https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEwjbksJ-Co
10 things I saw from Raptors-Jazz (Oct. 2 — preseason) – The Defeated
SOB: Kyle Lowry blew off some steam by bullying everyone’s least favorite rookie Grayson Allen (who isn’t a bad player outside of the dirty stuff.) Lowry picked Allen on three straight possessions and drew a foul on the Duke product, before proceeding to beef with Jae Crowder for no good reason.
10 observations: When the ball goes up, Kyle Lowry is always invested – The Athletic [subscription]
The Raptors’ lost the game 105-90, but that was almost entirely the product of the Jazz starters blitzing the Raptors’ reserves to start the third quarter. The Raptors’ whole rotation played well in the first half, particularly in the second quarter, and that will be what stands out as the team heads back to the Eastern Time Zone.
In that second quarter, Lowry threw away some money in stereotypically Lowry fashion. He and Jae Crowder picked up double technical fouls for jawing at one another with Utah’s Joe Ingles on the free-throw line. It did not stop there, as the two players continued to engage when Toronto took possession. Crowder rebounded Lowry’s missed three-pointer, but Lowry scooted into the paint to try to tip the ball away on the offensive glass, a vintage play from the point guard. Lowry put his shoulder into Crowder, and Crowder cleared him out with his arm. The result was an offensive foul, and a turnover.
It was a play you would expect in January or February that was made in the first week. It is a good reminder that when the ball goes up, Lowry cannot help but to play hard. Raptors fans can probably stop worrying about Lowry’s level of investment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3vNQKo3t2o
Raptors reserves lay egg in 15-point loss to Jazz, 105-90 – Raptors HQ
The Raptors are going to be able to bring the pain.
In the second quarter, which was as dominant as any you’ll see, Toronto absolutely locked up, and threw away the key on the Jazz’s offense. Kyle Lowry, Kawhi Leonard, Delon Wright, Pascal Siakam and Serge Ibaka combined for a long stretch of vicious defending. Until Joe Ingles exploded for ten points in 32 SECONDS, the Raps had held the Jazz to eight points over the first thirteen and a half minutes of the quarter. The key was aggressive perimeter defense and a swarming mentality that seemingly saw the Raps rotating to Jazz shooters before the ball even got there.
It all added up to a 33-18 frame that saw Toronto erase a six point first quarter deficit, and head into the break up 58-49 (and remember Joe Ingles saved the Jazz by averaging a point EVERY THREE SECONDS to end the frame.)
The Raps also used a Jonas Valanciunas, CJ Miles, Danny Green, Delon Wright and Norman Powell combo to dig in at the end of the third quarter to spark a 15-5 run that brought the Dinos back within five after Utah had opened the third quarter on a 25-5 run.
Overall, it was impressive that so many different, and frankly unfamiliar units, were able to provide such stiff defensive resistance.
Nurse continues lineup experimentation in Raptors’ first pre-season loss – Sportsnet.ca
Through two pre-season games now, Kawhi Leonard continues to be as advertised. He only played in the first half, but logged a little over 18 minutes and looked active and on his way to full recovery after missing all but nine games last season.
He scored 17 points on 6-12 shooting and put his mark on the game, showing small glimpses of what Spurs fans had grown used to. He was active around the boards, showed nice touch on his jumper, and manufactured free-throw attempts. Defensively, he spent time guarding multiple positions, including Utah’s star guard, Donovan Mitchell, and, on at least one possession, switched onto Gobert (which ended with a Jazz turnover on a pass attempt to the big man).
What stood out on Tuesday was his potential as a ball-handler. Leonard is comfortable bringing the ball up the floor and initiating the offence and, although he didn’t have any assists, he did a good job of finding teammates, including a deft bounce pass to Valanciunas on a pick-and-roll near the hoop early in the game that led to an easy floater the big man narrowly missed.
He was patient with the ball in his hand but quick to recognize how the defence was reacting and recovering from his teammates’ screens, leading to a number of well-timed, textbook pull-up jumpers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBAJMxzCreY
Yes, the Jazz ended up winning Tuesday night’s game by 15 points, so just by that fact alone, it’s hard to be too critical of them. But there’s a gigantic asterisk to the overall good news: while the Jazz started the second half with their starting lineup, the Raptors instead chose to leave their entire list of starters on the bench.
