Jamal Shead is standing on the shoulders of Raptors giants

Jamal Shead sits on the floor of the Toronto Raptors’ practice facility at the OVO Center. He says hi and does a wall sit before collapsing to the ground in a tired heap. The fiddle of Alan Jackson blasts over the speakers, “Good Time,” a country song, which shows Bruce Brown must be DJing. Shead doesn’t seem to mind the music; he’s from Texas, after all. He knows I’m forcing him to watch film with me, which no player ever wants to do. Still, he’s kind and patient. He acts more like he’s 32 than 22. He’s sore — having played almost as many games already in the NBA (35) as he did in his final college season (38) — and lets me know. When we talk about dunking, he says “jumping doesn’t excite me anymore,” with an old-head smile, even though he has “more to show.” 

“I’m here [in the NBA] off not dunking,” he says. It’s a dance-with-the-girl-that-brought-you situation. 

He’s a veteran rookie, an old soul in a young body. As a college sophomore at Houston in 2021, after his teammate knocked over a trash can after leaving the floor of a difficult, last-second loss, Shead stayed behind to right the garbage can and redeposit its contents before leaving. He was a starter that year; it’s not like he was trying to earn minutes. This is just who Shead is. 

When I ask Shead what stat he pays the most attention to, he doesn’t hesitate when he says his own turnovers. His explanation is simple: If he doesn’t turn the ball over, then he wins his minutes. That’s what it’s all about. Win whenever you’re on the floor. 

On Dec. 16 against the Chicago Bulls, Shead has perhaps the crowning night of his young career. He had played 40 minutes against the Maine Celtics the day before, collecting 15 points, 12 assists, and six steals in a one-point win. No moment was bigger than when he stole the inbounds pass with 6.6 seconds remaining to seal the win for the Raptors 905. For better or worse, Shead is always going to try to make a play on defence. As he showed the next night against the Bulls. 

Head Coach Darko Rajakovic didn’t want to overplay Shead because of the 40 G-League minutes the night before, but the team was in the doldrums entering the fourth, down nine and not showing much fight at all. Enter Shead. 

“Just bring energy,” said Shead that night. “Today was kind of a weird night for us. Everybody kind of seemed a little fatigued, on both sides. It was just like a dull night. With [Rajakovic] putting me in, I knew what he wanted for me, and that was just to try to bring energy.”

He doesn’t leave the court until the buzzer sounds. 

“Energy or die trying,” he says after the game. 

Initially that night it looks like he might die trying. In transition, he bites on a pump-fake from Coby White and flies past him as White drives to the hoop. Then White gets him on an up-fake on the drive, and he jumps again, this time fouling. 

But Shead settles in. He hits a floater, and closes out to White perfectly, forcing the offence to reset. Meets White in transition to force a turnover, and dimes up Jonathan Mogbo for a dunk in transition the other way. Drills a triple. Blocks out. Bumps a cutter. His fingers are in practically every play, going both ways. At one point, he switches onto Nikola Vucevic and runs a full 360 degrees around him to steal the entry pass. 

Dierks Bentley takes over the speakers, “5-1-5-0,” another country song. It rollicks. Shead is not excited watching his highlight steal on Vucevic, doesn’t laugh or brag or celebrate. Given every opportunity, he praises his teammates. Why’d he get that steal? Because RJ Barrett was giving him such strong help behind the play. Because Gradey Dick made the passer hesitate, giving Shead time to get around to the other side. Mostly, he says, he’s “just glad [Vucevic] didn’t get the ball.”  

He watches a clip of himself blocking a Jabari Smith jr. 3-pointer. He chases the ball, closes out to another player, peels to the corner to annihilate Smith. The height differential between the two players is 11 inches. 

“Are you more athletic than people think you are?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m just shy at showing it… Jumping and dunking and stuff doesn’t excite me that much anymore. It just takes a toll. Your legs start to feel a little gassed after you get up that high.”

Old soul.

Jamal Shead is wired up against the Milwaukee Bucks on Jan. 6. “Hi mom,” he yells, waving to the camera during introductions. “Hi mom.” 

The team, finally healthy, has absolutely no energy in a terrible loss against those Bucks. But Shead wins his 18 minutes. He has one turnover. 

Shead has a collection of ‘point-block’ steals to his name, tipping away the first pass of an opposing possession, not by jumping a passing lane, but with lightning reflexes while actually guarding the ball. That’s athleticism, maybe not jumping high and throwing down hard. But that’s the athleticism that got him to the NBA. Very few players are able to disrupt possessions at the point of attack like that. Shead can. 

In fact, there’s one number that points to Shead’s ability to bring energy. That encapsulates the point blocks and steals in the post and ability to take charges. (He’s at five charges drawn so far, which is tied for 19th in the league.) But that one number? It’s his opposing turnover on/off percentage. Opposing possessions end in turnovers 3.6 percent more frequently when Shead is on the floor versus when he’s sitting, which leads the Raptors. It’s also 97th percentile leaguewide. Bring energy or die trying. Usually that takes the form of forcing turnovers. But it can manifest in other ways. 

