You often hear people who ask for too much being told they can’t have it both ways.
Serge Ibaka may be asking for a lot, but it sounds like he may just get what he wants.
Ibaka’s quest for meaningful playing time has been answered in large part this year because teammate and good friend Marc Gasol could not answer the bell consistently due to injury.
The sweet-passing, defensively gifted Raptors big man was coming off the most successful full year of basketball any player in the game has probably ever enjoyed.
From September through June, with a change of team included, he was working towards and eventually helping the Raptors win an NBA championship.
From July through to that next September he was doing the same with the Spanish national team, culminating in a FIBA championship celebration.
It amounted to a 12-month physically exhausting experience and it took its toll when he returned to the Raptors last October and tried to do it again.
His body balked at the request and back-to-back hamstring injuries resulted. It meant far less Gasol and much, much more Ibaka who flourished in his good friend’s absence.
But a four-month, pandemic-forced hiatus from the game and what had to be a monk-like devotion to diet and exercise has Gasol back looking leaner and stronger and fitter than ever.
On the surface this would seem to push back Ibaka to a lesser role but that’s not necessarily true if all the talk about the Raptors jumbo lineup coming from head coach Nick Nurse is in fact more than just talk.
No stranger to finding his own path, Nurse seems to be willing to buck the trend among most NBA teams and go bigger, rather than smaller, in an attempt to have an advantage over his opponents.
Now Nurse has never said he was considering starting games this way but on more than a few occasions these past few weeks he has shown a real fondness for what he calls his “jumbo lineup” that features Gasol at centre, Ibaka at power forward with OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam holding down the small forward and shooting guard positions.
That is four of five bodies on the floor between 6-foot-7 and seven feet, which will dwarf just about any other lineup an opponent can throw at them.
For Ibaka it means getting to play meaningful and substantial minutes with Gasol, a player he would normally sub in for when both men are healthy.
Ibaka, having played with Gasol previously as a member of Spain’s national team — born in the Congo, Ibaka was granted Spanish nationality after moving there as a teenager and it’s where he began his professional career — knows exactly how well the two complement each other and how successful they can be.
Clearly, Nurse is of the same opinion.
“I think you’ll see Marc and Serge together quite a bit. I think there’s more familiarity there,” he said. “Again, I just think with Serge’s increased skill-set has been able to play a little bit more four, and Marc’s so smart defensively. As you know, he can switch out on to about anybody and figure out how to guard guys and take away the three-ball, and stuff like that. So it makes it good because of those guys’ skill-set and their IQ.”
About that increased skill-set. Nurse has seen Ibaka, who has been a defensive game changer his entire career, become more and more confident on the offensive end having put in as much work as he has on his shooting in particular.
“He really has gone to work,” Nurse said of Ibaka. “And that, you know, that has stayed the same. Maybe there was a break there (during the pandemic). But he’s been in the gym now for several months. At least two months, if not more. So the shooting aspect for him, I think he just feels, and rightly so, to himself that he’s a more confident shooter. Will the numbers stay as high and be as significant, or whatever? I don’t know about that. If I had to guess, I’d say probably not. I don’t think that’s really going to be the true indication of whether his level of play is as high as it’s been.”
Ibaka wants to contribute as much as he possibly can and if possible do so with Gasol on the floor beside him.
“Playing with Marc has really helped me a lot, especially since he’s been here with us,” Ibaka said. “Just watching him and the way he understands the game, his IQ, and specifically passing but from just watching him play and the way he passes really motivated me to work on my passing game. It really got me better.”
Ibaka knows full well the jumbo lineup won’t be the answer for every opponent. He expects Nurse will try it out against the super small Houston Rockets lineup in the Raptors first scrimmage tomorrow night but even he sounds a little dubious about its success against basically its polar opposite in the league.
But against more traditional lineups and even big lineups that teams like Philadelphia and Milwaukee can send out there, Ibaka and Gasol together may be just what the Raptors need and that would suit Ibaka just fine.
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