TORONTO

He will never be Dikembe Mutombo, but Jonas Valanciunas appears to be making huge strides as a rim protector for the Raptors.

He blocked four San Antonio shots on Sunday, held the Spurs to just 1-for-8 shooting at the rim against him for the game and is emerging as one of the league’s better rim deterrers lately.

It is all part of what Raptors assistant coach Bill Bayno calls “a daily focus” of the work they do to try to get Valanciunas to go up completely vertical defensively, without getting nailed for a foul.

The Raptors — Bayno in particular — have been showing the Lithuanian centre game tape of standouts like Indiana’s Roy Hibbert for well over a year now. The results weren’t always there, but, all of a sudden, they are coming.

Utah behemoth Rudy Gobert, he of the nearly eight-foot wingspan, is believed to be the NBA leader in defending field goals at the rim, allowing opponents to convert only around 37% of the time when facing him there. Earlier this year, opponents were shooting around 51% at the rim against Valanciunas. Over his past five games though, that number has dipped to just 30%. Over the past 10, it is a Gobert-like 37%. Impressive stuff, and something Bayno and the rest of Dwane Casey’s staff has definitely noticed. Nevermind the 10.5 points (on 61.4% shooting) and 8.9 rebounds Valanciunas has averaged over those past 10 games, it is the improved defence that has really stood out.

“His biggest issue is guys come at him so hard with that knee raised (that) instinctively, when he doesn’t rim protect, he turns,” Bayno told the Toronto Sun after the Raptors had their final pre-all star practice on Tuesday.

“But he’s getting much, much better at leading with his chest and hitting with his chest. Those are on the vertical jumps specifically. Where you make contact chest to chest. If you turn even a little bit, which he turned against the Clippers, they’ll call it. I thought it was close and said ‘I’ve been working with him on that,’ (the ref) said, ‘he turned at the last minute coach, I wasn’t going to call it, but he did.’ JV argued with me when I showed him on the film,” Bayno said with a laugh.

Bayno sees Valanciunas getting better and better at the skill as he gets older and wiser. The team wants him to hang out down low for longer, using as much as the time he is allowed down there before being whistled for a violation — and they are even fine with the odd three-second call as well — because the tradeoff will be that Valanciunas will be in position to deter driving opponents more often.

It is already happening, according to Bayno, who is the staffer that spends the most time developing Valanciunas (legendary Spurs coach Gregg Popovich recently praised Casey’s staff for the job they have done developing players. Valanciunas was singled out).

“Getting him to err on the side of over-helping and overprotecting, which is what teams are doing to us, I think that’s gotten better,” Bayno said.

To be fair, the numbers haven’t improved only because of Valanciunas though. Bayno believes the other Raptors have recalibrated defensively recently, which has made all of them look better as a whole.

“Our guards are closing down those gaps, so I think it’s a combination of the two and that’s what all the good teams do, they protect that paint and then if teams are hitting threes, you’ve just got to close out harder, you’ve got to have better shot contests, you’ve got to have great late jumps. They jump first, you jump second, but really challenge the shot,” he said.

It helps that Valanciunas gets to watch and learn from teammates like Amir Johnson, Patrick Patterson and Tyler Hansbrough who are “every bit as good as anybody in the NBA at vertical jump,” according to Bayno, who added that Kyle Lowry is “ the best guard in the NBA I’ve ever seen, I don’t ever see any other guards vertical jump the way he does.”

“We’ve got four guys (plus Lowry, who doesn’t get that many chances to show it because he isn’t a big man) that are really, really good at chest-to-chest, vertical jump, it’s a huge defensive skill that especially for us, we don’t have great foot-speed out on the perimeter, so when we do get blown by, those guys have got to be there and for the most part they have been,” he said.

“I think that’s a big reason why we’ve won 35 games (so far).”

With more likely to come, since Valanciunas is still only 22 years old.

“He’s getting older, he’s getting smarter, he’s getting more intelligent and getting used to playing against the bigs in the league,” Lowry added.