Raptors need to play with a sense of urgency on every possession | Toronto Sun
Wins over Atlanta and Orlando, while commendable, were far from works of art. There were definitely quarters that impressed in those games but just as many that showed how much work remained to be done. Sunday they ran into a team functioning at a very high level and for two quarters were soundly beaten. The Raptors played the Heat even in the third and actually outscored them by five in the fourth but the earlier damage could not be overcome. Walking into the locker room after the game you expected some tension and definitely a quiet room of brooding young men kicking themselves for letting an opportunity slip away. Instead it was as if the Raptors knew this were coming. They knew they were playing with fire and now that they finally paid the price there seemed almost a sense of relief that now they could begin anew and heed their coach’s warnings of giving away quarters and giving away halves.
Oklahoma City Thunder at Toronto Raptors: Tuesday NBA game preview | Toronto Star
Injury-ravaged Thunder without Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Anthony Morrow, Jeremy Lamb, Mitch McGary and Grant Jarrett. Oh, and Reggie Jackson may play, but he missed the first three games of the season, too. . . . Oklahoma City played Monday in Brooklyn. . . . Thunder’s Perry Jones has had games of 32 and 23 points already, picking up some of the slack for Durant and Westbrook so far. . . . Steven Adams is rounding into a solid player. He’s the guy Oklahoma City took with the pick that was originally sent by Toronto to Houston in the Kyle Lowry deal, then shipped by the Rockets to the Thunder in the James Harden transaction. … Toronto’s Amir Johnson suggested Sunday he’d be good to go despite missing a game with a sore ankle. . . . While Thunder are on a back-to-back, Raptors will be playing their third game in four nights.
Raptors Patterson Credits John Calipari For His Defense | Pro Bball Report
Patterson opened a lot of eyes in Toronto last season after he arrived as part of the Rudy Gay trade in early December. The physically imposing forward shot better than 40 percent from three-point range and was often seen chasing opponents around the three-point line at the other end with solid results. His ability to defend the perimeter wasn’t lost on Head Coach Dwane Casey and when opponents stop trying to go inside, Patterson is going to get the call over Jonas Valanciunas for defensive purposes on many nights. “I thought we needed more speed and quickness, (the Hawks) were coming at us pretty fast in transition,” Casey said after the home opener. “They weren’t trying to post up. I like Amir Johnson and Patterson for their athleticism and speed and quickness on the floor at the end. As long as the other team is playing fast, you may see that a lot.” It’s not really a surprise that Patterson doesn’t see himself as a great defender, he’s not a big steals and blocks guy, but Patterson is a mobile big man and in the ever quickening NBA, mobility has become a valued asset.
Canadian basketball growth evident in NBA | Sportsnet.ca
The numbers have exploded and the reasons are varied. That the Toronto Raptors are now in their 20th season in the NBA is a factor, while many of the first wave of the young crop of players in the league — Tristan Thompson, Cory Joseph, and Kelly Olynyk, for example — cite Vince Carter’s rise to superstardom in the late 1990s with the Raptors as a source of their basketball inspiration. For the youngest on the scene — Anthony Bennett, Tyler Ennis and Andrew Wiggins — they are simply the beneficiaries of a more robust and ambitious youth basketball scene in Southern Ontario when they were growing up. Each of them played extensively on summer teams that travelled in the US, as well as spent most of their high school years south of the border. Whatever the source of the wave, it’s washed up on NBA shores in significant numbers in recent years, with Canada providing the league eight first-round picks in the past three seasons, including the first overall pick the last two years.
Will the NBA ever return to Newfoundland? | The Globe and Mail
“I will make you one promise,” Grunwald continued. “The Toronto Raptors will return to this arena and play a game within two years.” Those two years have now stretched into 11, and Grunwald is still lobbying to have an NBA game played in the Newfoundland capital, even though he is no longer working in the league. “I’m just trying to deliver on a promise – that’s all I’m trying to do,” said Grunwald, who in August was named the new athletic director at McMaster University in Hamilton. “And it makes good sense, too, because there’s great folks out there in Newfoundland and they really like basketball. That’s the main thing, right?”
