Raptors 125, Bulls 104 | Box Score | Quick Reaction | Reaction Podcast
Goodbye Bulls curse and hellooo high scoring game. You may be a preseason game, and the Bulls may have—well definitely—stopped playing defense around the seven-minute mark of the 4th, but I will gladly, enthusiastically, and knowingly take the W.
There’s a lot more riding on this preseason for most teams involved (so sorry, The Nets) given all the wild manoeuvring of this past summer. What might have been akin to warm-up games in preseasons past now have the feel and fullness of everybody from a team’s starters to the sweat-Swiffering teens poised underneath the net fully measuring the other side up to see what’s changed. It’s tense! I assure you you’re not the only one sitting at home watching and wondering why you’ve yet to change into sweats well past the half.
The Raptors are under a new kind of scrutiny, one grounded primarily in fatigue. We’re all watching to make sure the moves the team didn’t visibly make in the offseason are due to a more subtle alchemy at play just below the surface, that the veneer of something shiny and new wouldn’t necessarily be better than retooling what we’ve got and seeing the results of the now ubiquitous, still sort of cryptic, “culture reset”.
So did it work? Tentatively, optimistically, yes.
Seeing Siakam start tonight was the equivalent of a band you’ve seen a few times starting their set out a little sheepishly with the words, “Ok if we have a little fun tonight?” It’s a little bit weird and sort of self-conscious but they’re all into it and more than that, this usually methodical group starts looking a bit lighter, like mmmaybe they are even having fun.
Regardless of Ibaka sitting this game out, Pascal Siakam getting to start was hopefully a signal from Casey et al. that getting dynamic doesn’t need to be so heavy handed, sometimes you can just try shit out and see what happens. (One person who should no longer be allowed to abide by those very same words, however, is JV. It was a nice to be reminded of how good he always looks in Raptors red, but he also revived the unfortunate Julius Caesar baby bangs of early to mid last season. #JVHive, please @ me about this).
From the outset the Raptors looked most definitive out of their 2017 preseason games so far, choosing their spots but more than that, moving the ball. DeMar especially continues to make a concerted effort to get it going around. So much so that you can see it in the slight hesitations where his muscle memory tells him to push for the drive but he pulls up, pauses, and looks to pass instead.
Lowry is trying, too, but he also has to lead. There’s a balance to strike between a change in team dynamic that’s rooted in reorienting plays to push the ball around and build confidence based on everyone contributing and one where the desire to move it only makes everybody play more frantic. With a team that’s going to need to lean hard on its rookies this year the Raptors, especially Lowry and DeRozan, have to tow the line between knowing when to lead with an ISO play and when to prompt that in others.
And speaking of these rookies, is it just me or did VanVleet get faster? He was a bane to the Chicago perimeter for most of the game but ramped it up in the 2nd half with a move that could have been pulled from the pages of what it means to be a bull (the actual animal). VanVleet led with his shoulder every time he went in for a layup—and they were big layups, layups with flourish—and threw his whole body into getting stops and steals. One minute he’d be scrambling for a lose ball and the next he’d be vaulting down the court to make the rebound, then the shot.
There was one particular moment when he got knocked around and came back leading with the same shoulder he’d just landed hard on to go flying through the key for an extended airtime bucket. Less than ten seconds later he was back for another, likely as upset as I was that one of the U.S. announcers called him “Little Fred VanVleet”. Despite all my rage, he’s playing a way more physical game so far this (pre) season and I am here for how comfortable he is in it. He worked for it all summer.
Norman Powell was a solid and steady hand in a few scrappy plays. Pulling his signature move of somehow flying through the air in a grand jeté very calmly to delicately lob the ball up, underhanded, and make the shot, while the defense scrambled around him. It’s good to have consistency. Powell is so seamless in the rotation, fully fading into or running full force out of the background when either or is needed, he didn’t have the greatest shot selection but most always was a compliment to whichever iteration of the line-up he got worked into.
Miles, too, showed up when he was needed, and that was primarily as Best Bench Dad Ever. With 27 points in 20 minutes and the good sense to chill for a second and let the open look corner shots come to him, he’s solidly, so far, leading the bench and looks comfortable doing it. C.J. Smiles would also be just a great, really cool nickname for him.
And the baby bench! Lil bud bench? We’ll work on the name but holy hell were they up for it tonight. Wright and VanVleet on the floor together are so much fun to watch. The looks they set each other up for and the easy passing between them. As for fouls, where Fred’s following in the charging steps of Kyle Lowry, Delon seems to have a cool knack for drawing them, and neither gets bogged down or takes much time to come back from calls. Anunoby was a little shaky to start but it very quickly showed to be a case of working out some early game kinks. By the half his pace had picked up and he was bouncing circles around a beleaguered Arcidiacono, as well as cutting and shooting at a clip.
More than that, maybe more than any of it—Bruno got a lil dunk! Throw in Bebe with a long 3 and we should all feel good at letting ourselves get a little excited about this rematch next week to mark the season start.
