'It's disappointing': Raptors looking for more from Trent Jr. on defence

The straight news for the Toronto Raptors is that Gary Trent Jr. will be in the lineup -- barring some mystery ailment popping up overnight which, as we’ll see, can absolutely happen -- on Wednesday night when they host old friend and emerging superstar Yuta Watanabe and the Brooklyn Nets.

The Nets, of course, also have Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons playing key roles for them.

But intentionally or not, Raptors head coach Nick Nurse raised the topic of what Trent Jr.’s long-term fit will be with the club, so we’ll deal with that first.

It’s no secret that the 23-year-old shooting guard’s contract year isn’t exactly off to a rousing start. Given the rising NBA salary cap, Trent’s age, and the value of his most defining skill -- he’s a career 39-per-cent three-point shooter -- the expectation has always been that he would decline his player option on the three-year, $51.8-million deal he signed prior to the 2021-22 season.

In a world where Tyler Herro and Jordan Poole can command $32.5 million and $40 million a season, respectively, over four years, Trent Jr. -- who is roughly the same age and has career stats in the same ballpark -- is likely justified in thinking that the $17.3 million the Raptors are paying him this season was just start-up money. If doubling his salary is a bit ambitious, a 50-per-cent raise is in order, at minimum.

This is the NBA we’re talking about where money seems forever cheap.

But the question was always how interested would the Raptors be in paying Trent Jr. that kind of money, particularly when Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and O.G. Anunoby will likely be in position to earn lucrative extensions of their own?

Well now we have an answer: not that interested.

At least, not this version of Trent Jr., who is shooting 32.6 per cent from deep and averaging 2.4 deflections and 1.4 steals per game a year after being among the league leaders in each category at 3.4 and 1.7 a year ago.

“Disappointing. It’s disappointing, like to get him a lot more aggressive on defence this year,” said Nurse when I asked him about Trent Jr.’s decline in deflections. “I would say that’s been … a little bit of negative because he’s capable of really getting after the ball and getting his hands on the ball a lot and that’s what we want him to do.

“We’re going to get him his shots and get him his points, but we want him to be a disruptor. He kinda fits us if he does that, and if he doesn’t, he doesn’t fit us. We need to get him back.”

Nurse didn’t make the comment in an inflammatory way, but he wasn’t just speaking off the cuff, either. While steals and deflections aren’t always a good barometer for overall defensive play, clearly Trent’s efforts on that end of the floor have been a discussion point, internally, and in that context Nurse was only saying what most Raptors fans would have said anyway: if Trent Jr. isn’t committing to defending, he’s not a great fit on a team that values two-way play so highly they traded the franchise’s all-team leading scorer coming off an all-NBA season.

That trading DeMar DeRozan for Kawhi Leonard helped the Raptors win the 2019 championship has only emboldened their world view, it seems safe to say.

Can Trent Jr. return to being the hounding pest that won Nurse’s trust a season ago?

There is no time like the present. The Raptors were supposed to be coming out from the other side of an early season wave of injuries and illnesses – Trent Jr. is expected to be back in the lineup Wednesday after missing two games with a hip strain and then one with a cold/flu that has been going through the team lately.

But as soon as Trent Jr. and Chris Boucher were being cleared to play, second-year forward Scottie Barnes appeared on the injury report with a sprained left knee with uncertain origins. Barnes played against Atlanta on Saturday and rolled his ankle but returned to the game and participated in a light practice on Monday. It’s not believed to be a long-term problem, but it’s certainly cause for concern given the Raptors will be without Pascal Siakam (groin), Precious Achiuwa (ankle) and Otto Porter Jr. (toe) for some time to come, though Dalano Banton being listed as questionable due to a non-COVID illness rather than his ankle sprain, is encouraging.

Nurse allowed that Trent Jr.’s issues could be health related. He started the season shooting wonderfully – 44.4 per cent from deep on nearly 10 attempts a game through his first five starts while putting up 20.2 points a night – but then fell off sharply. Trent Jr. has converted just 23.9 per cent of his threes over a nine-game stretch beginning Oct. 28 and has seen his volume cut in half while scoring just 14.6 points a game.

But Trent Jr. didn’t want to use health or nagging injuries as an excuse. “I’m just going out there, playing as hard as I can, the best I can, trying to stay with it,” he said after practice on Tuesday, and offered the same answer – almost word-for-word – when asked about the year-over-year decline in his defensive activity.

The Raptors will need all the help they can get against the Nets, who have been playing like a more dangerous team since Steve Nash was fired as coach Nov. 1. Brooklyn was 6-3 in its past nine games prior to a visit to Philadelphia on Tuesday night. The Nets have been bolstered by the consistent MVP-level play of Durant and more recently signs that Simmons is shaking off the rust after missing all of last season. They’ve also been helped by the emergence of former Watanabe, who is shooting 57.1 per cent from three to lead the NBA as a rotation player for Brooklyn after two seasons of never quite being able to stick in Toronto, or in Memphis before that.

It’s the kind of production that any team would dream off from a role player, and chances are that if Trent Jr. was shooting the ball at his normal clip, there would be less focus on his defensive slippage. But that’s par for the course in the NBA, where being able to justify your existence outside of scoring is a question that all but the very best players have to be able to answer.

However, in one sense, Trent’s interests are perfectly aligned with the Raptors. The key to cashing in as a free agent is having more than one team bidding on your services. If the Raptors are to believe he’s a long-term fit as a starter at guard alongside VanVleet, Trent Jr.’s shooting alone won’t cut it. The Raptors are committed to playing a disruptive, gambling style of defence both on the ball and in passing lanes, having identified creating turnovers and scoring off them as a central element of their defence and their offence.

Whether Nurse’s comments were just a rare moment of unvarnished honesty or an effort to make sure that Trent Jr. is clear about the message -- and you’d be naive to think that some version of the same comment hasn’t been made to the sixth-year guard in private already, by either Nurse, or Raptors president Masai Ujiri or general manager Bobby Webster or all three in combination -- it will be interesting to see if the player can channel the coach's public urging into action.

The Raptors would likely be very interested in a young shooting guard who can deliver 40 per cent from deep on a high volume, create their own shot in doses as required and be a consistent pest defensively.

At times Trent Jr. has displayed elements of those qualities, but not often enough this year.

Change that and the Raptors may well be among the suitors for Trent Jr.’s services this summer.

But if Trent Jr. is seen as not being willing or able to hold up his end of the bargain, it’s fair to wonder not only if he’ll be back next season, but if he’ll last the season in Toronto, or if the Raptors will decide to begin looking at the trade market for someone who suits their needs a little more specifically.