Just flipping between the games tonight with eastern conference teams we’re chasing…, Brooklyn lost to a Ball-less Hornets, at home. Cleveland lost to Portland at home. Bucks needed a furious last minute comeback to get to overtime against the Bulls with DeRozan and LaVine (Nick Caruso buzzer-beater for the tie!) and then lost. Knicks pulled out the narrow win at home to Detroit. Hawks trailed the Spurs most of the night and were a last-second, 50/50 charge/block call away from going to OT too.

Sometimes you can get too focused on the Raptors and their bad losses or embarassingly-close wins over bad teams, and not realize that it’s something that every team goes through. Tonight’s a little bit of an extreme example of that point.

Another indicator of this is that the only other starter that sometimes joins Scottie is OG, who is a great fit next to Scottie and is the only other starter that is young enough to fit his timeline.

Have you not noticed that the last couple games there’s been a significant dose of Barnes + Siakam + bench minutes at the end of the 1st and 3rd quarters? The Siakam/Barnes/GTJ/Flynn/Achiuwa unit is actually the third highest-minute unit across the last 6 games. There’s a couple Barnes+OG+bench units with 10 and 7 minutes respectively during the same duration, and all of these units are interesting and effective. But in terms of trying to find narrative there, I think you might be selectively watching here for what you want to see. They’re just an opportunity to reduce the Scottie+bench lineups minutes, which other than the fourth quarter tonight have generally struggled.

Yup, that lineup did great, and played longer shifts tonight, and one of the reasons why is Darko trusting units with the other starters and bench players, so he can actually rest Siakam and Barnes at the same time and then play them together more. Energy level in the late 3rd was exceptional, and then it carried over in the Barnes+bench unit in the fourth.

It’s amusing because I think most of us (including myself) thought the thing to do before the season was to keep their minutes broken up as much as possible and always have one of them on the court, but the opposite may turn out to be true.

Yeah, fantastic game. After Barnes came back in with four minutes left in the third, the Barnes+Siakam+bench unit went +6 to close out the quarter, and then Barnes+bench went +5 over the first four minutes of the fourth. +11 in those 8 minutes. That swing totally turned this game, and Scottie really drove the energy level for the whole team over that stretch.

Armchair GMing is fine, people having strong opinions about the team is normal and a big part of sports fandom. It’s just that anyone is an idiot if they think that the front office isn’t exponentially smarter and better-informed than them when it comes to evaluating basketball.

Hate that challenge. Best case scenario is you’ve got a jump ball at your defensive end of the court where the other team has time to score if they win the jump, and you’ll have a hard time getting a decent shot off if you win the jump. Didn’t prevent a foul on a key player. I just don’t see where the upside was, regardless of how much you think it’s a wrong call.

TL;DR: Darko basically did what this post was talking about tonight, breaking up the Barnes + bench unit and instead always having two or three starters out there, including putting Poeltl and Schroder out there with shooters without Barnes / Siakam.

I was suggesting breaking up Siakam’s minutes so he had a break in the first, came back out to be the second starter on the Barnes + bench unit, and then take another breather before coming back in to close out the half. Tonight the rotation did that with OG instead of Siakam, which I admit is better than my rotation because it allows Siakam to stay hot if he’s rolling, but similar approach.

Whoever is willing to max him in the offseason. I’m not sure he gets a max, but I think he’s going to be in-demand enough that you have to be willing to max him to retain him, or there’s no point in trading for him.

That is probably best for a team of mostly young stars who are going to be at most hitting the cheaper rookie max next contract, which does make Orlando a better fit than some other teams.

Okay, lone positive tonight IMO:

They stopped running the Scottie+bench lineup, and for once the Raptors never trailed by double-digits in the first half. Much more sensible rotation in terms of staying competitive all game long, until that horrendous last couple minutes.

From Toronto’s perspective, adding LaVine while losing OG is really lateral, let alone adding additional assets that would compromise any sort of rebuild timeline. Doesn’t make us anywhere close to a contender on a short-term timeline, seriously damages the rebuild timeline.

If we’re trading for LaVine (and I don’t think we should go this way), it can’t lose us any win-now assets. And Chicago can probably get better returns elsewhere so that makes it very unlikely to happen.

I mentioned this in another thread, but you have to consider those net ratings numbers with the fact that GTJ spends most of his minutes in lineups that have four other starters, and he’s done great in that situation, having very little dropoff. But start to pair him with one or more other bench players, and the ratings in those lineups fall off significantly. At the same time, he isn’t going against opposing starting units the way the other starters are. In short, you would expect someone who doesn’t start games but plays most of their minutes with four starters to have one of the best net ratings on the team.

