TORONTO — Rondae Hollis-Jefferson spent the first four seasons of his NBA career with the Brooklyn Nets, steadily developing into an energetic presence who provided dogged defence, rebounding, and unorthodox-yet-effective finishing ability at the rim. He wasn’t a star. And he suffered some brutal injury luck. But he was a solid rotation player and regularly started for the team that selected him in the first round of the 2015 draft.
But when his rookie deal expired last summer, the Nets opted not to extend Hollis-Jefferson a qualifying offer, making the team’s longest-tenured player a free agent. Hollis-Jefferson, who’d envisioned himself doing the unheard-of in today’s game and spending an entire career with one organization, was hurt.
“Man, it was like I grew up there,” Hollis-Jefferson said Friday at the lakefront practice facility where he was working out with his new team, the Toronto Raptors. “Coming into the league at 19, 20, in New York in particular, Brooklyn — it’s definitely a gritty place. A loving atmosphere. But they want you to play hard every night in ways like Toronto. They want you to go out and get after it. Just being there, seeing that culture, letting the fanbase grow on me, my family — it was definitely tough.
“When you’re coming into the league, when you see guys like Kobe play his whole career on one team, Dirk Nowitzki, you kind of want to be the next guy to do something like that. Things don’t work out. Of course it’s a business. I definitely was a little bit hurt. But it’s part of the game.”
Of course, the Nets had bigger plans for Hollis-Jefferson’s cap space in July. Brooklyn overhauled essentially its entire roster this summer to make room for the NBA landscape-shifting additions of superstars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant. Irving gave Brooklyn one of the NBA’s most dangerous point guards in his prime, while Durant, who’s sidelined for the entire season as he recovers from a torn Achilles, is one of the five best players in the game.
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So, with all due respect to Hollis-Jefferson, the Nets were hunting bigger game. But that was to the benefit of the Raptors, who picked the 24-year-old up on a remarkably reasonable one-year, $2.5-million deal and have found plenty of use for his defensive versatility and tenacity off the bench. And he’ll have no shortage of motivation Saturday when he plays his former team for the first time.
“I’m a competitor, so I look forward to every matchup,” Hollis-Jefferson said. “But this one in particular.”
The Raptors will take all the energy Hollis-Jefferson can give them as they try to pull out of a five-game tailspin in which the team’s offence has cratered, its typically stout defence has waffled, and the one trait it thought it could always rely upon in good times and bad — an up-tempo, tireless style of play — has been largely absent.
“One thing we’ve always tried to be is a super-hard playing team. We usually come with an attitude of we’re going to really guard you, get up the floor, play with some pace, those kinds of things,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said. “I think we did that the other night (in a loss to the Los Angeles Clippers). I think we were flying all over the place. And after reviewing the tape, we had five- or six-straight wide open uncontested threes, and none of them go. Mix in a few turnovers and I think we let it get to us.
“That zapped our energy a little bit. I don’t know what to say to that other than try not to let that happen. But it’s hard not to let that happen. We need to make sure we execute a little better. And we’ve got to step in and make some shots.”
The Raptors certainly haven’t done that of late, shooting 39.6 per cent from the field, and 27.2 per cent from three-point range, over the last five games. Over its 19 games prior to that, Toronto was shooting 46.3 per cent from the field and 40.2 per cent from distance.
Shot-making will vacillate over the course of a season, for sure. And every team has to find alternative ways to score when its three-point shooting isn’t there. But Toronto’s pairing its poor shooting with a minor slump from its primary attacker, Pascal Siakam, and a still-ramping-up-in-return-from-injury phase from its starting point guard, Kyle Lowry. It’s a bad combination and it’s why the Raptors have lost four of five.
And over the last two-and-a-half games in particular, the Raptors have direly missed the play of Fred VanVleet, who’s battling a right knee contusion. His facilitating is crucial, not only for how it lets Lowry play off the ball at times with Toronto’s starters, but for how it paces the transitional bench lineups VanVleet helms in the heart of games. Not to mention the luxury of having a career 39.4 per cent three-point shooter on the floor, or VanVleet’s ability to push the pace in transition and even get to the rim off the dribble at times when the Raptors need someone to provide a spark.
VanVleet practiced Friday, but he’ll likely be listed as doubtful going into the weekend. There’s a chance he could return if his knee responds well to Friday’s work and he passes some pre-game tests on Saturday. But there’s just as much of a chance that he’s not quite there yet and is forced to watch his team play Brooklyn from the bench.
And the Nets, winners of eight of its last 11, will not be an easy team to turn things around against. The good news for the Raptors is Irving won’t play Saturday, as he continues a month-long absence due to a right shoulder issue. But Brooklyn’s season has been characterized by resilient success in spite of missing its two best players. And Spencer Dinwiddie, who’s been doing a little bit of everything while having a career season across the board, has been making a case that Brooklyn actually has a big three.
“He’s a heck of a player. He really is. He’s a baller, man,” Nurse said of Dinwiddie. “He can score the ball. He’s got tremendous confidence and swag out there, handles. He’s one of those guys that every time he shoots it, he expects it to go in. He just keeps getting better and better. He’s really been a huge factor in their success lately.”
The perpetually underrated Dinwiddie’s been pacing the Nets since Irving went down, but it’s really Brooklyn’s depth of contributions that has fuelled its success. Joe Harris, Taurean Prince, and Garrett Temple have all brought activity and three-point shooting from the wing, keeping the ball moving quickly until it hits the hands of someone who’s open.
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Meanwhile, Jarrett Allen’s provided a physical presence down low, setting impactful picks, rolling hard to rim for buckets, and cleaning up on the glass. And Brooklyn head coach Kenny Atkinson spells Allen with a post-peak-yet-still-effective DeAndre Jordan off the bench. There’s a reason the Nets are still a top-five paint points and rebounding team while simultaneously shooting the sixth-most three-pointers in the league.
“Pretty good ball movement — they know where the ball is going. When they need buckets, they’ve got some primary guys. They’ve got some shooting out there. They’ve got a big who screens and rolls hard to the rim and gets his share of the basket, plays hard,” Nurse said. “They’re playing very, very well right now.”
Still, the Nets are a team the Raptors should beat, and need to be able to beat, if they have designs on being a top-four team in the East. Brooklyn will be a real problem next season with all that depth — including the versatile, defensively-minded Caris LeVert, who’s been out since early November due to thumb surgery — behind Durant and Irving, but they should be beneath Toronto’s level right now.
And yet, that’s all on paper. On the floor, the Nets have been surging and the Raptors have been spiralling. Toronto’s averaging only 98.4 points per 100 possessions over its five-game skid. In comparison, the New York Knicks, the NBA’s worst offensive team this season, was averaging 101.8 through Thursday.
The Raptors will always be a defence-first team. But you can’t win if you can’t score. And the Raptors can’t really do anything if they aren’t playing with the energy and tenacity they feature at their best.
“You just have to enjoy the game, man,” Hollis-Jefferson said. “I’m sure you guys have seen when we get to those moments of adversity where a team goes on an 8-0 run. I feel like we’ve got to understand that’s basketball. We’re playing teams with some good players — they’re going to make runs. It’s a part of the game.
“We’ve got to still enjoy the process, enjoy the fight, and just be passionate out there. Having fun with our teammates — I feel like that will help us get over that hump.”
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