Plenty of focus from Raptors on those bigs coming off the bench

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If there is an area of ​​improvement ripe for the picking for Nick Nurse and his Raptors staff, it is the contributions from the bench.

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To date they have been sporadic bordering on poor.

A lot of that has had to do with the lack of health among the starters as every time one or two of them go down, the second unit gets disrupted.

But with Fred VanVleet back and presumably healthy and with OG Anunoby a week or so away from returning, the faces coming off the bench to spell the starter in those early second and fourth quarter time slots have started to become familiar.

Chris Boucher, Precious Achiuwa and Thaddeus Young are normally the first three coming in. When Nurse needs a guard, he’s been turning to Dalano Banton of late with Malachi Flynn sidelined with that hamstring injury.

But the big three, who will be joined by a big four when Anunoby returns and Khem Birch slips back to bench duty, would appear to have the bulk of the bench minutes corralled barring another injury.

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So figuring out how to play that many bigs together is going to be a big part of the final 16 games after last night’s tilt in Phoenix.

“We’ve got to figure out who we’re playing against and what the matchups look like and who’s gonna take the more perimeter-oriented guys and the guys coming off a lot more screens usually between Precious, Chris and Thad,” Nurse said . “That’s just part of it. There’s so much switching going on. They’re all trying to get used to when they get switched on to smaller guys to play all facets of that: Guard the ball, help, correct rotations. There are a lot of things that go into that. That’s probably the most challenging thing.”

It obviously helps that those three joining two starters all of whom have their rest staggered to allow Nurse to keep at least two of his regulars on the floor at all times.

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Offensively there are adjustments to make as well, but more so between Young and Barnes than Boucher who scores in such a unique fashion that he is rarely getting in the way of his teammates offensive opportunities.

As for Achiuwa, well, the Raptors still don’t have a full handle on where he’s most effective for them form an offensive standpoint.

“Precious, we’re still trying to figure his out,” Nurse said. “He’s gonna shoot the three. He’s gonna drive it coast to coast. He’s gonna drive it from the corner. You never know.

“You’ll see a lot of different moves from him from night to night,” Nurse said. “He’s trying to clean up game and take some rhythm threes, and when they close up on him they straight line-drives it and makes the next play.”

In other words, the bench still has some work to do, but at the very least, the Raptors now have a pretty good idea of ​​who will be getting those secondary minutes regularly.