10 things: Selfishness and uncertainty cloud Raptors ahead of new campaign – Yahoo
4. Context from Jakob Poeltl
I asked Poeltl — who is undoubtedly the least selfish player on the team — point blank about whether Siakam’s game is selfish, and he provided valuable context about his longtime teammate.
“I wouldn’t call it selfishness. The selfishness comes into play when you’re trying to force plays that might be unnatural to your game, or that might break the team’s rhythm. So as long as you have an understanding of what’s the right read or what’s the right — there’s no 100 per cent right or wrong answers in these situations, there’s some grey area there. But understanding the game, having a feel for that, and I think Pascal has really good feel for stuff like that.
He’s more of a 1-on-1 player than most of the guys on our team, so he’s going to be in these situations a lot more than other guys, where he’s going to have the green light to go. For somebody from the outside looking in, it might look a little more selfish, but I really don’t think that’s the case because I know Pascal is the type of player when he still has the ability in those 1-on-1 situations to find the right play, where it might end up being a pass instead of being a bucket,” Poeltl told The Raptors Show.
To Poeltl’s point, there are some moments that can be up for debate, but there isn’t a glaring sign of selfishness. In terms of tracking data, Siakam ranked 40th in how long he had the ball at 4.9 minutes during a year where he led the league in minutes per game. That puts him right in line with most primary playmaking forwards (Giannis Antetokounmpo is at 5.2, Paul George at 4.9, Jayson Tatum at 4.8, DeMar DeRozan at 4.6), and Siakam ranked 143rd in the league at 3.6 seconds per touch so it’s not as if he was just holding it each time he received a pass. He was 21st in field-goal attempts, but only nine players averaged more assists among the 25 players who took 18 or more shots last season. If anything, Siakam looked right in line with the typical first option around the league at his position. There is more room for growth, but Siakam has clearly shown a willingness to do so given that his assists have increased in every season to date.
Siakam's future with Raptors remains in question as camp begins – Sportsnet
Not surprisingly, Siakam pushed back hard on the suggestion that he was part of the issue.
“I’ll speak for me, personally, I’ve never been a selfish player in my life,” Siakam said. “I’ve always played the game the right way and that’s from the first time I started playing basketball. I’ve always been a team player. All the things that I do on the basketball court is about the team and I’ve been like that my whole career … I think me evolving my game and being in a position where you get attention — and there’s a lot of attention — you have to make the right plays and I feel like I’ve always made the right basketball plays.
“When I’m out there on the court sometimes, it could look different because I feel like I always have two people on me every time I’m on the court,” he continued. “So sometimes it might look like I’m shooting over two people, but it is what it is. But I’ve always played the game the right way. I don’t have any selfishness in me. I’ve never really had coaches tell me that I wasn’t coachable, or I wasn’t listening, or I wasn’t doing the right things on the floor.”
But money talks in the NBA.
For all that Siakam has accomplished, the Raptors aren’t yet ready to pay him like he’s a foundation piece for their immediate future.
The tough-love message, fair or not, remains ‘prove it’.
But the future starts now. And while media day and training camp generally herald new beginnings and rosy futures, the Raptors seem to be heading into a new year with a lot of the questions from last year still lingering.
For all the intrigue about what rookie head coach Darko Rajakovic can bring or a full season of Poeltl will mean or the potential of new point guard, Dennis Schroder, who can attack the paint in the way no Raptor guard has since TJ Ford, might offer, the season begins where last year ended.
What will the Raptors do with Siakam? In a perfect world Siakam delivers his best season yet and meshes perfectly on a team where third-year forward Scottie Barnes promises to have more touches and more responsibility than in years past.
If it happens, Ujiri will look prescient. But the risk is the new season picks up where last season ended, with the Raptors — and Siakam — both falling short or stated goals and objectives. In that case, the Raptors will once again be most relevant for what happens off the floor, rather than on it.
Raptors return and signal change of course on media day – Toronto Star
A promise of selflessness, the notion of basketball played with heady intelligence, a new commitment to off-season diligence beyond Barnes’s undeniable dedication to filming commercials. All that was missing from Monday’s convention of happy campers was a roaring firepit, some marshmallows on sticks and Ujiri leading a rousing chorus of “Kumbaya.”
But for all those rosy outlooks, there was an undercurrent of unease to the proceedings. The Raptors are still going through the motions of a team that thinks it can compete at the highest level; as recently as last season’s trade deadline they were buyers, not sellers, acquiring Jakob Poeltl for a first-round pick even as they were destined for the draft lottery.
But now, after going 41-41 and getting blown out in the play-in tournament by the also-adrift Chicago Bulls, the Raptors have replaced the championship-proven Nurse with a first-time head coach who makes apologies for admitting his specialty is player development. That’s a step in a decidedly different direction.
“For me, player development is the most important thing,” Rajakovic said.
And as much as Rajakovic insisted Monday that development is about all 18 players on the roster — “It’s not just about the young guys,” he said — let’s face it, development is mostly about the young guys. The franchise’s foundational piece, Barnes, is 22. The newly arrived first-round pick, Gradey Dick, won’t turn 20 until next month.
