12-3
The immediate aftermath of the DeRozan trade highlighted this at a more national level, with DeRozan still seeming to carry some of the hurt from the move. DeRozan is as sympathetic a figure as there is in this specific universe given what he’s been able to turn himself into and how good a person, ambassador and advocate he’d been while a member of the Raptors. Ujiri is not wrong to have made a smart basketball deal that raises the team’s ceiling in the quest for a championship. But since DeRozan is a consummate good guy and Leonard is a read-what-you-will tweener, Ujiri was framed in some places like the bad guy, even apologizing publicly for DeRozan feeling the trade was handled indelicately.
John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports
The Open Gym episode that follows Wednesday’s game against the Detroit Pistons should be another with shades of grey to sort through. For years, Dwane Casey has been a central figure of the series, inextricable from the mounting success and momentum of the Raptors’ organization. Casey has not exactly hidden his feelings after Ujiri let him go following last season. That Casey came away with the victory in ironic late-game fashion, complete with Blake Griffin shade thrown at the Raptors afterwards, only added to the air of awkwardness.“I’m a big boy. I feel good knowing I left something here in Canada that was positive and good and it wasn’t negative and bad. Getting fired is not a negative,” Casey said at shootaround. “I landed. That’s part of being a professional coach. That’s what this is about. I have no ill will for anybody. I understand what happened, how it happened. I don’t know why it happened. I understand it.”
Again here, Ujiri is the actor in a good guy being let go. By Ujiri’s estimation, Casey’s tenure with the Raptors had run its course and it was the right move to make a change, even if Casey was a beloved figure with a lasting impact. Nick Nurse has been framed by some as the de facto bad guy in this case, which seems unfair. Nurse did not let Casey go, he only replaced him, taking an opportunity which he’d been waiting for his entire adult life. Even if the quality of their relationship by the end sounds chilly — Nurse declining to speak about it is justified given the no-win corner such questions put him in, though it allows quite a bit of room for interpretation — Nurse was a beneficiary at worst, not an actor.
Fans got to know Casey and DeRozan and the connections they shared intimately over the years, and it’s by Ujiri’s guiding hand that these changes have been made. This is the hardest part of Ujiri’s job, as he conceded after Casey’s removal.
For now, Ujiri seems comfortable donning the black hat, as it were. Decisions like these are often made within complicated morality. There’s a reason that within the last year, four of the WWE’s best storylines have involved their purest babyfaces (good guys) struggling with the weight of doing the right thing against continued Sisyphean failures to win a championship. Many of television’s best dramas in the modern television era have similarly focused on grey-area antiheroes of sorts. The Good Place, likely the best show on television right now, is a vehicle for philosophical introspection and moral reasoning problems.
Raptors’ Danny Green hoping new podcast will connect him with fans – Sportsnet.ca
Although it’s still in its infancy stage, Green had planned to start the podcast well before he was a Toronto Raptor.
In a stroke of luck, he was traded to Toronto, alongside Kawhi Leonard, as part of the summer’s marquee NBA deal. It’s shone a spotlight on the 10-year veteran, who went from being a trusted quote in the locker room to a player whose opinion was suddenly in high demand from fans and beat writers alike.
“Since the trade, people think I know all about what’s going on with Kawhi,” he says with a laugh, “so they want to tune in and hear my opinion. I want to keep it interesting for them.”
It’s not hard. Green is relatively unfiltered for an athlete, willing to speak his mind and excited about being able to do it through a medium in which he can speak directly to his fans.
“I was surprised,” Sanford says of how comfortable his co-host is behind a microphone, engaging and entertaining. “He’s delivering more than I anticipated, which is great. I didn’t anticipate laughing as much as I have been.”
“He’s a big personality and full of life,” Osman says of Green. “He’ll tell you himself: he’s not an overly social person, but he’s got stories to tell. He has wisdom to share. Ultimately we’re trying to give something to the fans while simultaneously building a career for Danny after basketball.”
