Mogbo’s impact invisible, but real, in weirdo loss to Chicago

The Chicago Bulls were on fire. Josh Giddey had seven early assists, as he hit the paint with ease and found orbiting shooters, who drained everything. The Toronto Raptors’ defence was not connected, with little help and less on-ball rigidity. 

That all changed when Jonathan Mogbo entered the game. He switched onto Giddey and immediately herded the big guard into traffic. Giddey tried to push his way through the dig, and Mogbo snatched the ball away. (It was ruled a block, though it was really a steal.) Later, the Bulls committed a shot clock violation as Mogbo’s switching helped flatten everything that the Bulls attempted. (It helped that Scottie Barnes was also in the game, and erasing the shot of his man driving to drive into his body.) Mogbo switched onto Kevin Huerter, also on fire in the first quarter drilling a pair of triples, and forced a wiiiide miss on a tough, contested stepback 3. 

Outside of the one block (again: really a steal), Mogbo didn’t put any numbers in the box score during that shift. That remained a theme through the entire game.

But he put steel into Toronto’s spine. 

Offensively, Mogbo’s game against the Bulls was much more muted. It wasn’t invisibly impactful as much as simply invisible. He stood in the corner. A lot. This is part of Toronto’s push to convert Mogbo into a wing. There is a method to this madness. 

Against the Bulls, Mogbo spent almost all his time on the floor alongside either Orlando Robinson or Jakob Poeltl. He has been playing power forward, or sometimes even small forward, depending on whether it’s him or Scottie Barnes.

It’s hard to argue that Mogbo is ready to offer value on offence as a center. His screening is immature, without solid contact, sharp angles, good flips, great reads, or any of those high-level adds. His finishing is far from what it was in college. He doesn’t seek out contact, power through contests, or display a huge amount of touch. In college, he dunked everything. He’s a quick jumper, very long and very strong, and that usually adds up to lots of dunks. Not so far in the NBA. He tried to fade away on a dunk attempt on Feb. 26 against the Indiana Pacers. On the season, he’s shooting 61 percent at the rim (excluding garbage time), which is in the 20th percentile for bigs. As a result, his scoring efficiency is ghastly.

There is plenty of juice to his offensive game, of course. He has an impressive handle in space (when not facing digs or help), and in that Feb. 26 game he turned Myles Turner inside out on a drive with a few crossovers. He has pop to his drives. He’s so strong that contact can send defenders flying. (Provided he’s hitting smaller defenders — another reason it’s helpful that he’s not playing center on offence.) He can unveil step-throughs and euro-steps with a live dribble. He has wiggle. But he’s not fluid yet at turning his forward momentum with the ball in his hands into actual shot attempts. A lot of those packages are ending in running, off-hand floaters at the moment. He’s currently shooting 21 percent from the short midrange. Million dollar moves, 10 cent finishes. Often times he turns a juicy drive into a pivot one way, a pivot another way, and then a kick-out pass to reset the play. But the outline is there for him to be self-creating layups. 

Still, until he can offer those skills while also finishing efficiently at the rim and setting real, productive screens, it’s hard to justify playing him at center. 

According to Cleaning the Glass, the Raptors are scoring 112.4 points per 100 possessions with Mogbo playing power forward. That’s fine. Slightly below average. But it jumps off a cliff to 101.9 points per 100 possessions when Mogbo is at center. There’s no advantages to be gleaned there. Just stiff, predictable offensive possessions with few open cuts, few helpful actions, and poor shot attempts. The defence, too, is better with Mogbo at power forward. 

Against the Pacers, he swooped into the paint as a tagger to break up Indiana’s pick and roll and steal the pass to the big. There’s a benefit to playing him off-ball as a wing. Great defenders impact players no matter where they are on the court. Sure, Mogbo’s switching screens is hugely helpful in declawing opposing offensive sets. But he’s also helpful in other areas, forcing turnovers or protecting the rim as the back-line sweeper, digging from above the break. 

Since re-entering the lineup on Feb. 4, Mogbo has enjoyed the fifth-best on-court defensive rating on the team. That’s meaningful for a rookie. 

He hopped back on the court late midway through the third quarter against Chicago. The Bulls had been shredding Toronto’s defence early in the third. On the first possession with Mogbo in the game, the Bulls committed a shot-clock violation. He had drifted to the paint and deterred a shot after a pass to a would-have-been-open cutter under the rim. Later, he closed out to a shooter, who missed wide right by approximately four feet. Outside of a putback layup (and that has seriously been a problem, with opponents hoovering offensive rebounds when Mogbo plays and switches out to the perimeter, hence him playing alongside other Raptors bigs), the Bulls didn’t score for two full minutes after Mogbo entered the game. 

And offensively, Mogbo stood in the corner. He cut occasionally, off of pindowns, or out of the corner. He didn’t touch the ball until four minutes after hitting the floor, cutting from the corner to clear space for Scottie Barnes, then looping back to the rim to receive a through-the-lane pass from fellow rookie Ja’Kobe Walter. Mogbo missed the layup, shying away from contact. 

Again, this is part of the process. His 3-point accuracy has been down since he rejoined the rotation in early February, and it’s now down to 31.8 percent on the season. He only attempts 1.0 per game, and only when he’s wide open. He missed the two he took against Chicago. The rebuilt jumper is not looking like a weapon, not yet. Another reason to make him a cutter and play finisher from the wing spot. 

Early in the fourth, when he would have left the game with a natural rotation pattern, he had played 19 minutes and won them by 12 minutes. His other numbers? One rebound and one block. Zero points, zero assists, zero everything else. The thing is — Darko Rajakovic kept him in the game for the entire fourth, and then overtime, including playing within a truly miserable bench group that gave up a huge run to Chicago, plummeting his plus-minus. He added a few more rebounds, a steal, an assist. And it was true praise of his defensive effort that Rajakovic kept Mogbo in the game. (Or a minutes restriction for Jakob Poeltl, one or the other.)

There are a variety of skills that Mogbo has to improve. But there is a framework to success. And in the meantime, he does so much defensively that the Raptors want him on the court. Which is good because it gives him a chance to sharpen those abilities that need sharpening.

The thing is, he was so good on the defensive end against Chicago that Toronto almost messed around and won the game. Fortunately (or, at least, it seemed that way based on some rotation choices, as well as the decision from Immanuel Quickley to foul a 3-point shot up four with four seconds left in regulation), the Raptors managed to lose. But Mogbo’s invisible impact was almost too meaningful. Instead, the Raptors get to keep losing, keep the pick as high as possible, yet watch the youngsters like Mogbo develop all the while. They get to have their cake and eat it too.

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