Kelly: The Leafs may be losers, but the Raptors will never rule Toronto | The Globe and Mail
His legacy rests largely on the basketball club’s turnaround. He went and got general manager Masai Ujiri – probably the signal achievement of his tenure. No Leiweke, no Ujiri. No Ujiri and the Raptors are still a hot mess in short pants. Q.E.D. Right now, the Raptors are the sexier of the pair. You’d find more charisma eavesdropping on one-half of an Amir Johnson phone call than in dozens of hours of conversation with all the Leafs combined. Well, maybe not Leo Komarov. If only we all spoke a little more Finnish. The Raptors are the better team. They catch more buzz on social media, thanks to the perfectly on-point “We The North” ad campaign (which might be Leiweke’s No. 2 accomplishment). The crowds? You can’t even begin to compare the crowds. Clearly, they drug the fountain drinks at the ACC. For the Raptors, amphetamines. For the Leafs, Quaaludes.
Kelly: The Leafs may be losers, but the Raptors will never rule Toronto | The Globe and Mail
Most importantly, the Raptors are sticking it to the United States on our behalf. There is nothing so sweet for a Toronto audience as indulging our collective short-man syndrome vis-à-vis our southern neighbours. That we’re doing it with a team that’s 75-per-cent U.S.-born is – well, let’s just ignore that part. In the past year or so, the Raptors have done every single thing right. That’s up to and including losing Game 7 to the Brooklyn Nets. Imagine they’d won, then staggered off to Miami to get annihilated by the Heat? That would have been amazing – for me. I had the South Beach hotel booked and everything. Several people were near tears in that postgame presser. All of them were local reporters. However, it would’ve created an unreasonable expectation – and a downer on the way out. If you want to bring your fan base to a boil, it’s best done in increments. That’s how you maximize interest. The Jays’ slow, winning burn beginning in the mid-eighties is the instructive lesson.
CBA 101: Contract Extensions | Raptors HQ
First, let’s clarify something that the media gets wrong all the time. An extension is not a player re-signing with his team. That’s a new contract. There were plenty of reports this summer of Kyle Lowry signing an extension with the Raptors. Not true – he signed a new contract. That might seem like pedantry to some, but in terms of the limitations of what an extension allows a player to sign for versus a new contract, there’s all the difference in the world. A contract extension is when a player re-ups with his team by extending his current contract, obviously, before hitting free agency. What this means is that, for the most part, the contract has to look like it is the same contract, just longer. So, it has to follow the same rules as any contract.
Raptors Rookie Lucas Nogueira Talks His First NBA Game | BALLnROLL
BALLnROLL.com: You’ve made it to the NBA. What’s going through your head? Lucas Nogueira: My head? I don’t know, man. [It’s] my first game of the year, my first game in the NBA, so I’m excited, because I worked all my life for this to get this opportunity today. I’m so happy to be here in this franchise. They give me their whole support here. I think this is big day in my life.
Will the Raptors become an Elite force this year? | SportsWorthy
Leaning in Toronto’s favour is potentially being in NBAs weakest division, being the Atlantic, but that isn’t enough to get them celebrating, not if they fail to only make it to the first round again. “Honestly, we felt like we haven’t done anything,” Derozan said. “I mean, cool, we made the playoffs, but everybody on this team wants more than that. I think the work we put in this summer showed that. But honestly, we’re just not satisfied with anything we did last year.” The future lies in the Raps hands now, Coach Casey and GM Masai Ujiri were great this offseason in acquiring Lou Williams and James Johnson, along with players like Vasquez and Terrance Ross also gives them an amazing bench moving forward, especially with potentially players like Grevias and Lou Williams being potential 6th man of the year candidates. All we can do as ‘We the North’ fans now is follow along and hope for the best, as sports in Toronto haven’t had too much luck in recent years.
David’s appeal to Toronto is obvious, but why would the Pacers move him, particularly for the end-of-the-bench guys I’m proposing? Because David will be 35 by the time the Pacers have Paul George back. The Pacers can wave goodbye to Chuck and Landry after this season limps (from their point of view at least) to a close, and have West’s now-departed cash to wave under the nose of free agents. They are likely to finish as a lottery team, and should be able to draft some quality talent. The pain in Indy could be short-lived with this move, despite the screaming of Pacers fans.
I can haz yo Raptors linkz? rapsfan@raptorsrepublic.com
