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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – To a man, the Phoenix Suns seemed surprised after Thursday night’s nail-biting loss in Toronto.

Coming in with the worst record in the Western Conference (11-35), they may not have expected to go toe-to-toe with the 34-win and league-best Raptors, even without the resting Kawhi Leonard in the lineup.

But when it came down to a final game-deciding possession, they definitely didn’t anticipate the ball being in the hands of breakout third-year forward Pascal Siakam.

“Honestly, when I saw Siakam get the ball, no disrespect to him, he’s a good player, he’s been playing really well, but I thought there was no way in the world they were running that last shot for him,” said Suns sophomore Josh Jackson, who watched the play from the visitors’ locker room after he was ejected in the fourth quarter for picking up his second technical foul.

Tied at 109 with 13 seconds remaining when the Raptors inbounded the ball out of the timeout, Siakam dribbled the clock down to three seconds before making his move from the top of the arc.

“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he admitted shortly thereafter. “I just had to make sure I took the last shot. That was the only thing on my mind.”

Most players would have run out of time in that situation, or been forced to pull-up. But, known for his long strides and quick first step, Siakam needed just one dribble to get from the three-point line to the rim, blowing past a couple of Suns defenders to bank in the game-winning layup just before buzzer.

The Suns were right to be caught off guard. It’s not like they didn’t read the scouting report. If anything, they were too prepared.

Going into Thursday’s game, the Raptors had taken 45 shots in the final minute of the fourth quarter or overtime with the score within five points or fewer this season. Six different players had attempted at least one of those 45 shots. Siakam wasn’t one of them.

While he’s often on the floor in crunch time, if for no other reason than his defensive versatility, he’s very rarely an offensive focal point in those situations. Now, as Fred VanVleet joked, he’s shooting 100 per cent, 1-for-1, with a game-winner on his rapidly growing resume.

This was the desired outcome for a Raptors team that’s had mixed results executing down the stretch. One night earlier they squandered a four-point lead with four minutes remaining in Boston. The Celtics scored 17 of the game’s final 21 points, with Toronto’s offence breaking down and Kyrie Irving outduelling Leonard in the final moments.

After the loss, both of Toronto’s all-stars – Leonard and Kyle Lowry – were vocal about the need to mix things up in crunch time.

“[We need to] give Kawhi some help,” Lowry said. “A lot of times we kind of give Kawhi the ball and get out the way. He is that talented a player, but we’ve got to help him. We’ve got to do things differently. We have to pay attention to detail better. A lot of things to work on I think we just got comfortable with Kawhi taking over and making every shot. He is really good and he can do it, but we have to give him some help.”

“That’s what I have to do,” said Leonard. “That’s what I’m here for, that’s what I work for. We just gotta get some movement going rather than just be stationary out there. It’s not just down the stretch at times, it’s throughout the game, sometimes when I do have the ball, there’s not movement, just everybody watching me.”

On Thursday the script was flipped. Leonard was the spectator, watching his teammates close things out from the bench as the Raptors continue to manage his workload on back-to-backs. Of course, had he been available, head coach Nick Nurse almost certainly would have called his number with the game on the line.

Leonard has taken 18 shots in the final minute of close games this season, tied for fifth most in the NBA. However, he’s only hit six of them – a 33 per cent success rate. That doesn’t mean he’s not a clutch player. In fact, it’s the exact same percentage Irving and LeBron James are shooting in those situations.

First of all, the sample size is extremely limited. If we zoom out and look at what the NBA considers ‘clutch’ situations – score within five points over the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime – Leonard is shooting 33-for-67. Only two NBA players have attempted more clutch shots – Kemba Walker (81) and Irving (69) – and of the 14 players that have taken at least 50 clutch shots only one (Bradley Beal) is shooting a better percentage than Leonard.

If anything, his numbers in the final minute of tight games could speak to the looks he and the Raptors are generating relative to what the defence is expecting.

That the Raptors want the ball in the hands of their best player during the most important moments of the game is hardly unusual. Even if they’ve found another late-game weapon in Siakam, or if the slumping Lowry heats up and can take some pressure off Kawhi (he’s just 1-for-8 in the final minute of close games this season), you still want Leonard taking those shots more often than not.

The key is in finding creative ways to free him up. Most teams lean heavily on isolation plays late in games; that’s not limited to the Raptors. The thinking is: ensure your best player gets the shot while minimizing the risk of a turnover. However, that doesn’t always mean the other four guys should be spectators.

Nurse has empowered his players, giving them plenty of freedom to read and react within their offensive structure. The offence is predicated on movement and spacing. For 43 minutes each night, give or take, they’ve mostly been successful in their goal: to be unpredictable and keep the defence on their toes.

Overall, the Raptors rank seventh in offensive efficiency. They fall to 16th over the final five minutes of close games and 19th over the final minute.

This idea of standing and watching, relying too much on one player to do all the work, isn’t a new one. It’s a concern that’s come up repeatedly over the years, with DeMar DeRozan in the Leonard role. It’s probably even more tempting to try and stay out of Leonard’s way, but it’s a habit they have to work to break ahead of the playoffs.

Opposing teams will really lock in on Leonard in the postseason, sending multiple defenders his way – as they’ve done to DeRozan in years past – and forcing other guys to step up and make plays.

Leonard, like DeRozan before him, has proven to be a willing and capable passer, especially over the last month. If, to Leonard’s point, they’re able to get more movement off the ball, he’ll have more options when the defence takes away his shot. Maybe he finds a cutter or an open shooter. Maybe those other guys serve as decoys. In football, even if it’s a running play or you’re throwing to a certain receiver, you still want the other receivers to run their routes convincingly.

“We've gotta keep working through those [late-game] situations,” Nurse said ahead of Thursday’s win over Phoenix. “I think we took a half a step backwards [in Boston on Wednesday]. I really thought we'd made a lot of progress. Late in games, we'd been really good at getting to where we wanted to go and reading the situation. The ball's gonna play through Kawhi mostly, like it does for Kyrie and like it does for [James Harden] and LeBron. It's gonna play through him and then the other guys gotta be ready to be spaced right, be ready to step in.”

The Raptors have played clutch minutes in four of their last five games. That three of them came against losing teams they should theoretically be beating more decisively is somewhat worrisome. On the other side of coin, they found a way to win all three, beating Atlanta, Washington and Phoenix, and those games could pay dividends down the road. The silver lining is that the Raptors are getting some much-needed reps executing in crunch-time scenarios.

A year ago at this time, the Raptors had played just 73 clutch minutes (the 24th-most in the league), which was a product of their point differential – they were blowing teams out. In many cases, that’s a good problem to have, but the concern was that they weren’t being tested enough late in competitive games.

Of course, when the level of competition goes up in the playoffs you’re probably not going to be winning games by 10 or 20 points. At that point, you have to be able to execute. Sure enough, the Raptors weren’t, not against Cleveland anyway.

This season, the Raptors have played 102 clutch minutes. Only three teams have played more. With more experience in those moments – more opportunities to succeed and fail, to learn and grow – the hope is that they’ll be better prepared for what’s to come in the spring.