It’s not that the 27-4 Jazz run that followed is completely void, but, well, it was clear that the Raptors were missing their best players. Norman Powell missed a 3-pointer and then turned the ball over in the first minute of the half, and it’s easy to imagine those plays turning out very differently had Kawhi Leonard or Kyle Lowry been in charge, as they were in the first half. Ditto with the Pascal Siakam and Fred Van Vleet misses that happened after that.
Utah Jazz win second preseason game with victory over Toronto Raptors – SLC Dunk
After halftime, Quin Snyder decided to leave his starters in for the third quarter while Toronto’s head coach, Nick Nurse, started the second half without any of his starters on the court. Utah capitalized on Toronto’s renown “bench mob” and went on a big run led by Joe Ingles and Ricky Rubio. Joe Ingles hit two threes and got to the line for two FTs. In what is a promising sign for Rubio’s outside shooting, Rubio also hit two threes on his way to 10 points in the quarter. Donovan Mitchell may not have been scoring in bunches, but he was setting up his teammates in the third. By the fourth quarter, Utah was in control and was able to clear the bench for their soon to be Salt Lake City Stars players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXstfslPj_o
Raptors upended in forgettable pre-season tilt vs. Jazz | Toronto Sun
The Raptors’ positives all came in the second quarter, when they turned up the defence and things immediately got chippy. Utah’s Joe Ingles was getting hot under the collar, Kyle Lowry and Jae Crowder were called for double techs and then Lowry, as only Lowry can do, created a little incidental contact going back up the floor after that double tech and got Crowder to shove him which got Crowder another foul.
Through the first 10 minutes of the second quarter the Raptors outscored Utah 29-8 eventually outscoring them 33-18 in the quarter.
The Toronto defence started with a grouping that included Fred VanVleet, Delon Wright, Danny Green, Serge Ibaka and Pascal Siakam. That five just shut down everything the Jazz tried to do.
Jonas Valanciunas, Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry just followed suit when they got back in. Only Ingles who scored 11 points in the final 1:38 of the quarter kept this one from getting away all together.
The Jazz starters began the third against Toronto’s bench mob along with Ibaka and ate up the nine-point deficit in just over a minute and a half.
Coach Nick Nurse stayed with that group that had really got the Raptors the lead in the first place. But by the time he took all but VanVleet and Siakam out six and a half minutes into the third the deficit was 11, a 20-point swing.
Raptors’ Kyle Lowry is about to face the hardest test of his career – SBNation.com
Part of the reason Lowry’s personal growth skyrocketed in Toronto is because the Raptors offered what he had always lacked: responsibility, security, and trust. They wanted him to be a leader, The Guy, and it motivated him to shed his surly side (and 15 pounds of dead weight).
“I was not a bad teammate [in Houston],” Lowry told Jonathan Abrams in a spectacular 2014 Grantland feature. “I was just really in a world of my own. I was just like, All right, I’m going to go to work. That’s all I’m going to do. I’m not going to fraternize. I’m going to go to work, come home, that’s it. Because it wasn’t my team. I was a role player.”
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
The Raptors empowered him, which meant he didn’t need to worry as much about exerting power himself — unless it was against an opponent.When the Raptors traded DeRozan, they effectively shattered the foundation upon which Lowry grew up. Lowry and DeRozan were more than best friends. They were 1A and 1B on the roster, a convenience that allowed them both to feel secure.
Of the two, DeRozan had a deeper connection to the city, which meant that if the Raptors traded him, they could easily trade Lowry too. Ujiri’s comments after the trade — suggesting he gave the old band enough chances and it was time to try something new — pissed DeRozan off. It’s not hard to imagine Lowry reacting the same way. Ujiri’s words were an indirect repudiation of Lowry’s ability to lead a team to the promised land.
Leonard’s arrival has effectively entrenched Lowry as the the Raptors’ No. 2 guy, a position from which Lowry has historically been a lot more likely to act difficult for the sake of being difficult, asserting his authority merely to test how much he can get away with.
But that was then. In the last few years, Lowry not only learned to temper his emotions, but felt the cumulative benefit of trusting the people around him. The Raptors’ successes have been tied to his own self-improvement, and in some twist of fate, they’ve led him to this crossroads as the Raptors embark on the most important season in franchise history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XnclTHU_Hc
Murphy: Handicapping the race for the Raptors’ final roster spots – The Athletic [subscription]
Jordan Loyd — 80 percent — Loyd is pretty safely locked in to the first two-way slot. The Raptors are intrigued by what his development might look like in an NBA system given how far he’s come largely guiding himself, he was the first camp hopeful off of the bench in the team’s exhibition opener, and he’s on a two-year two-way deal that gives the Raptors a lot of flexibility and investment in Loyd that’s not often there with G League pieces.