In other words, this is the same criticisms GTJ has had his whole time in Toronto; put him with four starter levels guys? He’ll fill that role fine; they’ve got the gravity, the passing, the defense, etc. to make up for him. As soon as you put him with other bench level guys, his impact drops off in a hurry.

Also not convinced on Rose’s numbers here. NBA.com shows Trent and Barnes with a 112.9 offensive rating, not the 118.3 Rose claims.

His best net rating unit is when he swaps in to replace Poeltl with the other starters, and when he and Flynn are in for Poeltl and Schroder. That’s a nearly +30 net rating in the former and +16 in the latter. But those units are usually used when the other team doesn’t have any legit big to worry about. So yeah, guys finish at the rim more in those units… is that because of GTJs gravity, or because there’s no rim-protector? I’m not saying he doesn’t have an impact, I just think the lineups and matchups make evaluating his impact a lot tougher than what Rose suggests here.

I think part of that is just that a lot of these lineups overlap which creates the illusion of GTJ being in a lot of good lineups. For example, that unit where Barnes sits and Gary plays with the other starters accounts for 51 minutes, more than any other GTJ lineup, and includes all of 3/4/5. GTJ’s next most common lineup is when he’s subbing for OG with the other starters, accounting for 34 minutes. That encompasses 1, 2, and 5 here. Him in place of Poeltl with the other starters accounts for 15 minutes, and includes 1, 2, 3, and 4 here. Him instead of Schroeder accounts for only 5 minutes, but is a +37, and includes 1, 2, 3, and 5 above. The other starters+GTJ combination, where he plays in place of Siakam, accounts for only 1 minute.

Anyway, my point here is that a lot of GTJ’s minutes come when he’s playing with all starters. And he’s great in that role! Just on a net rating basis, there’s very little drop-off, but part of that is matchups… a lot of his minutes are in a ‘first substitution’ lineup, and based on this it definitely seems like our first-sub units are outperforming our opponent’s on a regular basis.

The ongoing challenge with GTJ is that when he’s asked to play a larger role within a lineup… where he doesn’t have better players around him creating gravity, playmaking, defensive presence, etc. Put him with even just three starters and another bench-player, and the net rating starts to decline steeply.

Another way of looking at it with net ratings that supports this narrative… he has a positive net rating with any other starter, and a negative net rating with every bench player except for Boucher and Porter. (The Porter + GTJ units have a sparkling +23 in 32 minutes… only two two-man units have a better net rating in more minutes (Siakam+Boucher at +46, and Porter+Anunoby at +26).

Very poor gameplan to wait until the fourth quarter to go down by double-digits. Should stick with what’s working which is to go down double-digits early.

An aspect you don’t touch on is that familiarity is really valuable. Literally nobody tends to like new play-by-play until they reach a point where their voice starts to become familiar, and announcers tend to hold their jobs for a very long time. So any change is going to come very slowly. Nobody is going to replace a well-liked, longtime play-by-play guy for a new, unfamiliar one unless they need to. So turnover in this industry is really, really slow.

And it’s not a skill you can just step into, you need to have experience at it in the minor-leagues or other sports. But minor-league gigs tend to not pay well-enough to be a full-time job, so you have people who split their time between multiple minor-league teams and other broadcast gigs. Minor league teams generally don’t have the luxury of trying different voices or letting an inexperienced commentator take time to learn the ropes. A lot of these guys have experience doing play-by-play for their university teams in one sport or another.

So to address that, you have to get right down to the roots: are sports broadcast journalism programs fair in their admissions? The journalism school I went to in Canada was probably about 65% white overall, but the sports broadcast journalism stream was almost exclusively white male, and I’d wager that’s overwhelmingly the largest applicant group for US colleges as well. And there’s all the complexity that is the debate over affirmative action in the US.

But then how are university sports programs choosing who gets the plum gigs of doing the college sports play-by-play, which are the best way to break into the industry? And is it fair to do anything other than a meritocracy at this point? And how do g-league and other minor-league teams handle choose their broadcast teams, and is it fair to require them to risk what precious little radio/TV viewership they have for experimenting with other voices? If so, who decides which g-league teams have to exercise this sort of affirmative action? And if you can manage all of that so that there’s an actual pool of diverse candidates with quality abilities and experience, how does the NBA tell networks that they need to make certain hiring choices, when ultimately the NBA works in service of the networks to allow the networks to create the product that the networks feel is going to work for their audience?

