Best unboxing video ever #nbachamps 💍 pic.twitter.com/Pgz1bOg82q
— Serge Ibaka (@sergeibaka) October 23, 2019
Host William Lou is joined by Vivek Jacob to recap the euphoric celebrations on ring night, and preview the remaining games this week.
Topics:
Sights and scenes from the ring ceremony
Pascal Siakam blossoming before our eyes
Fred VanVleet making the leap
OG Anunoby coming on strong
Concerns over Kyle Lowry and Marc Gasol
Under review: Nick Nurse adjusting to strategy with coach’s challenges – The Athletic
This is the first year of coach’s challenges in the NBA, after a two-year trial in the G-League. The rules are fairly simple: A coach must have a timeout to make a challenge, and must call one immediately after the call in question in order to trigger a review. It can be used on any called personal foul on its own team, a called out-of-bounds play or a call of basket interference. A coach can use the challenge on a personal foul at any point in the game, while the latter two instances are triggered by referees in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime.
Most importantly: A coach only gets one such challenge a game, regardless of whether or not the call is overturned. Timing is everything. In Nurse’s mind, you might as well save it for a high-leverage play.
“One of my thoughts on (the rule) was, on a 3-ball, when (one of the Raptors’ defenders) goes out and challenge it and they call one, almost just asking our guys did you touch him or not and have the real talk with them,” Nurse said after Tuesday’s win. “‘You’ve got to be honest, because I’m gonna burn a timeout. Don’t say you barely touched him or whatever.’ I thought that would save a foul and possibly three free throws.
“But I thought (in Tuesday’s instance) we made the basket. I thought we made the basket. At least I was going for a high return on that.”
Indeed, it was a potential three-point play, which would have obviously been very valuable in a game that was decided in overtime. Still, Nurse ended up burning his only challenge in the first quarter, and he was nonplussed with plenty of calls after that point.
Nurse said he had a productive conversation with Raptors 905 coach Jama Mahlalela about using the challenge during the preseason, with Mahlalela offering him some “really good points.” After a full year of using the system, though, Mahlalela likely would have saved his challenge for later in the game on Tuesday.
“It’s mainly just being strategic with when you use it,” Mahlalela said during the Raptors’ training camp in Quebec City. “Sometimes early in the game you feel like you want to use it because there’s something that looks like, ‘Hey, I could win this and get the call right.’ But you don’t want to waste it early. That would be my advice. Sometimes you use it in the second quarter or the third quarter, but then in the fourth you’re like, ‘I wish I could challenge that one.’
Opener offers look into how Raptors’ Nick Nurse handling late situations – Sportsnet.ca
As much as there was anything instructive about it, Tuesday’s emotionally-draining, opening-night win was a first glimpse at how Nurse will approach these situations. Some early insight into how he’ll approach the biggest questions his team has to answer over the next half-year or so as they endeavour to defend their throne and raise a second championship banner. Who gets those looks with the game in the balance? Who do the Raptors go to when they desperately need a bucket? How does this team compensate for the loss of Kawhi Leonard?
“There’s a chunk of the offence that’s missing. That’s got to be filled in by somebody. And I think we start with our own guys,” Nurse said before the game. “I think that there’s plenty of guys that could use a few more shots a game or a little more usage. That’s where it’ll come from for now.”
The biggest beneficiary from a usage standpoint Tuesday was Pascal Siakam, who either shot, drew a foul, or committed a turnover on 35 per cent of the possessions he was on the floor during. That was Toronto’s highest usage rate by far — even higher than the 30 per cent mark Leonard led the Raptors with over his torrential season in Toronto, which ranked among the top 15 across the league.
“He was pretty good. He was carrying us there for stretches,” Nurse said. “We had to go to him time and time again there for stretches. And he produced.”
Raptors’ Kyle Lowry passes torch to Siakam, VanVleet – Yahoo!