When asked what Green brings to the table as a broadcaster, Osman doesn’t hesitate. “He can sit and dissect play,” he says, “but more importantly Danny knows people. He can speak to somebody’s character and how that applies on and off the court.”
Ibaka dishes on Kawhi on Inside the Green Room podcast – Yahoo
On the Episode 7, Danny and Harrison are joined by Raptors big man Serge Ibaka aka Mafuzzy Chef. They talk about Serge’s hit show “How Hungry Are You?”, his unique relationship with Kawhi, his resurgent play under Nick Nurse, giving back to his home country and the worst place he’s been asked for an autograph. Danny and Harrison also look back at the Raptors’ recent road trip, Pascal Siakam’s improved game and break down all the NBA drama, including the Warriors beef, Jimmy Butler and Carmelo Anthony.
Still growing pains to experience despite quick start to Raptors’ season | Toronto Sun
“Things didn’t go our way tonight,” he began stating the obvious. “The ball didn’t bounce for us. As you can see it’s a full moon (actually, it wasn’t). Kawhi usually doesn’t lose the ball like that out of bounds (on a potential game-winner, no less) or have the number of turnovers he had (six). He doesn’t get the ball taken from him like that. Where you get Reggie Bullock open for a layup floater, that doesn’t happen often.”
Green though did have a point. He was still getting there.
“But we didn’t lose that game at the end of the game,” he said. “It was well before that. You could just tell. I was watching it as I was getting treatment. You could tell body language and just the atmosphere or how the guys looked, it didn’t look good. It kind of looked how we were the other night against New Orleans only we had more energy, better kick to start the game. But once things don’t start going our way we still have to find ways or still conduct ourselves in the same way and not getting down and letting last plays affect our next plays.”
There is plenty of experience up and down this lineup, but early on this team has shown a tendency of rather long funks. Prior to Monday’s game, they have been able to pull themselves out of it. The loss to the Pistons though was almost an entire second half lull and that can’t happen.
Green then agreed with the take shared by both Kyle Lowry and Leonard made moments before their own departure: Communication on the defensive end is lacking and it was the culprit on that final play that led to Bullock’s game-winning gimme.
“We still got a ways to go,” Green said chuckling when the communication question was raised. “(We) talk at certain times. Important times we need to talk more. I think that is what stood out the most tonight because our communication hasn’t been the greatest when you have a situation like that, especially at the end of the game. Guy gets an open look underneath the basket, that’s usually a communication factor.”
Podcast: Locked on Raptors #418 – Dwane Casey’s Revenge w/ Katie Heindl – Raptors HQ
In Episode 418 of Locked on Raptors, Sean Woodley chats with Katie Heindl about the Raptors’ loss to Detroit on Wednesday night and all of the feelings and emotions that came with it. They discuss Dwane Casey dressing to impress his ex, whether the Raptors deserved the loss or not after their decidedly ghoulish albeit necessary summer moves, Greg Monroe’s strong performance with Serge Ibaka sitting and much more.
Despite hot start, Raptors still have plenty of work to do – TSN.ca
After the loss, Lowry, who was guarding the inbounder on that play, had some strong words in regards to his team’s defensive communication, or lack thereof.
“I think [it’s] just [about] talking, man,” said the all-star point guard. “Communication. Open your mouth. We’ve gotta speak, we’ve gotta talk, you’ve gotta say something. Can’t play if you can’t say nothing.”
“On the last possession you’ve gotta communicate. We have to open our mouth and say switch. We have to talk. Simple as that.”
Similarly, Anunoby and Siakam got crossed up on the ill-fated final possession of a loss to Miami last season, when a defensive breakdown gave Wayne Ellington an open path to a game-winning layup. Those are two of the Raptors’ best defenders, but they’re also two of their youngest players – now a sophomore and third-year player. They don’t have a ton of experience playing together, and they have very little experience sharing the court in crunch time. Certainly, this group – with Leonard and Danny Green, who will be out there to close most big games – doesn’t have much experience playing together in those situations.
