Darko Rajaković is learning Nick Nurse had a point with Raptors’ minutes

TORONTO — Famously, Kawhi Leonard played only 60 games for the Toronto Raptors in their championship season. That was the season that put the phrase “load management” into the basketball lexicon, the concept of resting star players to increase the odds of keeping them healthy until the playoffs. The league has been fighting load management with several methods, including limiting All-NBA, All-Defense, MVP and Defensive Player of the Year nominees to players who logged at least 65 games. It contributes to the devaluation of the regular season.

Leonard rightly bristled at the notion that the change would have impacted his seasons, particularly that 2018-19 campaign when he was rehabilitating from a knee injury that limited him to nine games the year before. Lost in that, however: Leonard played 34 minutes per game, then a career high, that season.

Leonard is topping that number, rounding up to 35 minutes when rounding to the closest minute, this season, having played in all 25 Los Angeles Clippers games before Monday night. His old team, meanwhile, is consciously lightening the load for core players. Raptors forward Pascal Siakam is down from the 37s in the past two years to the mid-34s. After being around 36 minutes per game in the past two years, OG Anunoby is right around 33 this year. Scottie Barnes, the youngest of the three, is slightly up from last year but is still below the 35-plus minutes per game he played in his rookie year. This was part of new coach Darko Rajaković’s vision, a departure from Nick Nurse, whose rotations constricted to as few as seven players at times over his final two seasons in Toronto.

“One thing that we cannot overlook is we have (had) a pretty healthy roster this season,” Rajaković said before Monday’s 114-99 win over the Charlotte Hornets. “That’s a testament to our medical staff but also us working together to try to manage those minutes. I always look at the long-term benefits for the player, for the team, for the organization and for everybody. I think that every single night running guys to 38, 40 minutes, it’s really, really hard. But on certain nights if that happens, it happens.”

Rajaković is starting to veer closer toward Nurse’s methods. The Raptors needed 39, 36 and 32 minutes from Barnes, Siakam and Anunoby, respectively, to take over the game. The rotation is constricting a bit, from 10 players to nine, with the last player often being a non-factor in the second half. Siakam has played 36 or more minutes six times in the past 11 games after doing the same just four times in the first 14 games. Six of Anunoby’s eight 36-plus-minute games have come in the same span. Barnes’ minutes are also up recently, although not as notably as those of the other two forwards.

There were multiple reasons Nurse’s minutes distribution, more tilted to his starters than any other coach in the league, were of concern. First, the Raptors played an extremely aggressive defensive style, and asking players to log that many minutes while playing that way was a tough ask from a consistency perspective. It also increased the players’ workload, possibly increasing the risk of injury, although it is unclear how much playing time contributed to the myriad injuries suffered by Fred VanVleet and Anunoby. More to the point for the Raptors front office, it kept management from getting a good read on some of the younger players the team hoped would blossom into contributors.

Well, guess what? Rajaković has shortened the rotation, with 25-year-old Jalen McDaniels and 20-year-old Gradey Dick the two players who have seen their minutes virtually disappear. Dick has been a regular in the G League. The bench is made up of two fourth-year players and two sixth-year players. Rajaković said he has shortened the rotation to give the guys who play a better chance to find their rhythm. What’s left unsaid, though: The guys who are no longer playing regularly were playing poorly (o are a few of the guys still in the rotation).

“So of all the things I haven’t done, I’m good at coaching teams that are like OK — teams (with whom) getting to seventh was a really good year,” Hornets coach Steve Clifford said before the game.

“(We’re) playing 82 games where you need everybody’s best,” Clifford continued. “That’s much different than where the Celtics are at, where the Bucks are at, where Philadelphia’s at. I think that you coach a team that has to play well to get in the top 10 much differently than you coach a team that is going to be top two or three.”

The implication: Teams that have to scratch and claw their way forward have to lean on their best players more than teams that can sleepwalk into the playoffs. This is another problem with the Raptors’ lack of direction. Without their first-round pick this year, they have no incentive to fall down the standings, but this core of players, Barnes and maybe Anunoby and Dick excepted, seems temporary.

The front office and Rajaković’s coaching staff should be in constant communication to be aligned on organizational priorities. That was also part of the point of the coaching change. One thing everyone involved is learning: Nurse might have been on to something with playing-time deployment.

• Credit where credit is due: It was that bench, playing alongside Barnes, that put the Raptors in control of a game they had to have from a morale standpoint. The Hornets were missing six regulars. Gary Trent Jr. had his best offensive night in a while with 22 points and 10 rebounds for his first career double-double.

• Barnes’ most glaring defensive weakness is playing on the perimeter, specifically against guards. That might never be his strength, but he should be able to hang out there. He used his length expertly early, keeping Terry Rozier in front of him and then swatting his attempt. Barnes also blocked a shot downward with two hands, which you do not often see. He also missed two other spectacular blocks by a few tenths of a second, if that.

Barnes had 22 points, 17 rebounds, seven assists and three blocks.

“Point-centre or centre-point,” Rajaković said of Barnes. “Whatever you want to call (him).” That about covers it.

• When you have limited spacing, pocket passes to your centre become much, much tougher, huh, Raptors? The offence was a mess with the starting lineup, and that resulted in Jakob Poeltl’s playing just 15 minutes. The Raptors lost his minutes by 12 points. Yikes.

• Picking up from the last three halves in the two games against the Atlanta Hawks, Rajaković mostly kept Dennis Schröder’s minutes wed to the opponent’s starting guard — in this case, Rozier. The coach went away from that in the fourth quarter because he leaned on Schröder heavily in the third quarter.

• JT Thor outworked Precious Achiuwa and Chris Boucher to get an offensive rebound despite not having inside position. He jumped higher and fought harder. Unacceptable. The two players also combined to blow a coverage that luckily resulted in a missed 3 from the corner. There aren’t obvious alternates, but these two might make too many mistakes to play together as much as they do.

• Speaking of an error by the two forwards, Leaky Black leaked out for a layup! You take what you get in a mid-December Monday night game against the Hornets.

• Former Raptors head coach Dwane Casey was at the game, presumably to remind everybody of more purposeful days. Casey is a front-office assistant for the Detroit Pistons, so maybe he just wanted to see one of his old teams win, a prospect that was looking dicey for a long while. He got a nice ovation.

(Photo of Darko Rajakovic and Scottie Barnes: Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)