To finish the Chicago game on Dec. 16, Shead grabs an offensive rebound with a few seconds remaining for a putback layup, then hits a pull-up triple off glass to beat the buzzer and cut the deficit to one. (And to ruin my piece that night about how the Raptors didn’t make a single pull-up triple that night.) Toronto loses, but Shead finishes the quarter — and game — with 10 points, six assists, four rebounds, and a steal. He has one turnover, which surely drives him crazy, but he wins his minutes by 10 points.

“I think Jamal’s actually pretty underrated in the pick and roll,” says Jakob Poeltl after Toronto’s game against the Orlando Magic on Jan. 3. Shead and Poeltl scored on multiple empty-side pick and rolls during a stint together. 

“He finds a way, he’s really crafty, he finds a way to get himself in the paint. So far, I’ve seen it a couple times, they’re not really respecting his shoulder bump into a floater game yet.”

I play a highlight for Shead that shows him darting from the weak corner to steal the ball from the roller before the much bigger offensive player turns and faces the rim. It was a read — Shead was not supposed to be the tagger, not supposed to be the one helping at the rim. I start my preamble: “I don’t know how much Raptors you watched before you got here –”

“Kyle,” he interrupts. 

He knows whose defence his resembles. There’s a legacy here in Toronto. Impossible shoes to fill, and then an impossibly long distance to march, before he arrives at that destination. Shead may not know the extent of it — he actually tripped up and thought Fred VanVleet was a Houston Rocket for more seasons, overlapping for a greater period with his own time next door as a Houston Cougar. But Shead is following in literally regular-sized but metaphorically enormous footsteps as a small, under-drafted, overlooked Toronto Raptors’ point guard. None of Toronto’s long lineage of undersized, overlooked point guards had a history before the city before playing with its name on the front of their jerseys.

Shead is probably not going to be a star, not like many of those spiritual predecessors. But he can easily become a solid, long-time NBA player. A fan favourite. With his incredible ability to catalyze energy, his improved shooting, his defensive turnover creation — he’s already close. One key is to keep hitting his triples; after a slow start to the season, he’s up to 42.6 percent since Nov. 24. Continuing to shoot them is one of his major goals for the remainder of the season. Rajakovic keeps insisting he let them fly.

But what he needs most is to stop fouling. To some small extent, fouling on the defensive end at least means you’re trying to make stuff happen. As with turnovers on offence. Shead switches onto wings, onto bigs. He helps at the rim. He tries to draw charges, to force steals. That all results in fouls when you’re fighting and pulling and grabbing. There’s a razor-thin margin. Bring energy, make plays, but do it without fouling. 

“There’s a difference between a dumb foul and a foul when you’re just learning,” he says. “When you’re learning and you learn how to guard certain actions, ball screens, maneuver, when you start to learn and get a feel for that, you won’t foul anymore.” 

A low point of his young career comes on Jan. 8. Shead commits two turnovers in his first shift as the dedicated backup, throwing away the ball from under the rim, then fumbling it near half court. He doesn’t find his way into the game and loses his 16 minutes by 21 points. No one can conjure energy out of thin air on command, not every time. 

But then, a few days later, another high point comes on Jan. 11. Shead is hitting the paint on offence with regularity, pitching the ball to shooters, connecting his teammates with the ball like an old-world village matchmaker. Defending in the wide pastures of the open court, he strips Cade Cunningham as the last line of defence. As in the Chicago game, Toronto’s energy levels were dead in the water before Shead and fellow Energizer Bunny Chris Boucher entered the game. Shead keeps it up in the second half, too, hitting a triple, jetting into the lane for an and-1 after a violent jab step the other direction. He finishes with zero turnovers. Wins his minutes by 17 points. (The Raptors, of course, lose.)

On nights like that it’s easy to see the future. You don’t need to squint. So far in his rookie season, Shead is averaging more assists per 36 minutes than Kyle Lowry did as a rookie. In fact, more than Lowry was able to match for many years — until the latter became a Raptor in his ninth season. Fred VanVleet didn’t match Shead’s assists per 36 until his ninth season, too.

There’s a lot of learning inherent to being a rookie in the NBA. Shead has to learn how to stop fouling, how to guard with his feet, how to help in the gaps and at the rim and on the ball in the enormous, fast-paced confines of the NBA. But he also has to learn playbooks, for the Raptors and the 905, has to learn money management now that he’s getting an NBA contract, has to learn how to live in a new city, in a new country, how to be a professional, how to talk to the media. There’s a lot. 

It’s no wonder Shead is tired. He’s part of the future, says Rajakovic. Exhaustion now will lead to success later. Shead has already played about as much basketball this season as he did in a full season of college hoops, especially considering his 905 minutes. And NBA basketball is harder than college basketball. This is the grind. And if he learns it all, rides the wave, there’s a legacy waiting for him in this city. He just has to claim it.

“I wouldn’t say I’m in the swing of things,” he says, “but I’m getting there. I’m getting there.”

The country music is done now, practice well and truly over. You can’t hear the sound of balls bouncing. Shead has put up with my questions, watched my clips. We stand, and he’s slouched, like he already wishes he could sit again. Fortunately, he’s done for now and gets to rest. Until he has to do it all again the next day. 

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