Jakob Poeltl anchored the rebuilding Raptors
The following is part of Raptors Republic’s series of pieces reviewing the season for the Toronto Raptors. You can find all the pieces in the series here.
This past season, the Toronto Raptors had rookies on the floor a ton. For the second-greatest number of minutes both league wide and in team history, in fact. Some of their most established players missed substantial time due to injury and others experimented with unproven aspects of their game (with varying success). For a developing team with so much instability it would have been easy to drift off course, were it not for Jakob Poeltl anchoring them in place.
Not only did Poeltl’s steady hand guide the Raptors’ growth, but he also had a career year in the process. He arguably had the best 2024-25 on the team relative to expectations, albeit during a season that was acknowledged to be a rebuilding one from the start. Simply put he was a winning player on a losing team. One wise prognosticator at Raptors Republic predicted Poeltl’s rise and warned against trading the Austrian Hammer.
Poeltl has been many things for Toronto since they re-acquired him at the 2023 trade deadline. He was the team’s first true starting-caliber centre in over two years. Last season he was noodles, hearty and filling. He’s been an air-traffic controller out of delay action, an entomber on screens and Calvin “Megatron” Johnson when catching on the roll. He also turned into “Shaqob” Poeltl for a three-game stretch in November, averaging 30 points and 15 rebounds on 71.9 percent shooting, including a 35-point, 12-rebound, 16-of-19 performance in an overtime loss against the Boston Celtics that prompted Joe Mazzulla to call him “one of the best guys in the league.” It was the first time Poeltl had scored over 20 points for three consecutive games in his career.
Mazzulla’s comment might be pushing it, but even outside of that spectacular run, Jakob has been incredibly dependable. Rock solid, immoveable, both literally on screens and figuratively as a ballast for the club. Poeltl’s anchoring kept the Raptors from floating into Wizards or Jazz territory by providing a context that better fostered the development of the young core. And he excelled while doing it, becoming the fulcrum of the Raptors’ most popular offence and the subject of the squad’s only passable playtype.
The seven-footer’s stat line on the season? Career-high averages of 14.5 points and 9.6 rebounds to go along with 2.8 assists, 1.2 blocks and 1.2 steals. We’ll get into some specific numbers and analysis on his effectiveness as a roller, screener, and rim protector below.
Fred VanVleet once dubbed Poeltl “the big ugly,” which seems pretty mean, but based on the context seemed to be said with affection. Yet, there was nothing ugly about Poeltl’s game this season. His footwork and screen craft? Impeccable. His touch on what has become a signature push-shot? Deft. His decision making in delay? Calm, calculated.
Just look at these reads that Poeltl made from the perimeter as off ball screens and cutters orbited around him.
Delay action is a five-out set where the centre handles the ball around the three-point line, while teammates run quick off-ball actions with the opposing big ideally drawn out of the paint. This type of play with Poeltl at helm, toggling through the options and making the decisions was one of the defining features of the Raptors’ offence this season. I’m not going to go too in deep on this, as Louis Zatzman wrote the definitive Poeltl delay-action piece earlier this season.
While both Poeltl’s touches and the Raptors’ use of delay waned slightly as the season progressed, it was still a staple. Poeltl matched his career high in touches set during the 2021-22 season with the San Antonio Spurs, and both his time and dribbles per touch were microscopic. He took 0.44 dribbles each time he had the ball, the least on the team and least league wide among players averaging more than 50 touches. This is due to him either quickly deciphering what to do with the motion swirling around him or simply throwing the ball in the hoop when he was within push-shot range. Darko Rajaković’s offence is predicated on this kind of motion and quick decision making, making Poeltl the perfect man for the job. Plus, this concept came in handy when it came time to destroy pressure defence.
The passes Poeltl makes – while often precise – aren’t generally of a high degree of difficulty. But he is adept at making sound decisions when dealing with a variety of options. And he thinks he can still get better.
“I think that’s (delay) still a part of it where I would like to see some improvement, because I think I can make good reads, but the part where I want to make the next step is making that secondary read,” said Poeltl in his season end exit interview. “Like if the first option seems open, but then it might not be because there’s a rotation – taking advantage of that.”
Almost from a point guard point of view where you have to be aware of your first, second and then third option and which part of it the defence is taking away and having some more poise in those situations.”
In the film above, there are a couple examples of Poeltl putting this into practice, passing on the first option for a better one. Overall, he was second on the team to Chris Boucher in offensive on/off differential at +3.2, and delay was his bread and butter, making his desire to improve further admirable.
