The Raptors Want to Make Jakob Poeltl a Bigger Part of the Offense This Season

The Toronto Raptors view Jakob Poeltl as an offensive focal point and someone they can run the offense through this season

OK, maybe the Jakob Poeltl trade wasn’t such a great idea.

At this point, it’s been litigated ad nauseam. The Toronto Raptors gave up this year’s first-round pick to re-acquire the 7-foot center from the San Antonio Spurs at last season’s trade deadline. In a vacuum, the deal wasn’t all that bad, but considering the way last year played out, it was far from ideal.

What’s clear, though, is the Raptors see Poeltl as more than just a valuable role player. Not only did they pay a premium to bring him back, but Toronto re-signed him this summer to a four-year, $78 million deal. Now, the plan is to make him a focal point of this new Raptors offense.

“We’re going to use Jakob more playing at the elbows, top of the key with the ball in his hands. We want to cut around him. He's (a) really good passer, very unselfish player,” Raptors coach Darko Rajaković said Tuesday. “We're going to be trying to play through him even more.”

It’ll be part of the team’s shift away from an isolation style of basketball and toward a style that involves more ball and player movement this season.

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Expect more cutting, off-ball screens, and handoffs from the team this season as they look to make Poeltl more of an offensive hub the way the Denver Nuggets treat Nikola Jokic or the Sacramento Kings treat Domantas Sabonis.

“That high-post offense, trying to run the ball, a motion offense, through the 5, is going to take some time to get used to,” Poeltl said on Monday. “We had elements of that in the past, but it's going to be a bigger focus now.”

The change should help with Toronto’s lack of floor spacing. It’s something Poeltl talked about when the Raptors first acquired him after he played a similar sort of style as the offensive engine for a lackluster San Antonio Spurs team. Even though he is far from a traditional floor spacer, his size and screening ability creates movement space for cutters on the court.

“I’ve had a lot of experience over the last year or two with limited spacing,” Poeltl said back in February when Toronto acquired him. “I think it’s about just finding your spots. Part of that was me making plays so that when I flashed to the high post we would have a lot of cuts, stuff like that.”

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For what it’s worth, Toronto’s offense was 7.6 points per 100 possessions better with Poeltl on the court last season. That number is a little skewed considering Toronto’s supposed success with Poeltl down the stretch came against a ton of weak competition. But it’s clear the Raptors view him as someone who can be a bigger part of the offense this season and maybe fix the half-court woes that plagued the team so mightily last year.