I wasn’t going to go to practice today. I was worried about needing to react to DeMarre Carroll and Luol Deng news. I’m so glad I did, because I got to bear witness to the greatest outfit of all time (and the timing of the Carroll news was fortuitous for my schedule). I present to you, best I could capture, DeMarre Carroll in a bird-themed tracksuit.
DeMarre Carroll is wearing birds hear-to-toe. He’s a bird shirt guy, too. pic.twitter.com/5TtZ8lObn4
— Blake Murphy (@BlakeMurphyODC) May 12, 2016
That wasn’t the only good part of Carroll’s availability
Carroll was speaking for the first time since injuring his left wrist in the third quarter of Game 5 on Wednesday. He missed the end of the game in order to get further diagnostic testing done after X-rays came back negative, and that meant he wasn’t around to speak with media following the game. It also meant he had to follow along from afar, a stressful endeavor.
“I actually looked at my phone and we were only up by one and that really made me mad,” he said. “I saw we were up by one and I was like, ‘How is this possible?’ Then I heard Kyle Lowry hit some big shots. I’m just happy we got the win, man.”
Oh, yeah, the injury. So, that further diagnostic testing came back negative, and he’s officially being called questionable for Game 6 on Friday. He’s being called questionable by the team, that is. Carroll left little question about his status.
“My wrist is great,” he said, laughing. “It’s alright. It’s one of those things. I got positive feedback from the MRI, from the X-ray. If it ain’t broke, with me, I’m ready to play.”
He continued to double down on his status, and it’s a moderate surprise he didn’t remind everyone that he played on one leg in last year’s playoffs. The team is going to make a decision with the training staff, but Carroll was pretty upfront about the role he’ll play in that decision.
“I will have a lot of say. Let’s put it that way,” he said. “I talked to my so-called dad, Alex McKechnie, and let’s see what happens, man. He said let’s take it day by day. Me being who I am, I’m pretty sure I’ma fight him to play…It happens, man. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s basketball, so. I don’t look at it like that. I just look at it like, got a couple of obstacles in my way so I’ve just got to keep trying to improve. I can’t worry about being hurt, man, because if I worry about being hurt that’s when you lose it mentally and I’m not trying to lose it mentally.”
A reporter suggested that Carroll employ the now infamous “thousand dollar shoelace” that McKechnie, the team’s director of sports science, tied around DeMar DeRozan’s injured thumb to prevent swelling during his rest periods Wednesday.
“I told him let’s wrap a shoelace around my wrist and see what happens,” Carroll joked. “But nah, nah, we’ve just been treating it. We’re going to treat it when we get to Miami. We’re going to keep treating it. It’s all about how I can tolerate my pain, but I’m [not] Junkyard Dog for nothing, right?”
I dare you to not love this guy. It certainly sounds like Carroll’s intent on playing, and he’ll undergo round-the-clock treatment (“any treatment you can name”) to ensure he can. It helps that it’s to his non-dominant wrist (“Man, you barely use it,” DeRozan told him), and it turns out the diagnosis is much better than originally anticipated – Carroll initially though he broke his wrist due to numbness after he landed.
“At at the end of the day, man, it’s a wrist,” he said. “It’s not broke, like I said, and hopefully I can play tomorrow.”
The Raptors are getting a bit of comfort from the fact that they played long stretches of the season with Carroll and Jonas Valanciunas both on the sideline, but they’d surely rather have Carroll out there.
Clinching is hard
Without much else to talk about and the stars not made available to the media, the practice session was mostly soundbite-seeking about morale and closing out and things of that nature. None of it is really all that meaningful for helping figure out Game 6, but here are a few quotes anyway.
Casey: “It’s one of the most difficult things to do in sports. The further you get in the series and also in the semi-finals, in the conference finals, the hardest thing to do is close a team out, especially a prideful team like Miami, a championship pedigree, a championship player like Dwyane Wade is, a well-coached team — it’s very difficult to do.”
Biyombo: “It is difficult. I’m not going to say it’s going to be easy. If it was easy, we should have come back here and played our last game last night. It’s not going to be easy but at the same time, I feel like we’re well prepared, our coaching staff and us as players. It’s going to take everybody. It’s going to take every position, and it’s going to be a fight. We’ve gotta be patient with it. We’re gonna have our ups and downs and we’ve gotta figure a way to finish the game and come up with a win. Of course, you’re not going to win by 20 points in this league, but we’re gonna find a way.”
More Casey, thankfully being pretty blunt at the repeated line of questioning: “If you’ve got to motivate players at this time of year to play hard, to play through things, to play through nicks and bumps, we’re in the wrong business. I’m in the wrong business. They’re in the wrong business if I’ve got to motivate players. Like I said last night, this is what you play for. This is why you work out all summer in the hot gyms, doing all the workouts and the strength training and weight training and all that — for this time of the year…You need to go play volleyball or golf or an individual sport or something like that, if you’ve got to be motivated at this time of the year.”
No disrespect intended to golfers and volleyball players, I’m sure. But good Shammgod, I’ll be glad when the season’s over just to go a few months without hearing questions about feels and how the playoffs are hard and about staying even after a win or a loss.
Assorted
- Jonas Valanciunas was out of his walking boot, although he wasn’t made available and there’s no update on his status.
- Casey spoke highly of Patrick Patterson’s ability to guard wings, particularly Joe Johnson. I have to agree with him there. Patterson’s been great all year, particularly the last two games.
- The primary point of emphasis sounds like it’s closing out quarters better. That’s long been an issue for the Raptors, and Casey tweaked his regular rotations some on Wednesday to try to combat it. Expect more of that Friday.
- On DeRozan breaking out of a slump, Casey offered: “It helps tremendously, that does help, even Kyle seeing the ball go through the hoop, it helps him tremendously. We never lost faith in those guys, it’s going to come back.” All you have to do is Biyombolieve, says Bismack: “We have dealt with injuries the whole season. Again, it doesn’t feel good to hear about a teammate going down, but at the same time, somebody else gotta step up. The mindset is still the same, us going into Miami, trying to get it done and whatever it takes. I think we have enough players that are capable of doing that. We’ve just gotta believe in each other.”
- The Heat aren’t having media availability today but Erik Spoelstra is having a conference call at 3 p.m. Check back for updates. And ditto for the Last Two Minute Report, which won’t be out for a while still.
- UPDATE: Spoelstra didn’t say much other than that Deng still hasn’t undergone his MRI.
- UPDATE: The L2M shows the following:
- 1:54, 4th – incorrect call, Lowry should not have been whistled for a shooting foul on Wade (this one was bad).
- 1:17, 4th – Dragic should have been called for a travel.
- 0:24.6, 4th – Biyombo should have been called for a loose ball foul for hooking Winslow under the rim.
