Lucas Nogueira has finally arrived for the Toronto Raptors

With LeBron James’ big ol’ shadow looming all over everything, it can be surprisingly easy to get pessimistic about Masai Ujiri’s Toronto Raptors. Are they just built to scoop up the empty-calories of regular-season wins? Even if DeMar DeRozan stays this prolific with the scoring, are all those 2-pointers going to mean anything against the big-boy 3-point arsenals Toronto will run into in the playoffs?

Maybe. Maybe — even though Ujiri manages to come out significantly ahead in just about every trade he makes — the Raptors will be remembered, at least south of the border, only for being a playoff foil. What I like about the Raptors, though, is that unlike just about any other team who has managed to make it to a Conference Finals, Ujiri is effectively rebuilding this team at the same time he’s pushing it forward.

The Raptors roster is totally filled out — about halfway with the veterans who are generating the team’s victories, for now, and about halfway with 24-and-under prospects who are given expansive, unhurried timelines to develop. Even though Ujiri signed just a single new free agent this offseason in Jared Sullinger, Toronto entered the preseason with 14 of their 15 roster spots totally locked in. (Fred VanVleet would eventually join the team after a strong October.)

For years now, Lucas “Bebe” Nogueira has been one of those long-term development projects. It’s totally fine if you haven’t thought of Nogueira since he and his totally bodacious Afro rocked the 2013 NBA Draft. The numbers have been sparse — almost comically so. The 2014-15 season, after he was traded to Toronto from the Atlanta Hawks and came to the NBA after being stashed in Spain for 2013-14: six games, 23 total minutes. Last season: 29 games, 225 total minutes.

Toronto wasn’t having him spend all kinds of time working on things in the D-League, either, with just 15 total NBADL appearances across those two years, less than half of them starts. It’s not like there’s a whole lot of film of Nogueira from Spain, either, since he played 300 total minutes in 2013-14, 500 in 2012-13, and just 30 as a teenager in 2011-12.

It’s been basically impossible to know, from outside the Raptors organization, if Nogueira’s development has been progressing in any particular direction at all. Sure, the team picked up his 2017-18 option — the last year of Nogueira’s rookie contract — in October. But what does that mean, really?

The first five games of this season looked like more of the same: Lottery pick Jakob Poeltl — pilfered in the legendary Andrea Bargnani trade with the New York Knicks — backed up Jonas Valanciunas at center, while Nogueira sat. But wait! Nogueira just had a sprained ankle. Now that both Nogueira and Valanciunas have been healthy for the last three games, it’s Poeltl who has been the healthy scratch while Nogueira has racked up 20+ minutes per game.

It’s only about 100 minutes old, Nogueira’s 2016-17 season. Then again, that’s a pretty large percentage of his entire playing career. And also: wow. Although Nogueira is not likely to do anything on offense past tip-ins and dunks, Nogueira’s constant defensive attentiveness and shot-blocking ability is enough to boost up the entire lineup. Toronto has been blowing out its opponents by better than 20 points per 100 possessions when Nogueira is on the floor.

The Raptors broadcast noted the other night that Nogueira is one of just five current players to be averaging both two blocks and one steal per game so far this season. The other four names on that list have all received quite a bit more of money and/or hype: Anthony Davis, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Hassan Whiteside, and Myles Turner. This is the kind of defensive company that Nogueira is keeping. Plus, at 22.6 minutes per game, Nogueira is filling out his per-game averages much more quickly than Turner (27 minutes per game) or the other three (all over 33 minutes per game). Over his whole career, Nogueira is also on the remarkably short list of players who have more than two blocks and more than two steals per 36 minutes, with the current master of that domain being Nerlens Noel.

With Poeltl, Delon Wright, and infamous draft moonshot Bruno Caboclo — who is being moved along even slower, minutes-wise, than Nogueira — all doing their own work with the same lauded coaching staff, Toronto’s “missing pieces” just might all already be with the team.

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