With plenty to improve, Nurse remains confident Raptors can repair defensive identity

Nick Nurse remains confident in the way he wants his team to defend and how well they can defend while doing it his way.

But then again, it’s not clear he has much choice.

As the Toronto Raptors tried to regroup after another loss in a mounting string of the emerging gap in the team’s traditional armour – even its identity – is getting hard to ignore in the same way an accident on the other side of the highway slows traffic: no one wants to see it, but it’s hard not to watch.

The Raptors have lost 10 of their past 14 games, their only wins coming against the short-handed versions of the Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Lakers at home nearly a month ago and a pair of more recent wins on the road against the New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers which required one of the greatest individual performances in franchise history (Pascal Siakam’s 52-point masterpiece against the New York Knicks) and the best shooting game the Raptors have had as a team in nearly two seasons (Toronto’s 19-of-37 performance from deep against Cleveland) to pull off.

As they get set to host Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies (20-13, third in the West) Thursday night, the Raptors (15-19, 11th in the East) have found themselves leaking oil in all the familiar ways: they are 27th in defensive rating since Nov. 30th, allowing 113.7 points per 100 possessions, sandwiching them behind the San Antonio Spurs and ahead of the Charlotte Hornets among the NBA’s Viktor Wembanyama aspirants.

Overall they are dead last in the league in opponents effective field goal percentage (which combines the value of two and three-point field goals) during the same period as Raptors have allowed teams to shoot 66.9 per cent inside five feet and 41.2 per cent from outside 20 feet, both of which rank them 25th in the league. As most modern offences try to score at the rim and the three-point line – the highest value shots on the floor – the Raptors are allowing opponents to take their pick. Toronto fouls a lot too, ranking 16th in opponents’ free throw attempts.

For Nurse, the problem isn’t schemes, but execution. There are too many nights his team can’t or won’t cover the ground required to make opponents miss often enough to win.

And given that the Raptors roster has been constructed around its defensive identity, it borders on an existential crisis.

“I think overall we’ve got to hang in defensively,” Nurse said following Toronto’s uninspired effort against the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday. “After I go back and watch the tape, there isn’t enough pace or energy in the way we’re playing defence. I think that kind of shows up. It’s an energy battle for being a good defensive team. There just wasn’t enough of it [Tuesday].”

Nurse knows what he preaches can work. When the Raptors are locked in and flying, they can be a menace on the defensive end as they force turnovers (the Raptors are the best doing that this season as they were last year and the year before that) harass stars and generally make opponents’ lives exceedingly uncomfortable. As a poor half-court team, offensively (ranked 28th, per cleaningtheglas.com) relies on its defence to create chances to score in transition.

It worked well last season. With largely the same roster the Raptors were sixth in defensive rating from Dec. 30th onwards as they finished the season on a 34-17 tear they rode from the draft lottery to fifth place in the East. The way they finished last season was the basis for so much optimism heading into this year. They were better at forcing misses – ranking 14th in opponents’ eFG percentage – which combined with their determination to force turnovers created a tidy defensive package built around their overall team length and athleticism.

The way Nurse wants to play is not easy. Where some teams are willing to sacrifice ball pressure so they can pack the paint and protect the rim, Nurse wants to do it all: be hard on the ball up the floor; hustle back and get multiple sets of hands in when the ball does get the paint, and then fly to the three-point line to challenge shooters when the ball gets kicked out.

“You can’t pick your poison,” he said. “ You can’t say, ‘OK we’re gonna protect the paint because they drive a lot.’ OK, you can do that, but you have to be out, too. It’s completing the entire possession and playing the whole possession.

“Guys are driving, we collapse on the paint but then we don’t guard the ball long enough and they get an easy chest pass out. We’ve gotta finish guarding the ball so the pass is harder, and that gives us a chance to get out better. There are a lot of little things like that.”

But the Raptors can be their own worst enemy. As one opposing assistant coach said to me recently: “We tell our guys: be strong on the ball, be patient passing out of the help and there will be open shots.”

Now, there are always extenuating factors, and judgements made about a team at its low ebb often fail to account for them. The Raptors are in the midst of a very tough run of opposition; a 25-game stretch where they will have played only three teams with losing records, and injuries don’t help, a problem that shows no sign of abating: just as Precious Achiuwa inches back from a seven-week absence due to an ankle injury, Fred VanVleet missed practice Wednesday with back spasms and Christian Koloko was having diagnostic images take of his knee.

But perhaps other factors are at work too.

Twice in the past week opposing stars have made comments that suggest they know what to expect when playing the Raptors, that the emphasis Nurse typically places on attacking other team’s key players with traps or aggressive helping schemes lacks the element of surprise it might have had in previous years.

Leonard said as much on Tuesday night after the Raptors held him to just 15 points in 32 minutes, well below the 26.2 points per game he averaged in the three seasons before his ACL injury or even the 23.8 points he was averaging in his last five games as he ramps back up to full speed.: “[Nurse] sent guys every possession: isos, post-ups, pick-and-rolls. He didn’t want me to play. The challenge is really trusting my teammates when I’m out there, don’t try to force anything and just try to make my shots when I get them.”

Sixers centre Joel Embiid even took it a step further – in his pot-stirring style – after Philadelphia narrowly managed to get past Toronto in overtime last week and the NBA’s leading scorer was held to 26 points in regulation, or seven below his league-leading 33.7 points per game average.

“When you play a team like Toronto, they don’t really care. It seems like, most of the time, they don’t care about winning. They just want to shut down the other star players,” Embiid said, according to a report from 76ers beat writer Sam DiGiovanni.

It's worth noting that Nurse pushed back on the notion that Leonard was routinely doubled on Wednesday. It may be a matter of definition: the Raptors may not have been trapping Leonard – sending a second defender early and aggressively to force him to give up the ball as quickly as possible – but he was the focus of multiple Raptors defenders on seven of his (season high) eight assists, six of which ended up as open or lightly contested threes for his Clippers teammates.

And of course it’s common for great players to command the attention of more than one defender but once you start rotating, the chances for breakdowns increase. Add in the Raptors' aggressiveness in pursuit of deflections and steals (Toronto leads the NBA in both categories) and the possibility of things going wrong increases.

On Thursday night the Raptors get another top team and elite, ball-dominant star to contain in the Grizzlies and Morant. The hope is that some additional tweaks, attention to detail can make the difference. There are plenty of areas to improve.

“I think that for us, the defences is fairly simple, but it does need to be done at a work rate that isn't simple. Right?” said Nurse. “Getting it set up is a big issue, guarding the initial actions is an issue, guarding the ball … being in and then being able to get out, contesting and then keeping them off the glass … [those are] the five components that we have, and we've got to do those all a little bit better.”

It's the way the Raptors are designed to play and in the absence of options, there is little choice but double down and hope their defence can find a way to cause more problems than their opponents can solve.