The fun is evident. They love kicking ass and they’ll do it every which way they can. When Siakam couldn’t get his shot to fall, he was all over the offensive glass, cleaning up his own misses and others’ on six occasions. When the game was in danger of slipping away late in the fourth quarter, it was Siakam who scored five straight, first an and-one finish at the rim before a dive into the paint where Lowry found him for a lay-in. When VanVleet was slowed by an ankle injury right before the end of the third quarter, he promptly came back in the fourth and shifted to playing off the ball and draining a pair of massive 3-pointers, once in regulation to tie the game late and then in overtime to cushion the lead. The duo got to the line 17 times and missed just twice. In the face of opportunity, they never blink.
Somewhere along the way, the Raptors have found the balance between pounding the rock and letting it rip.
No team has had its chances of defending its NBA title written off quicker than the Raptors because no team has had its Finals MVP depart immediately after winning it all. The concerns are fair, but this is a league now about the dynamic duo. On an opening night where Zion Williamson couldn’t accompany Jrue Holiday, where Paul George was a mere spectator to Kawhi Leonard’s heroics, and where Anthony Davis and LeBron James took the L, VanVleet and Siakam showed they’re willing to take on all comers with no regard for the box anyone on the outside wants to place them in. It’s a box Lowry has known all too well and refuses to place his teammates in.
“They’re going to continue to grow,” Lowry said. “Pascal and Freddy, they are the young core, they are the guys who will carry this thing on for however, whenever the time comes but I’m so happy for those guys to go out and perform like they did tonight and we’ll see them grow all year and we’ll continue to see them flourish.”
The ringmaker behind the Toronto Raptors championship bling – Macleans.ca
Lowry later offered suggestions, such as: let’s add even more diamonds. “We the North” looked cool, the point guard agreed, but how about just keeping the “North” chevron across the middle—no need for “We the”—and fill the open space with diamonds? The 14-karat, yellow-gold sides of the ring? More diamonds there, too.
“Kyle said he wanted it glassed out,” says Mike Zinyk, the ringmaker’s production manager. “He said to fill it with as many stones as you can.”
On opening night of the Toronto Raptors 2019-20 season, Baron unveiled its final product to the reigning champs: more than 650 Canadian-mined diamonds, totalling 14 carats; 16 rubies next to the jersey numbers of the 16 Raptors on last year’s roster; six diamonds on top of a golden Scotiabank Arena to represent the “6ix”; and a seven-millimetre diamond as the centrepiece to represent the Larry O’Brien Trophy. It is the largest NBA championship ring ever made.
Purists might call it gaudy, but the ring represents a team—and a country—that had been on a 25-year quest for an NBA championship. And for Baron Championship Rings, based in an unassuming building in a quiet town near the Detroit-Windsor border, the ring tells a story of its own quest for supremacy.
Raptors celebrate NBA championship, prove they’re still very good – USA Today
Asked what he learned about the Raptors during the preseason, veteran big man Serge Ibaka said, “We’re still good, man. People are sleeping on us. We’ve got players who can play, who have experience, confidence and mental toughness. We know how hard it is to win games, and we know how to play together. We don’t give up. We’re good man.”
Toronto has a strong starting five with Lowry, Siakam, VanVleet, Marc Gasol and OG Anunoby, with Ibaka and Powell off the bench. Yes, they lack depth and will have to develop that end of the roster.
But Siakam is a potential All-Star, All-NBA and All-Defensive performer who is not Leonard but still a very talented and unique player the way he operates on both ends of the floor. He’s going to get better, too.
Ibaka’s sentiment is shared throughout Toronto’s locker room.
“I keep saying this, there’s some really special players on this team,” Nurse said. “They can do a lot. They like to guard. They know how to guard. They can move the ball. They can shoot the ball. I’m expecting to have a really good team.”
That work ethic has taken Siakam from his home in Doula, Cameroon — where he participated in Basketball Without Borders and was inspired by NBAers — to a prep school in suburban Dallas to two years at New Mexico State to the NBA, where he is now considered one of the most exciting young talents after three seasons.
His father is always with him in spirit, whether the “RIP Dad” shows up in marker on his sneakers during games or as a hashtag at the end of his social media posts, alongside his personal mantras “humble hustle” and “doing it for you.” His brothers are regularly in tow, too. Tchamo Siakam always made sure that everyone around him was taken care of, and the son knows his father would be happy to see that continuing.
