Precious Achiuwa Explains What He Learned in the Playoffs & What's Next After His Breakout Season

The Toronto Raptors saw Precious Achiuwa breakout into a rising star during his sophomore season, now he's ready to come back even better

Joel Embiid’s turn-around jumper clanked off the back iron and fell right into the hands of Precious Achiuwa. What happened next, nobody could have been coming.

The ups and downs of Achiuwa’s basketball skills had become a bit of a running joke around the Toronto Raptors. At any moment he was just as likely to pull off some mesmerizing pump-fake, blow-by, dribble move for a bucket as he was to put the ball on the court and accidentally take a charge driving chaotically toward the rim.

“You never know what he’s going to do out there,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse liked to tell reporters from time to time. “I keep saying we’ve got to stick to a few, but he keeps busting out new ones.”

When Achiuwa came over from the Miami Heat last offseason as part of the Kyle Lowry sign-and-trade, Toronto didn’t quite know what it had. He was a 6-foot-8 forward who, by his own admission, hadn’t done much as a rookie. He was put in a bit of a box, as Achiuwa’s Heat former teammate Goran Dragic recalled, having attempted just one garbage time catch-and-shoot three-pointer all season and been held to limited action on a talented Miami squad.

With Toronto, though, the reigns came off and Achiuwa’s Pandora’s Box opened.

Having just grabbed the rebound off Embiid’s shot, Achiuwa spun around and began dribbling up the court himself. At this point, anything seemed possible. With James Harden backpedaling in transition, Achiuwa stopped just above the three-point line, collected himself quickly, and let it fly.

All mesh.

From the outside, it was a crazy shot. To take that shot midway through the fourth quarter in a close game seemed unthinkable considering Achiuwa hadn’t attempted a single pull-up three-pointer in his NBA career. But to Achiuwa, arguably Toronto’s most improved player of 2021-22, it was a shot that made perfect sense.

It was a shot Achiuwa had been working on all year in practice and, to him, what’s the point in practicing something if you’re not going to try it when it matters?

“It’s just confidence,” Achiuwa said during his season-ending media availability. “I always talk about going out there and doing the thing that you work on.”

For all the ups and downs of Achiuwa’s season, by the end of the year, it was clear he’d become a key member of Toronto’s future and one of the biggest success stories for the Raptors. He’d gone from a non-shooter in Miami to a three-point marksman, shooting 39.2% from behind the arc and averaging 12.2 points following the All-Star Break, and developed into one of the league’s most versatile and talented defensive bigs.

“To a certain extent, I kind of consider this year my first year in NBA just based on the opportunity that I had here,” said the 22-year-old Achiuwa. “There’s a lot of my game that I couldn’t explore that I was able to explore that here. And that just goes to what you said, you know, Nick, he allows us to play basically play free as long as you’re playing within the system of what we're trying to do.”

For all the success Achiuwa had in the regular season, though, the playoffs were an entirely different beast, he said. It taught him the importance of adjustments and taking what the defense gives you. At times early in Toronto’s first-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers, the 76ers' defense left him wide open behind the three-point line, daring him to shoot.

Once he nailed a few, everything switched.

“I came to the bench one time and Freddy looked at me and was like, ‘yeah, they’re not letting you shoot the ball, bro,’” Achiuwa recalled. “Now I just gotta figure out other ways, like it’s a learning experience.”

On the other end, battling with Embiid night after night taught Achiuwa the rigorous of regular NBA playing time as a center and the difficulty of going up against the handful of guys with Embiid’s size

“(I) learned that it’s tough to guard guys like that, (he’s) damn near 300 pounds, you know, battling every day is not easy,” said Achiuwa, who’s listed at 225 pounds.

Figuring out how to deal with those kinds of players is going to be the next step in Achiuwa’s development. On one hand, putting on weight and trying to bulk up this summer may help against the biggest bigs, but it could come at the expense of the versatility that makes Achiuwa so special.

It's a delicate balancing act, but, for him, any drastic changes are a non-starter.

“No, I like the way I look. I like the way I run, the way I jump. I’m going to stick to that, but yeah, definitely get stronger, lift more, but not with the goal of hitting 300 pounds,” he said. 

For Achiuwa, this summer is just about evening out the inconsistency that plagued him early in the year and learning to become a more reliable player. As Nurse always talks about, the difference between the average player in the league and the best players in the NBA is just consistency. Anyone can make an incredible shot or play one amazing game, but can you do it night after night on a regular basis?

That's Achiuwa's next challenge.

Further Reading

Masai Ujiri drops a hint regarding Chris Boucher's upcoming free agency

Masai Ujiri gets emotional praising Pascal Siakam & Raptors forward explains what's next

Nick Nurse explains what he'd like to see from Malachi Flynn moving forward