The point being, there’s a learning curve here. Nurse and the Raptors can and will continue to work on late-game execution and stress the importance of communication, and that helps to a degree. But simulating those situations in practice or watching them on film don’t replicate the intensity and the pressure of being in those moments. They’ll need the reps.
After Friday’s game in Boston, which should be a good test, the Raptors will visit the Bulls, Magic and Hawks – all losing teams – before returning home to face the slumping Wizards and Heat. From there, the schedule gets tougher. They’ll see the improved Grizzlies and host the Warriors in late November, then face the Nuggets and new-look 76ers in early December before heading out on a daunting West Coast road trip, where they’ll play the Clippers, Warriors, Trail Blazers and Nuggets in the span of a week.
It won’t be an easy stretch, but that’s a good thing.
The ability to execute down the stretch will ultimately determine whether this team can reach its ceiling. Taking care of business and blowing out inferior opponents is impressive in its own right, but it’s not always indicative of how good a team is. The 2017-18 Raptors are a prime example of that.
Nurse went with a big and switchable lineup that included Leonard, OG Anunoby and Siakam across the three wing positions (a personal favourite of mine on paper), and that group played to a plus-1 in four minutes and change, but they just couldn’t get over the hump and get the lead back. The defence was really good with that unit, with the Pistons only managing six points during that four-plus minute stretch, an estimated defensive rating of 60 for Toronto. Detroit only scored 100.5 points per 100 possessions on the night, by the way, so while the 106-104 final looked a certain way, Toronto’s problems primarily came on offence. That’s especially true late.
The fivesome they rolled with doesn’t have a lot of spacing and might be best with Ibaka, but it can work with Valanciunas as the centre. He wasn’t used much on the final possessions, though — after the Leonard-Valanciunas pick-and-roll began to show some emerging chemistry, Toronto mostly went away from it, isolating four times in the final six minutes. Those four isolations produced two points, while they shot 3-of-5 using pick-and-rolls in that same stretch.
And yes, there is some irony here in the Raptors getting a little redundant with one-on-one play-call decisions against Casey. For years, Casey was criticized for his lack of a playbook, even though those criticisms weren’t particularly accurate. (The Raptors consistently scored well in out-of-timeout situations, and many DeMar DeRozan “isos” came after an advantage was created elsewhere. This is not a fight I care to re-open, and it’s true Casey still did have some semi-habitual in-game mistakes, his reputation as a poor tactician was just always exaggerated.)
“You get criticized for a lot. People have their own perception. The perception is he’s a communicator. He’s a hard worker. He’s a grinder. ‘I respect him,’” Casey said at the end of an all-around awkward day. “I’ve been in this league for a long time, I’ve seen everything there is. Execution, knowing end-of-game plays, I’ll put them up against anyone in the NBA. People have to hang their hat on something, saying he can’t do this, he can’t make decisions. I just smile at it.”
Anyway, the Raptors trusted Leonard to create a lot of the offence himself. He’d finish with 26 points on 28 used possessions. He now ranks seventh in the NBA in total isolations on the year and is in the 57th percentile scoring on them, per Synergy Sports. (He was in the 72nd and 85th percentile his last two healthy seasons, for reference.) There are reasons for that decision, like wanting Leonard to continue to get reps like these, the fact that they liked the Stanley Johnson matchup for him and that Leonard is normally an extremely low-turnover player, offering a semblance of security. It didn’t work out as well here as they’d hoped, obviously.
Communication breakdown keys Toronto Raptors’ skid | The Star [subscription]
“We’d have these 20-point leads and cut it back to six, and it was a really similar pattern to what we’ve seen. We just took our foot off the gas a little bit defensively and all of a sudden they’re shooting a couple of wide-open threes and that just sparks them. … All that work you’ve done for, say, 34 minutes is gone quickly because you just took your foot off the gas a little bit.”