In short, I don’t think it’s a solvable problem, especially when a lot of people seem fine with the black colour-commentator as a workable solution. It’s certainly not solveable on a scale other than decades, and who knows what nba broadcasting is going to look like by then… you’ll probably be able to have your favorite ai personality do entirely believable custom play-by-play with the personality you want before that point, customized how you want. Sexy korean girlfriend voice who gives you whatever the popular advanced stat of the 2050s is in actual conversation, can give you parlay tips and place them for you, and spends time-outs telling you about her day (including a suspicious number of mentions of mountain dew)? Yeah, that’s probably closer in the future than a big change in the racial ratio of play-by-play announcers.

The big caveat is that minutes with Siakam, Barnes, and not Poeltl tend to be when the other team goes small (or at least doesn’t have a traditional big starting center out there). And yeah, Siakam and Barnes should and do tend to torch those lineups.

I really liked the Barnes/Siakam/Achiuwa/Flynn/GTJ lineup we’ve seen occasionally. Looks like that unit has played a super-small sample-size of 9 minutes together, with five of those minutes coming last night. Net rating of +35, but again, the sample size. Nonetheless, it’s a great lineup to punish teams that can’t bring a mobile rim-protecting C off the bench.

Last year Achiuwa had 3 or more assists just 6 times, and all of those were in games where he had 19 or more minutes per game. Never more than 4 assists.

This season, he’s had 3 or more assists in five of his ten games, including five assists twice. And all of those were in games where he had 19 minutes or fewer. He’s currently had three straight games of 4+ assists.

Now, I’m not ignoring the warts here; he still has some very poor decisions; last night I was literally in the midst of writing a comment praising his smart game when he tried to force a pass through three defenders. And then a couple minutes later had that awful pass to nobody that went the full length of the court.

But to me that’s pretty emblematic of what Darko’s trying to do here, allowing him to work through his mistakes and fill a crucial role as an additional passer on that second unit. Barnes is so smart at every role, and there’s something to be said for putting the ball in someone else’s hands and then having Barnes make a good cut and create a passing opportunity, rather than always being the guy with the ball, waiting for other players to make the right cut at the right time.

I’m not saying it’s working yet, or that it necessarily will work… but you can see what the plan is, and it’s intriguing. Hopefully in a month or two we’re talking about playmaker Achiuwa as this brilliant successful experiment in the same way we’re talking about the transformation in Flynn.

If there’s one constant in a Chicago / Toronto game, expect at least one team to not be able to hit a freethrow to save their lives.

I swear, I’ve never seen a player who has the most selfless, team-centric, long-term perspective to the game, and yet has a huge group of fans of his who care only about his personal stats and individual success.

If you’re gonna be a Scottie fan, try to be like Scottie: he doesn’t care about his stats, he wants the team to win. He wants to take on the biggest challenges that will help his game grow. He wants to take on the hardest minutes on the rotation and see if he can help his struggling teammates be more successful. He wants his teammates to do the things that will make them and the team successful. He cares about his impact on defense as much as offense… even the elements of defense that don’t show up on the scoresheet. Don’t just be a fan of who he is as a player, be a fan of who he is as a person and a teammate, and try to bring that to your own fandom.

I think you’re making it complicated and looking for a conspiracy when it’s actually really simple, and comes down to this: believe survivors.

There’s a clear difference between questioning the validity of accusations in situations where there’s an accuser who is telling their story as a victim, vs. questioning the validity of accusations when there isn’t someone who has come forward as a victim/accuser at this point. If a victim steps forward to tell their story, people automatically want to express support for them telling their story; if that does not happen, there’s no reason to not let it play out and let the information that’s out there get vetted by law enforcement and reputable media.

Usually the media cycle on these sorts of stories is:

1. vague online rumours (optional)
2. reporting by TMZ-type media sources that are really good at finding people who will talk, and do minimum vetting.
3. reporting on those TMZ reports by mainstream media.
4. mainstream media doing their own well-vetted reporting, which is usually at the stage that everyone from the player’s reps, to the league, to the victim’s reps, to prosecutors, are all willing to make statements to the press.

Right now we’re still at #1. Usually things move from 1 to 2 quickly because with a lot of allegations, either the victim wants to talk or someone close to the victim wants to talk; someone usually sees themselves as doing the right thing by getting the story out there. In this case, the alleged victim potentially doesn’t see herself as a victim here; her parents might feel that this blowing up is worse for her than it being handled quietly. There just might not be those sources that a TMZ-type outlet can lean on. In which case, if any meaningful coverage happens it may not be until step 4, which can take a lot of time.