“He did a great job, he raised an amazing son and someone that kind of like represents him and who he was as a person, somebody that worked hard and loved everyone and showed every love and did it the right way,” Siakam said.
The aspirations of Siakam and his father were bigger than just providing security for their family. They wanted Siakam to be to future generations what players like Hakeem Olajuwon and Dikembe Mutombo were to him.
“I think just doing something like (signing the contract) is definitely going to change the minds of a lot of kids from Africa that look up to me and don’t think that things like that are possible,” Siakam said Monday. “They can look at my story and see the journey and how there were a lot of ups and downs and I just stuck to whatever I believed and continued to work hard to be able to be in this position.”
That’s the not-so-secret to Siakam’s success, a trajectory his dad put him on all those years ago.
NBA Free Agency: Raptors officially sign guard Shamorie Ponds to a two-way contract – Raptors HQ
Ponds joins the Raptors and the G-League’s 905 as a 21-year-old guard listed at 6’1” and 180 pounds. Hailing from Brooklyn, he’s spent the past three seasons playing for St. John’s in the Big East Conference, averaging 19.5 points, 4.5 rebounds, 4.3 assists, and 2.3 assists in 35.2 minutes per game. In that time Ponds has been good for 44 percent from the field and 33 percent from three. Ponds seemed about ready to try for the NBA in 2018, but apparently thought better of it and played out his junior season.
Nevertheless, after going undrafted in the 2019 NBA Draft, the Rockets signed Ponds and put him on their Summer League team where he put up 7.2 points and 2.2 rebounds in 20 minutes per game across five contests. After that, he got to run through training camp with James Harden and the gang, even getting the chance to travel to Japan to play in the two preseason games against these very same Raptors. Ponds skipped through eight minutes of action across the two games, putting in a total of five points. (You’d be forgiven if you’ve already forgotten this information.)
The main thing that appears to be working against Ponds right now is his size — again, 6’1” with a 6’3” wingspan — but he’s got a ton of quickness on the offensive end and, as those steals averages suggests, a nose for the ball on defense. With the departure of Jordan Loyd, and Isaiah Taylor’s apparenty decision to decline a two-way deal after Toronto put Malcolm Miller on the main roster, Ponds now stands to benefit.
And from the sounds of his excited tweeting, Ponds appears ready to go for the 905 already. Now he, and all of us, have to once again just trust the Raptors’ player development process.
‘I Don’t Get It’: NBA Execs Sound Off on Biggest Rookie Extension Deals | Bleacher Report
Pascal Siakam: ‘Raptors are still living off that championship high’
Similarly, Siakam’s four-year maximum extension ($129.9 million) with the Toronto Raptors (per Wojnarowski) led to some consternation.
“Not the player—he’s tremendous—but the Raptors are still living off that championship high,” the agent said.
Instead of protecting their cap space next summer, which could have reached over $80 million (including Siakam’s low $7.1 million cap hold), the Raptors gave Kyle Lowry a one-year, $30.5 million contract extension.
Toronto may not be a proven free-agent destination, but teams like the Brooklyn Nets, Memphis Grizzlies, Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers have all used cap room in trades over recent years, getting compensated with draft considerations for taking on unwanted contracts.
“I’d have played the restricted-free-agent game with Siakam,” one former executive said. “If you’re willing to pay the max, you can pay him that same max later.
“But it keeps the relationship strong and shows commitment,” he continued, using logic that would apply to Brown and the Celtics as well.
GANTER: Raps getting away with a short bench — for now | Toronto Sun
But even with the overtime that bumped VanVleet’s minutes to just over 44 in the opener, it was still about 10 minutes more than he was expecting to play.
“I figured it’d be right around 35,” he said. “I didn’t expect that. But I’m not complaining. I’m not complaining yet. Ask me in about two weeks if it keeps up. I’m riding a high right now. I’m feeling pretty good.”
The onus is on the likes of Stanley Johnson, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson — who was held out of the opener with a sore groin — and three-point specialist Matt Thomas to lock in with Nurse’s defensive needs and expected style of play to extend the rotation to a more sustainable number.
