This is a guest post from Katie Heindl.
The Toronto Raptors are not a team that has, in recent memory, enjoyed the qualifier of being called ‘tough.’
They’re scrappy. There isn’t a team comfortable with getting as consistently gritty in their games as the Raptors have over the last three years. The mix in rotations, in players shifted around on the court or whose contracts get shuffled, have made for a playing style that works as-is to best support the molten core of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. Toronto’s backup plan has always been digging deep, in frenetic bursts, and figuring out a way to make it work. Scrappy is smart, scrappy is energy, and scrappy is ingenuity to spare. Scrappy finds a physical embodiment in Lowry and scrappy has won the Raptors games by the skin of knees and knuckles. It was how they took Cleveland to six games in the Eastern Conference finals.
But scrappy isn’t given the same pull as ‘tough.’ Not in a league currently centered on super-teams and all-stars, anyway.
Masai Ujiri has a knack for knowing what the Toronto Raptors need just when it starts to seem like if something doesn’t happen soon, the already spinning wheels are going to fly clear off. A reliable power forward who could get in the paint and contend consistently for rebounds while giving shooters a defensive break was not, by any means, a mystery piece missing from the puzzle. But that it came so quietly in Serge Ibaka, after a too-loud trade proposition the previous summer that hinged on giving half the squad away, seemed an assured piece of timing. The more unsuspected thing, an almost innocuous thing, was P.J. Tucker.
One of the best parts of watching Tucker play is getting to see his face when he inevitably gets calls. It’s different than Lowry’s Shakespearian stage gesticulation. Tucker is subdued in his body but his face turns into the thespian masks. Tucker emotes, and he does it from a place of assurance. In his game, he puts his whole body up in a split second charge he’s come out of nowhere to take, because Tucker is tough. Together, Tucker and Ibaka have given the Raptors a shot in the arm that’s gone full body. The playing style of this team has shifted.
The clearest indicator came a few weeks ago in the form of Isaiah Thomas flying face-first across the floor. The game was dragging and the Celtics were getting flashy about it. Thomas snatched the ball from DeROzan just shy of the center line and moved it down the court before the Raptors could get their feet under them and reverse. But DeMarre Carroll came from behind with a shove that sent Thomas skidding belly-down into the key. Whether the Raptors’ energy shifted in reaction to it or the shove was a reaction equivalent to a hard line being drawn, the message was sent—no easy buckets. Not anymore.
Tucker isn’t just a human catalyst for foul trouble. The entire team plays demonstratively better with him on and off the court. After a dismal loss to the Thunder, Tucker was said to be the most vocal in the players-only meeting that followed, and rightly so – he’s a veteran with confidence his teammates pay attention to, and he probably felt ripped off.Tucker knew what he was getting into before he got here. After telling Tucker he’d been traded, Ujiri’s last words before wishing him a safe flight were to “get here focused and prepare your mind for 25 games of hell.” Tucker had signed up for games of hell, sure, but had rightfully assumed he was to be the harbinger.
Whatever was said behind closed doors worked, because keys that were missing—grit, cohesion, energy, fight—were back in the rotation of the Raptors’ game, and with a team full of players particularly susceptible to vibe, back-to-back wins against the Pacers and Pistons seemed the best talisman to wield going into an away game against the Bulls and a curse that dogged the Raptors since 2014.
Instead, every bit of grit the team had gained back seemed to get smoothed to a polish. More aptly, by the end of the first quarter the Chicago defense effectively shut down Jonas Valančiūnas’ in-the-paint ability and Jimmy Butler armed a team that ought to have not given Toronto any trouble (without Dougie McBuckets, even) with fakes and fouls to effectively lure them deep into the abyss of the persisting mire of the curse, outplaying the Raptors up until Robin Lopez came loose of his senses.
Lopez went for Ibaka with a missed punch over some shoving, and only by the grace of his vortex of hair did he manage to deflect Ibaka’s retaliating hook. Both Ibaka and Lopez got ejected and an already grim game seemed primed for a full-on funeral dirge. It wasn’t just retaliation and like Carroll shoving Thomas, the impetus wasn’t only a physical altercation, but there was a shift. Something wound too tight got rattled in the dust-up and shook loose: We’re afraid of these guys?
It was an inch for inch fight after that. It wasn’t just montage stuff. The Raptors fought for every possession, ground it out when they needed stops, weren’t shy about driving and took an extra split second to line up the threes. Everyone was working. Tucker chipped away at Butler (some of his shots still hit—that’s what they do—but there were less of them). He was as unbalanced as the rest of the team because the Raptors didn’t give a gained inch the rest of the way. Joffrey Lauvergne, a nice boy from France I’m sure, thought the basket seemed a good place for a picnic toward the end of the fourth but DeRozan reared up like a storm cloud on the horizon and simply said “non.” It’s not just Tucker’s on-court osmosis there. He’s been directly encouraging DeRozan to expand his defensive role, and if smart, fast blocks are a skill he can add to his leadership, this team will only get stronger for it.
The thing is, the Raptors could always rally. It was like a bad, ulcer-inducing running joke that they’d gas up with two minutes left in the game and almost catch up, only to run out of time. That’s underdog stuff, that’s the same old scrap. But this new toughness adds depth, it’s the gear that was missing and while it still seems a bit choppy, it’s clear they are getting comfortable playing at this new clip.
The numbers reflect it. The Raptors held the Pacers, Pistons, Bulls, Heat, and Mavericks respectively, to 34, 41, 44, 35, and 38 per cent shooting from the floor, and over these last five wins, the games since the players-only meeting, the Raptors posted a defensive rating of 93.5 (points/100 possessions), first in the league in that stretch. Every game has to count like this, but grinding it out and refusing to give up anything without a fight is the commitment that alchemizes scrappy to tough. It’s the kind of team, too, that’s going to enable Lowry to drop languidly into new rotations that have been honed in his absence.
Toronto are always going to be the underdogs, that’s just the intangibility of optics and being on the opposite side of a border separating them from the other 29 teams in the league. What Tucker and Ibaka give to the Raptors is a seasoned confidence. For the Raptors’ star players, that’s smart support and underscores their existing confidence. In the rookies, it adds foundation to their tenacity. It’s a deeper pitch to their growl, something that will resonate up the rankings to rankle the pundits, players and playmakers and show that Toronto tough means wanting it a whole lot more.
