couple of passes – showing his first sign of nerves, maybe – and didn’t get any shots up but his defence on Batum was solid.
But the Raptors’ standards aren’t all that high, at this point. Some version of good defence and a ghost of a threat offensively may be all the NBA’s fourth-rated offence needs for the moment.
“That position is probably going to be fluid,” Casey said. “We’ll keep looking at different people. It’s a situation where we’ve got to get a lot of people ready and this is an opportunity to do that.”
There’s no drama; no small forward controversy: the first guy who can give Casey just a little bit more than the minimum – good defence and some open threes – will likely get the chance to take the job and run with it.
