PRESEASON GAME 5: Toronto Raptors @ New Orleans Pelicans - OCT 11, 2018 8PM ET

[MixxAOR]

New Orleans Pelicans

Elfrid Payton



Jrue Holiday



E.Moore



Anthony Davis



Julius Randle



VS

TORONTO RAPTORS

Kyle Lowry


Danny Green



Kawhi Leonard



OG Anunoby



Serge Ibaka



NOTES:

- Second night of B2B

- Delon Wright did not travel because of injury

- Kawhi Leonard is a Toronto Raptor

Raptors win, 116-91. They'll play their preseason finale in New Orleans tomorrow - a game that isn't televised and most of the regulars aren't expected to play in (if a tree falls...). Reg season opener next Wednesday.

— Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) October 11, 2018

[MixxAOR]

Jimmy Butler overheard screaming “They gave this Canadian Terrance Ross $147M”

— Nuby (@WentzMVP) October 10, 2018

[KeonClark]

Headed to regular season like

[MixxAOR]

Delon Wright told the Toronto Sun he hurt himself going up for a layup. Won't travel to New Orleans, but doesn't think it is anything serious.
Nurse told us OG Anunoby will play a lot tomorrow as they look to get him to shake off the rust.

— Ryan Wolstat (@WolstatSun) October 11, 2018

[Ebonhawke]

Anthony Davis didn't play Wednesday night vs. the Heat, so likely in for heavy minutes against the Raptors.

Unfortunately, no TV broadcast for the game, so we'll likely be stuck with a stream and/or YouTube highlights

[Scraptor]

Last preseason game before we get to start the season against our nemeses Cavs, Celtics, and Wizards. Even though LeBron is gone, fuck all of those teams.

[consmap]

Anyone else worried that JV might not start against the Cavs?

[DanH]

Anyone else worried that JV might not start against the Cavs?

I'm constantly worried that JV might not start in any given game. Nurse is unpredictable.

I'm all for experimentation, but I do hope we get past this particular experiment quickly.

[DerozansSpurs]

I'm constantly worried that JV might not start in any given game. Nurse is unpredictable.

I'm all for experimentation, but I do hope we get past this particular experiment quickly.

I'm not a fan of Ibaka starting, like, at all. He lacks any real skills beyond shooting - he's a terrible passer, can't dribble, isn't a good rebounder for a big man, and is a super streaky shooter from beyond the arc, yet he continues to dribble a lot and stand behind the arc and pass the ball when he's not good at it. He just has very little feel for the game and awful basketball IQ. On top of that, he's a bad tweener who's too slow to guard PFs and too small to guard Cs, because his athleticism is rapidly declining. Sophomore Jarrett Allen* was bullying him all night in the post and on the glass. The only thing good about Ibaka is that he can block shots in the paint and hit mid-range shots at elite percentages. Did I mention that Ibaka has awful hands too? Half the time he catches the ball, it slips out of his hands.

While I don't think JV is anything more than a really solid role player for us, I still like him a lot and would rather have him start over Ibaka 20 out of 10 times. JV can actually pass the ball decently unlike Ibaka, he can actually dribble a bit, he's a very good rebounder, he sets very good screens, etc. He's a lot like Siakam (another solid role player) in that he does a lot of little things not named scoring the ball that really help out our team.

Ibaka at this point in his career should be playing 15 minutes off the bench. He's just not a good player at all - even if he was paid $2 million instead of $65 million, I'd still be frustrated with him.

*Side note: I like Jarrett Allen a lot. I think the Wizards were stupid to trade away that pick for three months of Bojan Bogdanovic - Jarrett Allen would be a lot better for them than the corpse of Dwight Howard.

---

By the way, here's Casey's dream centre Andre Drummond sagging off of D'Angelo Russell, who then promptly drains a open three-pointer to take the lead.

If this happened to JV, Casey would be ready to swap him out with Bebe/Poeltl/Ibaka.

Just a reminder to anyone who's still wondering why Casey got fired.

[white men can't jump]

I'm constantly worried that JV might not start in any given game. Nurse is unpredictable.

I'm all for experimentation, but I do hope we get past this particular experiment quickly.

I'm really just hoping at this point that Nurse doesn't want teams to have any clue how we're going to set our rotations, so that's his main reason for starting Ibaka so much in preseason.

As DerozansSpurs mentioned, he can't even handle Jarrett Allen. I also like Allen, but he's also still a pup and not that imposing compared to most other starting Cs in the league. Ibaka may get blocks some nights but his D is otherwise not actually that impressive, often struggling with his matchup and not that great with his positioning. This is not 5 years ago Ibaka, who can make up for any miscues by recovering with his athleticism. And yeah, his hands and IQ are bad offensively, which can really help stall things. I haven't liked the starting unit with him in there. More stagnant than our other units.

[GLF]

I'm constantly worried that JV might not start in any given game. Nurse is unpredictable.

I'm all for experimentation, but I do hope we get past this particular experiment quickly.

Man, I hope the same thing too. Serge starting is clearly such a mess. I really don't want to start hating Nurse for it

[The Great One]

Don't want to see Kawhi playing tonight. There's no point really.

[G__Deane]

Anyone else worried that JV might not start against the Cavs?

If Nurse Casey's JV this season (even early), I'm gonna go off....

[Chr1s1anL]

Year 7 and JV is in another position battle. At some point your guys are going to have to face it. That JV is not this all-star y'all want him to be so bad. He's a role player that can give you 25 good minutes a night.

Doesn't matter who starts cause neither will play more than 25mins a game. Well maybe Ibaka will just over 25mins because he will close more games.

Sent from my LG-H831 using Tapatalk

[The Great One]

Winter is coming 🦈 pic.twitter.com/VkJ9fyNVch

— Max Holloway (@BlessedMMA) October 11, 2018