The Toronto Raptors seem to be taking a nice to have, rather than a need to have, approach to Brandon Ingram\u2019s scoring potential ahead of the biggest game of the season.<\/p>\n
Toronto\u2019s top shot-maker has been held to only 12 points a game, fourth on the team, and below 40% from the field over three games against the Cleveland Cavaliers. He has missed only two fewer shots than Scottie Barnes, even though Barnes has attempted 17 more. He has misfired on four more shots than RJ Barrett, even though Barrett has attempted 12 more. Ingram also has been uncharacteristically turnover-prone and has been victimized repeatedly defensively by Cleveland. All in all, not good at all, but you never would guess it given how the Raptors have been talking about Ingram and how composed he was up at the podium after practice on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see that he\u2019s doing an outstanding job for us,\u201d claimed head coach Darko Rajakovic when asked by the Toronto Sun if Ingram\u2019s poor series was wearing on Ingram at all.<\/p>\n
The Raptors have made it clear throughout that they believe, or at least want everyone else to believe, that they\u2019re OK with Cleveland closely tracking Ingram, allowing him to make plays or create space for others.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way they decided to guard him, it\u2019s opening up a lot of stuff for us. We don\u2019t have a say to decide what they\u2019re going to do, how they\u2019re going to guard us, will they be blitzing or not blitzing, or top locking, or whatever,\u201d Rajakovic said. \u201cThat\u2019s their decision. I know one thing, that he\u2019s creating a lot of gravity for a reason, and then that\u2019s opening up a lot of stuff for the whole team. And I thought that in this last game, he was aggressive, that he was trying to make the right plays,\u201d Rajakovic said.<\/p>\n
Jakob Poeltl agreed. \u201cI think there\u2019s always more to improve,\u201d said the much-maligned starting centre. \u201cYeah, but at some point you also got to just take what the defence gives you. You still want to try to create advantages for him,\u201d Poeltl said, referring to setting screens, \u201cto get him going. But then when they send like, two or three guys at him, somebody else got to be able to step up and make use of that room, that spacing, that he creates for us by just the attention he demands from the defence.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, that has been Barnes and Barrett, both brilliant overall, and little-used Jamison Battle, who swung Game 3 in Toronto\u2019s favour in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Ingram praised Barrett while also saying of his own game that he would use past experience to make more of an impact moving forward without forcing it, which could throw off the offence.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Barrett\u2019s) name has been everywhere (in trade rumours) this year. His name hasn\u2019t been brought up a lot on the positive side,\u201d Ingram said. \u201cHis mindset is to prove to people that he belongs on this floor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ironically, that\u2019s where Ingram now finds himself, with Toronto finding success more than once in the series with Rajakovic leaving him on the bench.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tell myself to keep going. I\u2019ve been in this situation a bunch of times, where shots weren\u2019t falling and things weren\u2019t going my way,\u201d Ingram said. \u201cKeep going, keep communicating, don\u2019t let it spiral down to the defensive side of the basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s work to be done there too. Whether it\u2019s falling asleep on cuts, not boxing out to finish a defensive possession or in other ways, Ingram has not been as strong defensively as he was in the regular season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect him to continue getting better as the series (progresses),\u201d Rajakovic said.<\/p>\n
Ingram expects the same.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll find out Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
@WolstatSun<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Raptors seem to be taking a nice to have, rather than a need to have, approach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1327,17,1481,5813,4724,1326,4811,9863,2145,1329,48,1287],"class_list":{"0":"post-19754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-brandon-ingram","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","11":"tag-darko-rajakovic","12":"tag-dean-wade","13":"tag-jakob-poeltl","14":"tag-jamison-battle","15":"tag-nba-playoff-game","16":"tag-rj-barrett","17":"tag-scottie-barnes","18":"tag-toronto","19":"tag-toronto-raptors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}