Jamal Shead attacks the defensive end like Kyle Lowry

It is 2012. Kyle Lowry is unhappy in Houston, and during the offseason the team eventually finds him a new home in distant Toronto. Almost overnight, the Raptors transform from the laughingstock of the league to one of the best teams, year in and year out. Eventually, they win a championship.

It is 2016. Fred VanVleet stands in front of friends and family at his personal draft party and tells them that, by his own choice, he is not going to be selected in the NBA draft. He lands in Toronto.

It is 2019. Another rookie, Terence Davis, stands in front of a party of his friends and family, and tells them that, by his own choice, he is not going to be selected in the NBA draft. He lands in Toronto. It is 2020. The Raptors select Malachi Flynn, coming off of Mountain West Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year. He was one of the 10 best players in all of college.

It is 2024. Some of the above players were letdowns, and some were extraordinary, on Mount Rushmore of the franchise. All are gone. Instead, standing in Toronto, is Jamal Shead. For more than a decade, the Raptors have had a penchant for small, (mostly) strong, defensive-minded guards. Shead is standing on the shoulders of (diminutive) giants.

He will certainly fall somewhere within the spectrum of the four players who preceded him. The question, of course, is where.

If early returns are to be believed — and believe me, they were, at times, unbelievable — then he may exceed his predecessors. All? No, of course not. You know what? All. Why not. He was incredible. No, not all, that’s crazy. But so, too, was his performance in Toronto’s first preseason game. So let’s get a little crazy.

Superstar Es Baraheni already dove into the big picture of Shead’s defensive performance. I want to get into the nitty-gritty. How was he so successful? How are any little guards successful on the defensive end?

On his very first possession on the floor, Shead picked up Bub Carrington at the half-court line. (He consistently picked up early throughout the game when his man dribbled up the floor, eating clock, and forcing actions away from their intended destinations.) But on this possession, he bumped Carrington multiple times, forced a change of direction, and forced the ball into a big. When Carrington cut, Shead got ahead of him and stole the entry pass. The next time he was involved in half-court defence, he went over a screen and got out of position, so he switched onto the big. But he scrambled back into the play so quickly that he picked off the pass to the roller. His ability to cover ground on defence, combined with his sticky hands, means he will steal a lot of passes. He presses in transition after those deflections.

He had the 16th-best steal rate in college last year, higher than VanVleet, Davis, or Flynn in any of their college seasons. Only Lowry’s steal rate in college approached Shead’s, and both have similar steal profiles — they get a lot of deflections in the air, created by their scampering feet rather than their hands. Both are small and enormously strong.

Another Lowry quality: Shead defends like a jedi, outthinking the ball. At one point Kyle Kuzma — an established NBA veteran, a champion! — raced towards Shead in the open floor. Shead took a wide step out of the paint and set himself to take a charge. But he didn’t like his positioning, and immediately vacated, just before Kuzma crashed into him. Kuzma was thrown akimbo, flailing, defeated by a much younger man’s basketball version of ‘I’m not touching you!’ He smoked the very challenging, yet uncontested, layup.

That’s pure Lowry. So, too, is Shead’s defence in transition. He gambles when it matters, when he can force negative dribbles and blow up an advantage. He can turn an fast break for opponents into a contested drive into two teammates. Shead’s attack of the ball meant a floaty pass, which took enough time that the possession was completely inverted.

Another Lowry trait: Shead’s strength. He can steer drives without fouling, with one of his rye loaf hands on the ballhandler’s hips. When an offensive player backpedals in his pivot, Shead eats the space so there’s nowhere to pivot back to. Gobble, gobble: travel, or force an off-balance prayer, or just reset with a dead shot clock.

The ball has momentum on offence, with passing begetting passing. But so too does point-of-attack energy on defence. When Shead blows up a cut, it forces the action elsewhere and eats clock, but it also makes it more likely the ball will return to him later.

When he’s defending the pick and roll, he’s an active listener. Here, you can see him acknowledge Jakob Poeltl’s defensive call and jet up to the ball to both steer the direction of the pick (deny middle!) and make himself unscreenable by gluing to Jordan Poole’s hip. Then he tears through the screen, beating Poole to the spot, and rounding his drive away from the rim. Poole has to settle for a pull-up 30-footer, which he bricks, not because of Shead’s challenge, but because of his early work.

And for as strong as Shead’s on-ball defence is, his off-ball defence is almost as impactful. The reaction time and speed and strength means he both stomps and floats, the fastest little dinosaur you ever saw. He digs with his feet, not his hands, getting to his spots so that players can’t go through him or draw cheapo fouls.

He rotates early and contests shots despite his size. And he contests everything, not just shots. He contests cuts, getting in front of his man so they have to cut through his body. He trusts if they go backdoor, he’ll be faster to the spot. He contests screens, for heaven’s sake, getting in front of his man so they have to go through him to even get to the ball to set a screen. He’s just relentless. Nothing easy, Zaza Pachulia-style. Nothing easy.

That movement and intentional scampering can catch guys by surprise. It will give him an extra beat on digs, let him rotate earlier, because he knows he can recover faster. It will result in steals. But it will also force offensive fouls because he’s jetting around screeners before they’re set. Movement is good, and he’s always moving.

And of course, he closes out possessions. He doesn’t grab a ton of rebounds on either end (neither, by the way, did Lowry in college), but he still helps there with blocking out. Even when he’s in the corner, he still picks up his man and hits him. That’s a position in which most defenders just let their guys crash. Not Shead.

Will that hyperactivity continue? Was he just amped up for a first preseason game? Impossible to know. But the Raptors are building a defence based on point-of-attack aggression, and Shead fits perfectly. So perfectly that he might just mess around and earn a rotation spot with the big club sooner rather than later. He was that good defensively.

The offence is of course a work in progress. He played terrifically on that end against Washington, but the Wizards treated defence as optional in that preseason game, and they were going over screens Shead ran. He found open pick-and-pop passes to Kelly Olynyk for 3 that he just won’t find in regular season games. (He does have a fun little habit of celebrating his teammates’ 3-pointers off his passes as they shoot, holding out three fingers with the ball in the air.) But his handle is tight, and he showed off straight-line drives until defenders stopped him, or, as happened against the Wizards, just let him get to the rim. That combined with solid touch on his push shots off glass means he has offensive value beyond his passing. That’s something. When he was off the ball, he cut, even drawing free throws in the first half off a late-clock cut. That is a must for players who aren’t spacing the floor and whose defenders sag into the lane. It’s almost crass to say for a Raptor, but we have to say it: If the shooting comes along, whoo boy, we’re cooking with a flamethrower. But even now, with him as a relative non-shooter for a guard, there’s stuff there that can keep him afloat, even if it’s a question mark. But the defence is no question.

Lowry, of course, was one of the best offensive basketball minds in the league for almost a decade. The comparison breaks down there. But at least on defence, Shead moved like Lowry, stole the ball like him, used his strength in a similar way, and even showed off comparable jedi mind tricks. It was a good start. And for a season in which Toronto’s players are already dropping with injury, watching Shead roam the defensive side of the court like a ghost of the GROAT will keep the games entertaining no matter who else is playing alongside him. Shead’s performance so far puts him firmly in the battle for back-up point guard, which your favourite writer’s favourite writer Samson Folk will cover for Raptors Republic soon.

It is 2024. The Raptors again employ an undersized, hard-nosed point guard who earns his reputation on the defensive end. It is 2026. Jamal Shead is your favourite basketball player.

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