“Offense wins games, but defense wins championships.”
As the old saying goes, “offense wins games, but defense wins championships.” The Toronto Raptors have exemplified this mentality since the beginning of the restart.
Through their first four games, the Raptors have yet to allow their opposition to score 100 points. This is especially impressive considering they held the NBA’s ninth and tenth ranked scoring teams in the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers under the century mark.
The Raptors also rank second in the league in opponent field goal percentage, holding opponents to just 42.7 percent shooting on the year.
Toronto leads the NBA in the opponent field goal percentage through their first three games at 39 percent. However, after their blowout loss to the Celtics, the Raptors dropped down to third with a 42 percent opponent field goal percentage.
Numbers aside the defensive effort Nick Nurse has gotten out of his players is extremely impressive. It would’ve easy for the Raptors to show up in Orlando and take these games lightly, but they’ve played almost every game as if there’s a huge prize on the line.
From an individual perspective, OG Anunoby has been one of Toronto’s standout defenders. His tenacious defense on both Bam Adebayo against Miami and Aaron Gordon against Orlando helped nullify the two stars.
It will be interesting to see if Nick Nurse continues to assign Annunoby to bigger players, so far it’s worked out great. This is especially helpful if Nurse decides to go small because he can trust the 23-year-old to guard the bigger guys.