In the short term, Nurse and the Raptors can get away with the current situation, but it can’t stay this way for too long without potentially damaging the very guys he is going to rely on all season.
Davis’ early emergence has been extremely important in the Raptors’ present circumstances.
An undrafted rookie normally wouldn’t be counted on for much at all at this stage in his development, but there was Davis, contributing a much-needed 15 minutes in the opener and not looking all that out of place.
“I think what you see is what he is right now,” Nurse said of his rookie’s NBA debut. “He’s explosive, he flies right in and grabs some rebounds, he had a bunch of deflections and then he took a couple of ill-advised shots, a little quick, right?
“But again, he’ll learn but there’s a lot of tools there,” Nurse said. “I think the biggest thing is he competes. He’ll fly around and go get balls and rebound and make plays and guard people and that’s a great starting point.”
Ujiri has modelled a lot of what he’s built in Toronto on the Spurs franchise, and he said he deliberated over the wording of the banner for some time. He used “world,” he said, only because he considers the Raptors unique from the league’s 29 other franchises.
“As the only team outside the U.S., I think we’re a proud representation of the rest of the world,” Ujiri said.
Certainly Ujiri, a global citizen, is a proud representative of more than one port of call. A British-born, Nigerian-raised son of a Nigerian father and a Kenyan mother, he made his professional name in the U.S. before coming north to preside over the greatest era in the history of Canada’s only NBA franchise.
Given Ujiri’s diverse background, and his NBA beginnings as an international scout, it’s not a coincidence that his championship roster was infused with a global-village vibe. Toronto’s two best big men, Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol, are both Spanish nationals, and Ibaka was born in Congo. Breakout swingman Pascal Siakam hails from Cameroon. Jeremy Lin, the California-born, Harvard-educated shooting guard, is the son of Taiwanese immigrants and became the first Asian American to win an NBA ring.
All of that, Ujiri said, went into his decision to opt for “world champions.” And there’s something else. Call it an us-against-the-world attitude. Call it an “Eff-Brooklyn” swagger. Ujiri’s been trying to instill it in Toronto since he arrived here as GM in 2013.
While previous team executives whispered excuses for why Toronto couldn’t succeed in the NBA, from cold weather to deathly taxes — and while the local inferiority complex allowed those excuses to sometimes be accepted — Ujiri has loudly proclaimed a grand global vision for the franchise. As he has said more than once, he believes the team is positioned to transcend the NBA in the way that, say, a soccer powerhouse like Manchester United transcends the English Premier League, drawing fans from all over the planet.
WOZ BLOG: The rotation, Terence Davis, the Canadian kids and more | Toronto Sun
As expected, it was an awfully compact rotation for Nick Nurse, even in an overtime contest (won by Toronto 130-122). He has the seven returning guys he trusts, plus rookie Terence Davis II, who again showed some intriguing flashes, particularly in the passing lanes, where he appears to be a menace (more on that later). Nurse has said he wants to get the rotation up to nine and even 10 at times, with Patrick McCaw, Chris Boucher, Stanley Johnson, Matt Thomas, Malcolm Miller and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (who is currently injured) all potentially factoring in, depending on the situations.
It likely isn’t sustainable to play only seven guys heavy minutes and an eighth a handful, especially because Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet tend to pick up numerous nagging ailments along the way. They’re doing a few things to alleviate the load on the point guards, like giving Pascal Siakam some reps running the offence, letting Norman Powell do it, letting Marc Gasol facilitate more and eventually want Davis to do more of that (though he’s focusing on two-guard play for now as he gets his feet wet).
I talked to Davis as he sat studying a scouting report before he made his NBA debut in the second quarter, the first Raptor who wasn’t on the team last year to check in.
“I’m just focusing on the game, looking at scouting reports and things. I’m just locked in on the game. It’s my first one and I want it to be right and bring some energy into the game,” Davis told the Toronto Sun.
Toronto Raptors Prez Not Charged For Altercation With Deputy – SFGate
The district attorney’s office received incident reports from Oakland police and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in late July, and requested additional investigation and interviews that lasted until Sept. 1.
