Toronto Raptors: This is the beginning of the end for Marc Gasol

It’s becoming more and more clear that Toronto Raptors big Marc Gasol is approaching the beginning of the end of his storied NBA career

Whenever Marc Gasol has a stat line as he did in Monday night’s game against the Charlotte Hornets, I always think back to the Memphis Grizzlies’ playoff series vs. the San Antonio Spurs in 2017.

Memphis was brutally outmatched against this 61-win behemoth, starting either James Ennis or Wayne Selden alongside Vince Carter (who was only 40 at the time) at the wing positions. And yet, the Grizzlies made it a respectable six-game series largely on the backs of Mike Conley and the aforementioned Marc Gasol.

Gasol averaged 19 points a game on 59.5 percent shooting from the field and made several big shots throughout the series.

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When the Toronto Raptors traded for Marc Gasol at the 2019 trade deadline, they knew they were getting a defensive stalwart whose passing and intelligence would hopefully marry the “Kawhi” and “non-Kawhi” offenses. What they could not have foreseen, however, was how much Gasol’s scoring game would deteriorate.

Marc Gasol currently has a 7.5 PER this season, which ranks in the bottom 15 out of 242 qualified players. No matter how impactful a player is on the defensive end or in the floor game, it is pretty much impossible to be a net positive with that horrendous level of statistical production.
Gasol’s usage rate has naturally dropped since he joined the Raptors, but the decrease in shot attempts has been staggering.

He has basically been reduced to a ball-mover and screen setter in Toronto’s offense. He mainly initiates dribble-handoffs from the elbow with Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet or drifts out to the 3-point line to watch Pascal Siakam scamper his way to the basket off the dribble. Even in this tertiary role, Marc Gasol is still a vital cog in the Raptors’ beautiful offensive system. He helps mesh the frenetic player movement with their collective intelligence to turn them into a polished machine.

So far this year they have been the sixth-best offense in the NBA despite injuries to Lowry and Serge Ibaka. The Raptors are 17.1 points per 100 possessions better with Gasol on the floor during his 1,005 total regular-season minutes with the team, per Cleaning the Glass.

Maybe this is how Gasol has always wanted it. ESPN’s Zach Lowe has always described him as “persnickety,” as if he seems driven be some kind of inner desire to share the ball and “play the right way.” Getting him to finally become a primary scoring option in Memphis was like trying to pull teeth. Nonetheless, this level of deference still has to be a cause for concern.

Marc Gasol is shooting 12 for 45 (26.7%) on 2-point field goals through 13 games. Many of these attempts have been pretty alarming in film. The silky touch that he used to have on his quick push shots in the lane has seemingly abandoned him. Gasol has never been the most explosive around the rim, but it appears as if he has lost the ability to create any kind of separation as either a post player or a finisher.

This has severely limited the Raptors’ offensive options at times. In the second game of the season against the Celtics, his misses around the basket sparked Boston’s transition offense in the fourth quarter, playing a major part in Toronto losing the lead down the stretch. The robust face-up game from the mid-post that he had in Memphis has vanished. The rim and paint shooting numbers are quite ghastly, but with such a small sample size they cannot be fully bought into just yet.

But the fact that it is such a small sample is a problem in and of itself. He passes up countless shots every game, oftentimes not even looking at the rim. Attempting 45 2-point shots total in 13 games is low even for the most anemic offensive big men that we have seen, guys like Reggie Evans and Michael Ruffin.

Part of this is undoubtedly situational. Given the extreme talent gap between Memphis and Toronto, he is not relied upon to put up points night-in and night-out anymore. Nick Nurse also uses a much more free-flowing and egalitarian offensive system. Gasol seems content taking a back seat to the younger guys who have much more energy and pep to their step. It took a countless number of games for Gasol and Conley to fine-tune their elegant pick-and-roll ballet. He is also coming off an incredibly successful summer, so having a bit of championship hangover is understandable.

Merely because of his size and preternatural feel for the game, Marc Gasol will likely be an effective NBA player until the day he retires. Watch here as he sets a screen for VanVleet and then seals his man so that VanVleet gets a clear path to the basket. He does so many little things like this on the margins that help his teams win. He and Kyle Lowry were almost born to play with each other in this way. He is one of the greatest passing big men ever, and he will almost always turn down decent looks to hunt even better shots. He also appears to be is usual stingy self on the defensive end.

The decline in Gasol’s scoring game should be continued to be monitored as the season progresses. He had a fair share of droughts during the 2019 playoffs as well but managed to cobble together a few clutch performances against the Bucks and Warriors. It is possible that he has moved into a different stage of his career after being one of the best centers in the league for nearly a decade.

If he can no longer be counted on to even be in double-figures scoring-wise, then it drastically alters Toronto’s ceiling and standing in the Eastern Conference. He provides much more than backup center Serge Ibaka in all other aspects that do not involve individual scoring. But there will be many other situations like the Celtics game from the first week of the season where an opposing run needs to be quelled with a bucket.

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In a league that is being overrun by new-age centers right before our very eyes, Marc Gasol is among the few big-men from the older generation that are still effective. At age 34, he is still an essential piece for the Toronto Raptors, but the days of him producing at a near all-star level may be over.

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