Nick Nurse’s shuffled Raptors’ rotation worked for one night, but does it have legs?

New Orleans, La. — Was it an opportunity to experiment or just a chance to slowly reintroduce a slew of returning players?

Whatever the case, Raptors head coach Nick Nurse tossed a pretty surprising change-up out there Monday night when four of his players, including two starters returned from injury.

Nurse chose to slowly re-introduce his starters by having Pascal Siakam re-join the starting five while Scottie Barnes, a starter every game this year, came off the bench.

Also coming off the bench after starting every game he was healthy enough to play in was Gary Trent Jr.

In their place, Nurse opted to keep Thad Young and Juancho Hernangomez in the starting five. Young had started six in a row while Hernangomez had started two of the past three games when the injuries and illness situation was at its worst.

The result was a win over a talented, albeit depleted Cleveland Cavaliers squad.

The Raptors were defensively solid and sound enough offensively to get the job done.

Neither Trent Jr. nor Barnes balked at the decision.

“Whatever they want to do, it doesn’t really matter to me,” Barnes said. “We know what we can do as a team. It worked out for us (Monday), whatever goes, it goes. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Trent Jr. hasn’t been shooting the ball as well as he’s capable for more than three weeks now and he wasn’t about to fuss over the decision.

“It is what it is,” Trent Jr. said after returning from a post-game shooting session with his father and assistant coach Rico Hines.

“In the game, day in and day out, whatever coach’s game plan is we are going to follow, going to be with him 100%, back him, and try to execute it to the best of our abilities and that’s what we did tonight,” Trent Jr. said.

Both Barnes and Trent Jr. still played 26 minutes in the game, and both produced with Barnes scoring 11, assisting on five others and Trent Jr. hitting two of his five threes in a 14-point performance that also included seven rebounds.

Nurse was not tipping his hand when asked if this rotation was one he could see sticking with for a while.

“I don’t know,” Nurse said. “I think I’ll probably have to look at the lineup that we’re going to be facing in the next game. And then just try to figure it out. It could be totally different.”

Nurse suggested his choice of starters Monday night had more to do with the odd circumstances the team found itself in having to re-introduce a number of players all at once with Siakam, Barnes, Dalano Banton, and even Justin Champagnie (although he did not play) into the mix all at once.

“Well, I think that it was more of a case of not throwing a whole bunch of guys out there at the same time that are out of rhythm, haven’t played, maybe played one game, etc. just trying to keep some balance with some guys that have been kind of logging some minutes etc., so that’s the way we decided to do it,” Nurse said of the sudden shake-up.

“I think we got caught on that one time a year ago or maybe two where we had a whole bunch of guys kind of coming back at once and we threw them all out there and we just got smacked, so we just tried to learn from that a little bit, and we just tried to keep some guys with some rhythm together and it seemed to be pretty good,” Nurse said.

Nurse, though, could very well be looking at this as an opportunity to address the offensive shortcomings his bench has been playing with for much of the year.

There really isn’t a shot creator from that bench when he starts Fred VanVleet, Trent Jr, Barnes, O.G. Anunoby and Pascal Siakam.

Siakam is the most reliable among those five but Anunoby has shown flashes of an improved ability and the other three also have that in their game.

Perhaps taking one, or even two from that group and moving them to the bench makes some sense in terms of equalizing the two units.

VanVleet, who runs that first group suggested it wouldn’t be the worst idea he’s heard, assuming of course the move didn’t get anyone’s nose out of joint.

“It makes us dangerous; you know, it makes us dangerous when you got that type of talent coming off the bench,” VanVleet said. “Again you still got to mix and match with the rotation, I think coach was trying some stuff there for different reasons, but when you got that type of talent and those type of players, it’ll even out the team and balance the team out, I think we just get a little unbalanced at times with lineups and rotations and something that can help us going forward, and find more rhythm and flow to what we do.”

It’s certainly something to keep an eye on as the season progresses.

1. Pascal Siakam dominates in return to lead Raptors past Cleveland Cavaliers

2. SIMMONS SUNDAY: Raptors forward O.G. Anunoby continues to grow ... and surprise