New footage has emerged which changes everything.
NBA Power Rankings: Predicting every team's future – Sports Illustrated
9. Nuggets – Nikola Jokic has brought the Nuggets back into perennial playoff status, and Jamal Murray is signed long-term as his running mate. Murray’s growth will be critical for Denver moving forward. Ditto for Michael Porter Jr. If the aforementioned youngsters become All-Stars, we could see the Nuggets in the Finals. If they falter, Jokic’s prime will be wasted.
8. Raptors – Masai Ujiri has done a masterful job shaping this roster, even if Fred VanVleet cashes out and leaves in free agency. Perhaps a reset is on the way when Kyle Lowry and Marc Gasol see their contracts end, but don’t count Toronto out of the 2021 free agency chase. Could Giannis Antetokounmpo consider moving north of the border? If he does, vault Toronto to the top of these rankings.
7. Heat – Miami has built beautifully in recent years, acquiring a stockpile of young talent headlined by Bam Adebayo. Can they lure a free agent in the 2021 class? Pat Riley always has a plan up his sleeve. Giannis Antetokounmpo could be enticed if things go south in Milwaukee.
While a return to NBA basketball games is still uncertain, the league is reportedly about to take its first major step in that direction. Starting on May 1, the NBA will allow teams in areas with relaxed social distancing guidelines to reopen their practice facilities, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Players will only be allowed to work out individually, as group workouts will still be prohibited. Considering how many star players have revealed that they currently lack access to proper equipment, though, that is still a significant improvement.
While this is no guarantee that the NBA ultimately resumes its season, it is at least a meaningful first step. The most recently reported plan to bring basketball back involved a 25-day preparation period in which players would work out individually for 11 days before coming together as teams for a 14-day training camp. Some players have expressed skepticism at the viability of such a truncated timeline, so reopening facilities at least provides players a chance to get a jump on individual workouts.
On paper, though, the idea of reopening facilities in certain areas would seem to provide a competitive advantage for teams in those areas should the season resume. Fortunately, according to Wojnarowski, the league will work with teams in areas that don’t relax their guidelines to provide local accommodations for workouts.
The decision to reopen facilities was brought on by Georgia’s upcoming relaxation of their stay-at-home guidelines. The league did not want players working out in public or otherwise unsafe facilities, per Wojnarowski.
Beginning on May 1, the NBA is allowing teams to open their practice facilities to players in cities and states where local governments have eased stay-at-home orders, sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) April 25, 2020
The one thing the Raptors have been able to hang their hat on regardless of who is available is defence. Even with players being in and out of the lineup, the Raptors have the second-best defensive rating in the league. According to NBA.com, they’ve been holding teams to an average 104.9 points per possession, a sizable improvement from last season (106.8) despite them no longer having two of the best perimeter defenders in the league in Leonard and Green.
Continuity helps – Lowry, Siakam, Gasol, Serge Ibaka and Fred VanVleet each played a key role in Toronto’s stifling defence last season – but Nurse set the tone before the season by calling out Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Stanley Johnson, two newcomers on the team, for not understanding how hard the Raptors play. While the Raptors still haven’t gotten much out of Johnson, it lit a spark under Hollis-Jefferson, who has since become the most versatile defender in the league.
Holding players accountable is part of the reason the Raptors have been able to build the defence they have. Nurse is also one of the best tacticians in the league. He’s shown on multiple occasions that he isn’t afraid to try new things, whether it’s by playing a box-and-one to slow down one particular player, a zone to mess with a team’s rythme or a full-court press to speed teams up, all of which are schemes you’re more likely to see at the high school level than the professional level.
It hasn’t always resulted in wins, but Nurse has proven to be the NBA’s most adaptive and innovative coach in only his second season at the helm.
“The game has changed radically offensively in the last five years, and I just think that maybe it’s the defense’s turn to radically catch up,” Nurse told James Herbert of CBS Sports this season. “And I think it’s spreading really fast, as everything does in this league.”
Who wrote Chicago Bulls theme song in "The Last Dance"? – Chicago Tribune
All that changed in 1984, when, as legend has it, Bulls announcer Tommy Davis heard the Alan Parsons Project instrumental “Sirius” while sitting in a theater waiting for a movie to start. Struck in the moment by the 114-second track’s signature echo-drenched synthesizer riff and roof-raising guitar solo, the former WLS-FM DJ bought the group’s 1982 album “Eye in the Sky” the next day and began practicing player introductions on top of it.
Before long, “Sirius” was reverberating through Chicago Stadium like an electric shock, becoming inextricably linked to the sight of Jordan and company storming the court en route to six NBA championships and forever transforming the nascent world of in-game sports entertainment. The song is now utilized by countless franchises in the world of basketball and beyond, to say nothing of its evergreen status as a bar mitzvah, wedding and air guitar anthem par excellence.
Parsons, a highly regarded British engineer and producer who worked on iconic albums with The Beatles and Pink Floyd before creating Alan Parsons Project in 1974, certainly never set out to write an American sports anthem. Indeed, the music he made with a rotating band of players was steeped in the studio precision and instrumental virtuosity of prog-rock titans such as Genesis, Yes and Floyd itself — hardly the fare one would expect to win over generations of American sports fans. What’s more, it was never intended to be played live — Parsons didn’t even begin touring regularly until 1993 after he split with longtime APP vocalist and songwriter Eric Woolfson, who died in 2009.
