Even Without Marc Gasol, Raptors Continue To Frustrate Nikola Vucevic

The Toronto Raptors used Aron Baynes and all sorts of defensive schemes to frustrate Orlando Magic big Nikola Vucevic in Sunday's victory

Aaron Rose | Feb 2, 2021

Even Without Marc Gasol, Raptors Continue To Frustrate Nikola Vucevic /

Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse must love playing the Orlando Magic.

Since Nurse took over Raptors head coaching duties in June 2018, his teams are 11-3 against the Magic. Throughout those games, he's deployed a very simple gameplan: slowdown Nikola Vucevic and don't get beat by outside shooting.

That gameplan has been made a lot easier by the presence of Marc Gasol for the better part of Nurse's Raptors tenure. But this year, with Gasol playing in Los Angeles, the Raptors had to change things up a little and hope Aron Baynes could hold his own against Orlando's 6-foot-11 centre.

Prior to Sunday's game, I was skeptical Baynes would be able to stop Vucevic. The Raptors had struggled against the league's best big men to start the season and Baynes had done little to show he could stop a star like Vucevic.

I was wrong.

With some help from Nurse's aggressive defensive gameplan, the Raptors held Vucevic to a pitiful 5-for-18 night, his worst shooting performance of the season. Though he still came away with 15 points, only five of those came in the 27.12 partial possessions when Baynes defended him, per NBA Stats.

There were two keys to stopping Vucevic on Sunday. Whenever he got the ball inside the Raptors aggressively sent help. It's why he generated just two points out of nine post-ups, per NBA Stats.

"I thought he we did a good job of making most of his shots really tough," Nurse said.

The other, more complicated aspect to slowing down Vucevic is dealing with his 3-point shooting. He's shooting 44% from behind the arc this season and the Raptors held him to just 2-for-6 from behind the arc. What's more impressive is all six of those 3-pointers were classified as "Wide Open," per NBA Stats, and yet the Raptors were able to rush his mechanics and force misses.

"They're very aggressive and cover a lot of ground," Vucevic said of the Raptors defence. "They want you to take quick shots or kind of make quick decisions, but you've kind of got to use that pressure against them."

This has been a trademark of the Nick Nurse Raptors. His teams have been able to constantly make these so-called "Wide Open" shots feel a lot less open due to constant pressure.

Keeping to that gameplan on Tuesday night will remain key. The Raptors will need another big defensive game from Baynes to slowdown Vucevic. If they can, Nurse should move to 12-2 all-time against Orlando.

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