TORONTO — This is not the way anyone would have guessed Patrick Patterson’s time in Toronto would come to its end. Long a fundamental, vital piece of several Raptors rotations, Patterson followed up an inconsistent, injury-riddled regular season with 10 playoff games in which his contributions barely registered. He averaged only 18.5 minutes, 3.4 points, two rebounds and two assists over those 10 games. He shot well below his career averages from the floor. In the final two contests, he attempted only two field goals, missing both.
For one reason or another, Patterson faded significantly to the background of the Raptors’ playoff efforts this year, and now he enters free agency trying to sell teams on his ability to be the guy he used to be, and not the one he was over the last several months.
Not long ago, Patterson was heralded as one of the more perpetually underrated players in the NBA — a plus/minus darling who did the dirty work on the court that made the players around him better. And that’s how he started 2016-17, too. But then began persistent left knee issues that forced him to miss a number of games in the heart of the season. And then came the trade deadline acquisitions of Serge Ibaka and P.J. Tucker, two players who provided similar defensive value. And then Patterson began to fade.
His minutes declined. He shot less, despite Raptors coaches urging him to shoot more, especially from three-point range. And a player who was once potentially looking at a four- or five-year deal worth as much as $16-18 million per season in free agency could now be looking at far less.
“I don’t know if he ever really got 100 per cent healthy after the injury,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey, asked to identify what held Patterson back over the latter half of the season. “He never was the same after that. His rhythm was off a little bit. If you miss as much time as he did — it affected him, I thought. Especially his three-point shooting production and effectiveness.
“But he tried to give it to us in other areas. Whether it was defence, moving the basketball, screens. He was one of our best screeners. So, I’m sure it’s a lot of factors that caused [Patterson’s decline in productivity.] But I couldn’t put my finger on it.”
Casey said he wanted Patterson to shoot the ball more than he did over the second half, and that he wasn’t sure why the 6-9 forward passed up as many looks as he did. The numbers play it out. Patterson averaged 4.5 three-point attempts from the start of the season through the beginning of January when his knee issues first forced him to miss games. From that point through the end of the season he averaged only 3.3, although it’s worth noting his playing time decreased significantly as well, dropping from 28.4 minutes per game during that pre-injury stretch to 21.1 per night over the back half of the season.
Patterson still averaged more attempts from long range this year (3.9) than he has in any season of his career. But Casey was clear the Raptors wanted that number to be much higher.
“For whatever reason, toward the end of the year, he didn’t take the opportunities — the threes that he normally did,” Casey said. “We wanted him to. He has to do that for us to continue to be successful.”
Patterson didn’t attend the Raptors end of season media availability Monday, and thus wasn’t available to offer his own insight into his struggles. An obvious assumption is that the knee issues caused the most hindrance to Patterson’s production, although when he was asked how healthy he was following the Raptors’ sweep at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers Sunday night, he simply said, “I’m fine.”
Patterson’s disappearance from some of the Raptors rotations was odd, especially considering that since he arrived in Toronto midway through the 2013-14 season, he’s been a frequent feature of some of the team’s most efficient lineups. And, when healthy, he was a staple of Casey’s closing unit, a rotation of strong floor spacers and defensive stoppers the coach turned to in the dying minutes of tight games.
“He was a big glue-piece to our team,” Casey said. “He was a very important part of what we did. His toughness, his understanding of what we were trying to accomplish on the floor, the plays. He knew the system backwards and forwards. His leadership — the way he played — was very important to us.
“Just his athleticism, his toughness, his understanding of his role and everybody else’s role — he was a big-time team guy for us.”
At his best, Patterson’s primary utility came on the defensive end, where his through-the-roof work rate and good quickness for a man of his size allowed him to guard multiple positions. That made defensive switches much less of a concern for the Raptors when he was on the court, and limited the mismatches the opposition could create.
Offensively, some of Patterson’s best contributions came in his screen-setting, floor spacing, and expeditious ball movement, three things that don’t turn up on stat sheets but can make a player a favourite of his coaching staff. He regularly shot three or four times per game from three-point range, and while he didn’t hit often enough — he shot 37 per cent from deep this season — to draw exceptional defensive attention, the fact that he did take his open shots forced defenders to stay somewhat near him, which in turn opened up the paint.
Even though his season declined significantly over its latter half, the Raptors were still a +10.8 team per 100 possessions this year with Patterson on the court, and a +4.1 team with him off of it. That isn’t everything, but it does indicate Toronto operated much more effectively with Patterson on the floor.
Patterson’s knee issues likely hampered his mobility somewhat this season, and could have affected his shooting ability on the offensive end. But the fact remains that four of the Raptors’ five best lineups by net rating this year featured Patterson. And the perhaps not-used-often-enough rotation featuring Patterson along with Raptors starters Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, DeMarre Carroll and Jonas Valanciunas was the team’s most effective, accumulating a +90 over the 23 games it was featured in this year.
For the first half of the season, many fans were lobbying for Patterson to be consistently starting games with that unit, especially when the Raptors were often starting rookie Pascal Siakam at power forward. But Casey clearly preferred using Patterson off the bench to provide stability for the team’s second unit, a role that doesn’t come with a pre-game introduction but does factor very importantly into a team’s success. Casey often referred to Patterson as his “sixth starter” and it was rare to see a lineup late in a close game that he didn’t factor into.
But as the season wore on, that slowly changed. As with all things, there are probably a lot of different reasons why. Now, Patterson gets to find out how those changes affect his fortunes in free agency. And whether a Raptors team that slowly moved away from him as the season went on will want him back for another one or not.