Another reason the Raptors’ offence was so much better with Poeltl on the floor was his effectiveness as both a screener and a roll man. He was among the 14 highest volume roll men in the league, and among that group his 1.2 points per chance in plays he finished ranked fifth, sandwiched right in between Domantas Sabonis and Victor Wembanyama.
There are a lot of factors that make Poeltl such a strong roller. First his thunderous ball screens clear space setting the play in motion. Then he provides a huge target for passers (doing Immanuel Quickley a couple of favours). Then there’s his, adroit, immensely efficient finishing ability. He does the work to earn his roll-man buckets, and makes it look easy to boot. The push-shot reached new heights this season – he took them more frequently and from a father range than ever before – punishing defences for sagging off too far.
When he wasn’t catching in the short roll and playing Pop-A-Shot from 10 or more feet, Poeltl was a capable scorer in close. He shot 74 percent at the rim, 80th percentile among big men. And when he wasn’t wide-open, he was great at lifting his defender with an up fake to free himself up. The big guy has guile. Poeltl may be the only big to utilize the Pinoy Step, or at least a seven-footers version of it.
It won’t show up in his points per chance stats, as that only includes plays he finished with a shot, turnover or free throws, but Poeltl is also skilled at making the extra pass out of the roll. So, what already graded out as an elite playtype may have in fact been even more deadly.
When it comes to just setting screens, be that in the pick n’ roll or elsewhere, the Raptors don’t have anyone who compares. Poeltl’s mix of size and savvy crunches defenders, clearing massive swaths of space for his teammates. He finished sixth in the league in screen assists at 3.9 per game. One exceptionally fun moment came when he miraculously hammered the twin towers of Cleveland’s frontcourt with one screen.
The duality of Poeltl is that while crushing dudes on screens swallowing up boards, he also managed to better the finer aspects of his game. He improved his free throw percentage to 67.4, beating his career-high by a mile. This development makes him more tenable in closing lineups if the Raptors play in more close games next season.
To start this season, Poeltl struggled to adapt to the Raptors new ball-pressure centric, “point-of-attack defender is the most important guy,” scheme. Toronto initially allowed more shots at the rim and a higher percentage on those shots with Poeltl on the floor than without. This was in large part due to coverages, as with Poeltl they played a lot of lock and trail plus drop on ball screens. The Raptors allowed a ton of drives, particularly on second-side actions and closeouts, and put Poeltl in plenty of uncomfortable, two-on-one situations.
When Jonathan Mogbo played minutes at the five early on, they played more switch which effectively dissuaded some of these drives, part of the reason for Poeltl’s wonky on/offs.
This course corrected as the season went on and he both adjusted to the new scheme and played a little lower in it. Poeltl did a better job walling off the paint, mostly through strategic movement and positioning. He even gathered over a steal a game for the first time in his career and spoiled plenty of forays downhill with his quick hands.
Opponents still shot more often at the rim with Poeltl on the floor than off, but less so than at the start of the schedule. By the end of the season opponents shot the same percentage at the rim whether he was on or off. And other players shot 5.4 percent lower than expected within six feet when Poeltl specifically was defending them.
This shook out to a –3.0 defensive on/off, third on the team this season after Davion Mitchell and Scottie Barnes. Poeltl’s all-around +6.2 on/off differential was a Raptors best.
But far more important than his winning play was the structure he provided on both ends for the team’s youth. His delay reads providing the context of a modern offence. His daunting screens freeing up the rookie guards to get their game off. His presence behind the stellar on ball work of Mogbo and Walter tying together what ended up being an average defence. Had Poeltl been traded, this promising young group wouldn’t have learned what it means to play functional NBA basketball.
And even more, Poeltl saw the big picture. He knew this team was nowhere close to contending for a championship and that development was at the forefront, he said as much on media day. The patience and maturity he demonstrated as an established player, always staying measured and keeping things in perspective, is truly commendable.
Poeltl’s lone experience as the leading centre on a playoff team came six years ago, when he took over the starting job on the No. 7 seed Spurs in the final two months of the season. He does not have a proven track record in that role. Yet next season, when the Raptors are ready to be good again, Poeltl inspires confidence at the five. He does everything you could ask for from a centre, and he does it in ways that are uniquely suited to Rajakovic’s systems. To those who say he can’t shoot, the Raptors once ran a play to get him a three right off the tip.
Poeltl was so tremendously important to providing an environment fertile for growth, and he took full advantage of that context by having a career season. He acted as the anchor for these Raptors, keeping them from floating away. Yet next season the team’s anchor must come up, as they depart shore and set sail into uncharted waters as a real basketball team. When that time comes, Poeltl will be ready.
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