Welcome to Inside Open Gym presented by @Bell, where we break down the latest epi & give our fans a deeper look behind the scenes of what goes into it all.
This week's guests: @20_awill, @SmithRaps, Coach Nurse
Watch: https://t.co/T8PsiudWyt pic.twitter.com/KKZN2ZHgLt
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) April 25, 2020
While this can be viewed as a positive step, as Wojnarowski notes, it in no way means we’re any closer to NBA games being played.
As far as the Sixers go, it’s hard to imagine their players being allowed to work out anywhere locally any time soon.
New Jersey, where the team has its practice facility in Camden, has been hit hard by COVID-19. Only New York has more positive cases in the country than the Garden State. Even if the Sixers wanted to use the Wells Fargo Center or another gym in the city, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has said that Philadelphia will be “among the last” to reopen in the state.
Perhaps the 76ers Fieldhouse in Wilmington, Delaware, could be an option. It’s where the Blue Coats, the Sixers’ G-League affiliate, play. As of Friday, at least 3,442 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in the state.
We all want to see the NBA season resume, but even Wojnarowski himself is throwing cold water on his own report. Don’t get your hopes up too much with this news.
Planets to Phantoms, Toros to Tornados: 10 Toronto teams you may have forgotten – The Athletic
Toronto Torpedoes, roller hockey (1998)
Almost no mainstream media attention was paid to the Torpedoes, who attempted to rise from the roller hockey ashes the Planets left behind. They were part of Major League Roller Hockey, a league that had teams such as the Tampa Bay Rollin’ Thunder and the South Carolina Fire Ants.
Toronto selected Tie Domi in the 1998 draft. It was one of the only times the team earned mention in a local newspaper. Domi did not report, and the team did not return for a second season.
Toronto ThunderHawks, indoor soccer (2000-01)
Paul Coffey, by then a member of the Carolina Hurricanes, was a minority owner for an indoor soccer team that aimed to show Toronto could support professional soccer. The thing was, management opted to base the team in Mississauga, inside the still-new-but-decidedly-suburban Hershey Centre.
Hazel McCallion, the long-time mayor, attended the introductory news conference, but was not happy the team did not incorporate Mississauga into its name: “It is irksome.”
It was also short-lived. The team claimed to have lost more than $1-million in its debut season, and the league shut it down. (The league also folded, and was replaced by another league, which folded in 2008.)
Raptors: 3 offseason moves team must make if the season doesn’t resume
1. Re-sign Serge Ibaka/let Marc Gasol walk in free agency
Both Ibaka and Gasol become unrestricted free agents this summer. Ibaka was making $23,271,604 this season while Gasol was at $25,595,700.Since Marc is the older player with more miles on his body, it makes sense for the Raptors to re-sign Ibaka and let Gasol walk in free agency so he can sign with another club. Gasol only appeared in 36 games this season due to injury. He averaged 7.6 points, 6.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists.
Hopefully, Ibaka will give the Raptors some type of hometown discount once free agency starts. The 30-year-old, who will turn 31 in September, was putting up 16.0 points, 8.3 rebounds and 1.5 assists for Toronto before the season was suspended.
The Raptors and its fans will always appreciate Gasol for what he did for the team in the 2019 Finals against the Golden State Warriors. However, it just makes sense both financially and strategically to say goodbye to the Spaniard and bring back Ibaka — who is still an elite defender in the NBA.
Some believe Nurse was the front runner to win the 2020 Coach of the Year Award. After all, the Raptors were a stout team on both sides of the ball and this is after they lost one of the best players in the NBA in Leonard.
How Raptors coach Nick Nurse conducts a symphony of free-form hoops and jazz | The Star
Among the special guests at the launch event were Arkells, the Canadian band that’s become one of the Raptors’ musical talismans.
“Nick invited us to a Thelonious Monk documentary the other day and it was super cool,” Arkells guitarist and vocalist Mike DeAngelis said that night. “And he gave a little presentation about how the sort of free-form part of basketball is very similar to the free-form jazz, in how you react to one another and break the rules.”
Among the special guests at the launch event were Arkells, the Canadian band that’s become one of the Raptors’ musical talismans.
“Nick invited us to a Thelonious Monk documentary the other day and it was super cool,” Arkells guitarist and vocalist Mike DeAngelis said that night. “And he gave a little presentation about how the sort of free-form part of basketball is very similar to the free-form jazz, in how you react to one another and break the rules.”
Video: Raptors President Masai Ujiri Did Have Credentials, Alameda County Sheriffs Wrong
Masai Ujiri, Toronto Raptors President, is owed an apology by The Alameda County Sheriffs Department.
Hat tip to a viewer with better eyes than mine. But from the video of Raptors President Masai Ujiri on the floor of Oracle Arena after the altercation with the Alameda County Sheriffs Deputy after NBA Finals Game 6 2019, one can see that he was clearly carrying his credentials in his right hand!
And this tweet from ABC10 (KXTV) Sacramento Sports Producer and Reporter Sean Cunningham, who’s also the Sacramento Kings Radio Reporter, clearly shows Masai Ujiri has his credentials on him all the time.