Green was in the locker room getting treatment for lower back stiffness as Toronto surrendered its lead to the Pistons and eventually conceded a last-second, game-winning shot to Reggie Bullock. He didn’t like what he saw on television from the training table.
“We didn’t lose that game at the end of the game,” Green said. “It was well before that. You could just tell. I was watching it as I was getting treatment. You could tell body language and just the atmosphere or how the guys looked; it didn’t look good. It kind of looked how we were the other night against New Orleans only we had more energy, better kick to start the game. But once things don’t start going our way, we still have to find ways or still conduct ourselves in the same way and not getting down and letting last plays affect our next plays.”
Green joked that there must have been a full moon on Wednesday night, a night of strange results league-wide with losses for the Philadelphia 76ers, Milwaukee Bucks and Portland Trailblazers, among other hot teams. Leonard, for example, booted the ball out of bounds on the Raptors final possession, in a quarter where he had five turnovers. Green said his longtime teammates “doesn’t get the ball taken from him like that.”
Whatever was at play, though, Green said the team still has a ways to go when it comes to communication and the maturity needed to close out games, even though it’s early in the season.
“They talk at certain times,” he said. “Important times we need to talk more. I think that is what stood out the most (on Wednesday) because our communication hasn’t been the greatest when you have a situation like that, especially at the end of the game. Guy gets an open look underneath the basket, that’s usually a communication factor.”
Thoughts on Casey’s return and more – TSN.ca
3. TORONTO RAPTORS (12-3): It’s a long season and losing two in a row exposes some areas that need improvement. The team shoots a good number of threes but still lacks the consistency of being able to make them. Turnovers have been an issue in some of their recent games. On the defensive side, they’re still working to achieve play-by-play efficiency and focus in their scheme. When they’re locked in, they’re terrific. Other times they float and it leads to critical breakdowns. It’s early in the season and poor stretches create an opportunity for self-evaluation and growth. It’s how you react to the setbacks that will set the table for sustained excellence and achievement. They head on the road for four straight now, with the first one on Friday in a difficult matchup at Boston. It’s amazing what 72 hours of adversity can do to change the theme of a team. It’s time to bounce back and keep grinding and growing. This is all part of the process of building a true winner.
Friday game preview: Toronto Raptors at Boston Celtics | The Star [subscription]
Key players: Kyle Lowry/Kyrie Irving
After a hot start to the season, Lowry quieted down during Toronto’s three-game homestand, averaging 9.3 points and 8.7 assists while shooting 15.4 per cent from beyond the arc. He still led the league with 10.7 assists per game heading into Thursday’s play. Irving, who probably wouldn’t mind a veteran presence like Lowry’s on his team, is leading Boston with 20.7 points, 5.5 assists and 1.5 steals per game.
Need to know: The Celtics thumped the Chicago Bulls 111-82 on Wednesday night, a win the team hopes will provides a boost and help Boston jump higher than fourth in the Eastern Conference. Boston has made 189 three-pointers this season, good for second in the NBA, which accounts for 38.4 per cent of its points, so Toronto will need to shut them down on the perimeter and keep up from behind the arc at the other end of the court … The Raptors are shooting 33.9 per cent from three so far this season. Danny Green, who left Wednesday’s loss to the Detroit Pistons in the third quarter with lower back tightness, sounds like he doesn’t expect to miss any more time because of the injury and Serge Ibaka is expected to be available after missing that game with right knee soreness. Toronto will likely be without Norman Powell (shoulder) and C.J. Miles (adductor) … As is custom for the Raptors so far this season, Kawhi Leonard will likely sit out either Friday’s game against the Celtics or Saturday’s game against the Bulls; he has yet to play back-to-back this season … Boston leads the league with a defensive rating of 101, compared to the Raptors’ seventh-place rating of 107.
Did I miss something? Send me any Raptors-related article/video to rapsfan@raptorsrepublic.com.
