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For 2020-21 Raptors, tanking ain’t easy. Here’s why: Murphy – The Athletic
In addition to Lowry resting, Fred VanVleet has missed 11 of the 24 games as he manages a hip issue. OG Anunoby has missed seven due to a lingering calf strain. Trent missed eight, Chris Boucher nine and Paul Watson Jr. 21 — the latter two with injuries for which the severity cannot be questioned. Pascal Siakam has been the only primary regular, and he sat three games, too. That the Raptors are 9-15 since the deadline with a plus-0.6 net rating is not due to them playing out the string with their foot on the gas.
This is where it’s important to remember players don’t tank and development matters. You could find your way to giving Lowry the Al Horford treatment, but as explained, he’s more or less done that with occasional games to stay fresh. You’d want Anunoby to be playing, as he’s a 23-year-old who has been making significant strides on offence. VanVleet is probably at the stage now where you could shut him down due to the hip, but he’s also still in the late-development or early-peak stage of his career arc, where developing pick-and-roll chemistry is helpful. You want Siakam to get his confidence back with big nights, and he gets to work on the crunch-time issues in games where the outcome isn’t quite as important. There’s also a real cultural and relational component to shutting guys down: They may not want to. That can’t be ignored, either.
Of the nine wins down the stretch, only a few were even loseable, really. They beat the Warriors by 53, enough of a cushion that Nick Nurse could have run a Blake Murphy-William Lou pick-and-roll for the fourth and not blown the lead. Wins against the Wizards, Cavaliers and Spurs came with both point guards out, anyway, and a win against the Thunder was without both of them and Siakam. Even their healthier wins against Cleveland and Brooklyn are understandable, as Cleveland is Cleveland and Brooklyn was down two of their big three. They’ve used 34 different starting lineups. It’s the Lakers game and the Trent game-winner against the Wizards that stand out, and that’s about it.
Losing those games would have insulated the Raptors so there’s no worry about falling lower than No. 7 in the lottery standings down the stretch, but to cobble together an extra five or six losses is near impossible. When you’ve had wins people would prefer to be losses while starting Bembry, Watson, a rookie point guard in Malachi Flynn and Stanley Johnson, you’re making the right moves. Who’s played the most minutes across the team’s post-deadline wins? Flynn. Anunoby got to spike his usage. Watanabe has been top-five in minutes during that time, too, as the team evaluates if he’s a long-term piece. Jalen Harris is getting his first opportunity. The Khem Birch addition probably nudged the team to being a little too good at times, but they’ve also given all of the backup minutes to an undrafted rookie out of the G League. (I’d argue the biggest mistake of the future-oriented approach was saving some money by not trialing more names like Freddie Gillespie sooner; their second two-way spot remains open, too.)
You can’t sit everyone, and the Raptors have prioritized young players with a potential future with the team.
Again, I understand how frustrating the year has been at times, and that a 31.9-percent chance at a top-four pick doesn’t exactly cauterize the wounds of this season. It’s not nothing, though, and even adding a top-10 pick to a young-ish core with notable cap flexibility should leave room for optimism for next year, not to mention the additional developmental reps that have been available in the last six weeks.
Ideally, yes, if you’re a team like the Raptors, you bottom out if you don’t think you can make a run past at least the first round. The path wasn’t obvious until the health issues at mid-season, and short of flipping Lowry — an understandable gripe that may look better or even worse in August, depending — it’s hard to say what more they could have done after March 25.
Pascal Siakam Is Finally Looking Close to His Best Again | Complex CA
Perhaps some of the hyperfocus on what Siakam has been bad at stems from some feeling they’ve seen this movie before with DeMar DeRozan and are having to relive the possibility of a No. 1 option with real flaws. The LeBronto scars run deep. Has Kawhi Leonard made anyone beneath that seem unworthy? To truly appreciate the championship is to understand what the journey was all about and everything that went into building up to the DeRozan-Leonard trade, not just what came after it.
What stands out about Siakam’s improvement this season is his handle, his mid-range shooting, and the aggressiveness with which he’s been attacking the basket. All of those are related and come back to work ethic and getting those reps in. Siakam’s dribble game seemed to have taken a nosedive after the extended break last season and it has been a steady process throughout this jam-packed regular season to get it back.
Siakam couldn’t find a home he wanted until after Super Bowl LV, the second week of February. With Tom Brady’s Buccaneers surging to the championship, demand was high even during a pandemic. He was living at the hotel the team initially set up when they moved to Tampa, Florida just a couple weeks before training camp and had been there long enough to know the hotel staff by name. Throw in the forced absence from the team between late February and mid-March due to health and safety protocols and continuing to get booed at home and it’s been—as Nick Nurse has called it—cement wall after cement wall thrown at the team. Yet, here is Siakam, continuing to stand tall with his teammates and power through their 72 road games and take the blows that come with it.
“For me, it’s that he’s getting buckets in a variety of ways and that he’s playing at the other end like he can, because he is a super defender,” Nurse said about what he’s encouraged by. “And that’s not easy to do, to be the guy that’s putting up 25-plus some nights 30, 40, whatever it is, and still producing at the other end as well and that’s it. He’s a tremendous talent, he’s a tremendous person, and we’re trying to continue to build his game. There’s always going to be things to add and things to work on.”
Siakam missed a three-point shot that could have tied the game as the overtime buzzer sounded against the Wizards. He and VanVleet exchanged knowing smiles suggesting, Hey, that’s just how this season has gone. Siakam joined Kawhi Leonard and Vince Carter as the only players in Raptors franchise history to record a 40-10-5 game with his 44 points, 11 rebounds, and seven assists, but the loss virtually ended all hope the Raptors could feature in the play-in tournament. That now brings the off-season closer and with that, another chance for Siakam to grow, another chance to get better, another chance to have more fun.
Dr. Kyle Lowry’s message to the Acadia graduating class: ‘How will you pay it forward?’ | The Star
“I want to leave you with these questions,” he said in a six-minute address. “How will you serve? How will you pay it forward? What will be your impact on your community? And how will you be a change agent for the next generation? If we do not, then who will?
“Booker T. Washington said, ‘Those happiest are those who do most for others.’ So remember, Acadia family, leading is not only about achieving your own goals but it’s also (about) uplifting others to achieve theirs.
“Success cannot be accomplished alone. It’s because of my family’s sacrifices and those who generally cared to invest in me and who I am that I beat the odds.”
Lowry received the honour for much more than his prowess on the basketball court, where he is known as one of the most competitive players in the game.
He and his wife, Ayahna Cornish-Lowry, run the Lowry Love Foundation which works to improve the lives of underprivileged and disadvantaged youth in Philadelphia and Toronto.
Whitney Ffrench, the daughter of a member of Acadia’s board of governors and a college basketball teammate and roommate of Cornish-Lowry at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, helped start the process to honour Lowry.
“I think the message that it sends to the current generation, both of our 2021 graduates and those that are going to be following, is that if we use the platforms that we have for a universal or social good, that’s how we move on forward out of whatever the dark times that we seem to find ourselves in,” Ffrench told The Star’s Steve McKinley last month.