The district attorney’s office said that rather than file charges, “Both Mr. Ujiri and the Sheriff’s Department were made aware of and were in agreement with the decision to handle this matter by way of the meeting” that occurred Monday.
5 NBA stars who could get traded this season (plus one who probably won’t) – SBNation.com
Kyle Lowry
I’m not sure if this is true after what happened last June, but Kyle Lowry still feels like the least appreciated star of my lifetime. At 33, he’s a five-time All-Star, NBA champion, and plus/minus God. History will shine a brighter light on his career than it received at any point while he played, and right now, as his franchise’s all-time franchise player, Lowry is well-positioned to prop up Toronto’s future as a delicious trade chip.
Of everyone mentioned in this entire article, none can upend the season’s entire landscape if moved to the right team like Lowry can. That team is not Minnesota or Miami (maybe it’d make the Heat an Eastern Conference Finalist and apologies ahead of time for casting doubt upon Lowry once again), but what if Denver offers Gary Harris, Will Barton, and Michael Porter Jr.? Or what if the Raptors sent him to Milwaukee in a deal centered around Eric Bledsoe and a lightly-protected first in 2024. (That probably isn’t enough for Toronto, but forwarding Lowry to a place where he can compete for another championship would make that front office look genial in a precarious situation. How teams treat their players has never mattered more than it does right now.)
Elsewhere, if the Sixers trade Tobias Harris for him they probably win the title. But my favorite destination is Dallas, where Lowry would be the absolute best point guard for Luka Doncic over the next two years. Unfortunately, Jalen Brunson isn’t going to get a deal done.
The Raptors just signed Pascal Siakam to a four-year max contract because Lowry’s one-year extension ate the cap space that once justified waiting until next year to get a deal done. If you can avoid frustrating Siakam, you don’t; signing him now is a signal that the Raptors have their eye on the long game. If they blow the doors off every other team they play in the first few months of the season, there will be an obvious incentive to hold the core together as long as they can. But this team isn’t winning it all, and the longer they wait to break it up, the less they’ll get in return.
1. The Raptors trade one of Gasol or Ibaka, but not Lowry
I do not like starting like this. I leaned hard toward “Raptors give one of Marc Gasol or Serge Ibaka a one-year extension,” now that the team is mostly out of the 2020 market from a cap position. I think that’s possible, and it is not mutually exclusive from my prediction here.
Still, the idea of one of the bigs getting dealt feels weightier. I was admittedly a skeptic about the chances for a summer trade, and I still think the complicating factors – the difficulty matching salaries and a desire on the part of the Raptors to remain competitive this year – exist. Going forward, the preseason extensions awarded to Kyle Lowry and Pascal Siakam remove a big opportunity for the team to take on additional 2020-21 money, but it opens up more potential trade partners who can make the salaries work. The Raptors won’t take on 2021-22 money, but they’d probably be open to taking on an extra year of a deal to pick up a better asset in sending Gasol or Ibaka out.
There should be a market for both. Ibaka has solidified himself as a high-end offensive centre while Gasol is Gasol, a stout defender and high-IQ facilitator who fit in with the Raptors quickly and seamlessly. Boston and Milwaukee should both have a theoretical interest in Gasol to help them match up against Joel Embiid and Philadelphia. Portland is a fairly natural fit, too. If the Raptors are offered the opportunity to acquire a first-round pick or a prospect they really like, they’ll have to consider it. Continuing to compete as they retool is a priority. Maximizing 2021 and beyond is the priority.
I note that Lowry won’t be the one dealt because that bucks some of the recent discussion around him. Lowry’s extension likely makes him more tradable to certain teams that value an extra year of him over an expiring contract. It would still require a trade partner that can send out about $28 million in money to match salaries and attach enough of a sweetener for the Raptors to move on from their legacy player. Miami makes some sense, but they’d probably balk at Justise Winslow as an ask. Not a lot of teams have dead-ish salary to match, a need at a guard spot (Lowry fits anywhere, really) and the pick equity to make it worth Toronto’s while.