Still, two-way contracts can only be lightly guaranteed, and those guarantees don’t count for the purposes of the luxury tax. In theory, the Raptors could move on from Loyd if two other candidates blew them away or they decided four point/combo-guards at the NBA level were enough depth for the year. It seems unlikely; Loyd is good and the Raptors think he could really take off in their development incubator.
New role for Siakam could have big benefits for Raptors – Sportsnet.ca
“We flipped over,” said VanVleet of his role as the finisher on open-court plays made by the Raptors big man. “You’ll see a lot more of him bringing it up and me shooting [this year] … he does a good job of breaking down the defence and if I can get an open look, I like my chances, so it’s something developed a lot late last year and into the summer and hopefully we can find that again this year.”
You won’t get any arguments from Nurse, who loves the idea of Siakam, all speed and arms and angles, forcing the ball down the throat of a back-pedaling defence only to pitch it out to one the team’s elite three-point shooters, wide-open as the defence instinctively collapses to stop Siakam, who can seemingly get the rim for a high-flying finish in one dribble from inside the three-point line.
“It’s hard to guard,” says Nurse. “…It’s good because he’s exploring all this stuff and all of sudden he’s deep and it’s in the basket.”
Or in the hands of a three-point threat stepping into wide-open jumper.
“It’s like a pre-game warm up look,” said VanVleet who shot 41.4 per cent from deep last season and who knocked down three of his four triples against Portland, two of them on passes from Siakam. “That’s the goal, to get good looks for our offence and especially in transition, playing off stops, getting the defensive rebound. I’ll spray it ahead to Pascal and he’ll pass to myself.”
Powell has work cut out on deep Raptors | The Star
“We thought that Norm got outside that group a little bit, and we’d just like to fix it real quick,” Nurse said. “He understood it. He took it and went to work, and I think it’s helped him. Already I’m seeing an improved rhythm, chemistry and team play out there.”
The Raptors haven’t given up on Powell, but in the harsh real world of the NBA the team is good enough that they don’t have to rely on him. It will be up to him to find a way to make Nurse play him.
Maybe the return will be as dramatic as the rise was. Powell came out of nowhere in 2016, the 46th pick in the draft who was so good, so explosive and exciting that he was rewarded with a four-year, $42 million U.S. contract that was touted in some corners as something of a bargain.
It still is — the average NBA salary is slightly more than $8 million a year, and Powell has shown slightly above-average skills at times — and that’s the second edge of the sword. If Powell can’t find a spot in the rotation, perhaps he becomes a trade chip if general manager Bobby Webster and president Masai Ujiri want to go shopping once the regular season reaches about the 20-game mark.
On a team well stocked with shooting guards and small forwards, it’s going to mean Powell is either going to have to capitalize on the misfortune of others or regain his form of two years ago to even sniff a significant role.
Why Kawhi Leonard can be an offensive monster for Raptors – Sportsnet.ca
If one pre-season game is any indication at all, one of the things the Raptors will want to do a lot of under Nick Nurse is to get out in transition and take threes. Leonard can do that:
Another offensive emphasis from the Raptors this season will likely be to limit long twos and mid-range shots and look to get almost all of their two-point buckets inside the paint. Leonard has mastered a unique jump-hook, floater hybrid shot that’s made him absolutely deadly in the paint, even with seven-footers attempting to defend it.
This isn’t to say he can’t hit those long twos when the team needs him to, though.
And just in case that DeMar DeRozan-esque bailout above wasn’t enough for you and you still don’t think he can create his own shot, allow this turnaround jumper to ease your mind.
The best part of Leonard’s scoring ability, however, is that while he can make those tough twos, he doesn’t rely on them to score. ‘Efficient’ is the best way to describe how he impacts the game on the offensive end and as such, he’s also a great partner in the pick-and-roll as evidenced by this clip.
The Raptors will probably be running a ton of pick-and-roll this season, but at the moment, only the team’s point guards have proven they can command it. As the clip above shows, Leonard is another option that could help in this regard as well, further diversifying Toronto’s attack.
In Episode 389 of Locked on Raptors, Sean Woodley and Vivek Jacob somehow fill an entire episode discussing where each of the Raptors’ should sit in the new-look Raptors locker room in order to optimize team chemistry and camaraderie.
Did I miss something? Send me any Raptors-related article/video to rapsfan@raptorsrepublic.com.