Meanwhile, the impending free agent with whom Ujiri said the Raptors have yet to engage in contract extension talks, two-time all-NBAer Pascal Siakam, will turn 30 by season’s end. That’s a concerning organizational generation gap, to say the least.
So, let’s just say you didn’t need to be a world-class prognosticator to sniff the makings of a more comprehensive youth movement in the air. As Ujiri acknowledged, in an off-season that saw Siakam among the Toronto players dangled in trades, it’s something the front office has already contemplated.
“Did we look at other opportunities? Yes, we did. Did we look at maybe going younger? Yes, we did,” Ujiri said.
They haven’t gone younger just yet, though, because the NBA is an unpredictable place filled with undeniable parity, where the balance of power can shift on the right player’s restless whim. The prospect that anything is theoretically possible, that franchise transformation can happen in one negotiation, has kept the Raptors precisely where they are for a while now: treading water in the NBA’s unenviable mid-pack. And even though Toronto has missed out on trades to land stars Kevin Durant and Damian Lillard, Ujiri refused the close the door on the possibility of taking another big swing when the next NBA star decides to hit the market.
“I know everybody is looking for trades. I know everybody is looking for moves,” Ujiri said. “Trust me, when the right ones come … maybe we’ll take those opportunities.”
With those words, too, Ujiri was acknowledging the growing impatience with his torturous wait to concoct the next Kawhi Leonard trade. Organizational patience is great, to a point. But so is picking a lane.
In other words, somewhere along the line, if a trade to instantly morph Toronto into a contender isn’t imminent, doubling down on players in their early 20s seems like the responsible alternative.
Onus is on Masai Ujiri to make sure selfishness doesn’t impact Raptors again – The Athletic
As much as talent, though, the sense of what this team represents is a legitimate question. Scottie Barnes, the third-year player who figures to have the most room to grow individually as a result of VanVleet’s departure, called last year “energy draining.” Jakob Poeltl was more diplomatic, saying players last year had a tendency to try to change poor team play by themselves, and they had to “figure out a way to enjoy playing together through the ups and the downs.”
You can infer what you’d like from that, but Ujiri has already said it out loud. At various points last year, Ujiri said selfishness was among the problems that contributed to Toronto’s disappointing season. What that meant was never clarified. On-court issues? Focus on personal goals over team goals? Players not getting along personally? In fact, it’s unclear whether Ujiri ever got more specific in his diagnosis, other than that he knew it when he saw it.
“There’ll be no selfishness this year,” Ujiri said succinctly.
That Siakam went on a lightly prompted, full-throated defence of his motivations could not have been coincidental. As it happens, he is one of three core players who is likely to become an unrestricted free agent next offseason, and one of two, along with Gary Trent Jr., who can be offered a deal he might sign in the offseason. (Due to CBA constraints, the Raptors cannot offer O.G. Anunoby what he would get on the open market, although the defensive maestro did say he wants to remain in Toronto.)
“I don’t have any selfishness in me,” Siakam said. “I’ve never really had coaches tell me that I wasn’t coachable, or I wasn’t listening, or I wasn’t doing the right things on the floor.”
Ujiri said he has talked to Siakam, but not about an extension. Well, that is generally not how this league works.
Ujiri said the time will come to have those conversations, or not to have them, and that will depend on how everyone adjusts to a new playing style that Rajaković hopes gets the ball moving more quickly, with more decisiveness from the players. As for why Siakam hasn’t been offered a new deal, it’s not hard to understand: His efficiency has not been good enough for a first option in an offence, and the Raptors want to see if that changes before they add four years to his contract. That’s why they were in on Lillard, who would have bumped Siakam down to a lesser offensive role. The notion of paying Siakam full freight to try to fill a role that isn’t quite right is an issue, too — hence the talks about moving him.
The hope is that the context, with Rajaković changing the style and Barnes maybe growing into a bigger role, turns Siakam into a sharper version of himself. Saying that, this is a lot of nitpicking for a player the Raptors are fortunate to have, one of the 30 or so best in the league. Those get paid the most money they can be offered, by one team or another.
In that sense, it was notable to hear Siakam clarify, out of nowhere, that he is enjoying his life.
“It gets so super sometimes stressful because of all of the (off-court) things that are happening, but I’m actually living my dream,” Siakam said, hinting at the rumours and money talk. “It’s crazy. And I’m excited about that. … I wanted to say that.”
Generally, people make proclamations that they are actually having fun when it doesn’t look like they’re having fun. And that’s the way it has seemed with Siakam, who wears his emotions on his face, for the last year and change. The point? All of the chatter that has surrounded him and his team has worn on him.
That makes it incumbent on Ujiri to make some of the more pressing decisions sooner rather than later. It is clear that Ujiri intends on reshaping the team, but he is intent on determining his own timeline for that.
Raptors have created precarious environment for players by delaying the inevitable – Yahoo
In addition to trying to keep their players in the loop at all times, the Raptors can fall back on their history of treating their players right when it comes to the way they managed Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet at the 2021 and 2023 trade deadlines, refusing to trade them somewhere they didn’t want to go for a package that wouldn’t move the needle in a significant way. And they can fall back on their history of paying players when it comes to extensions and free agency, often giving them player options on the final year of their deals.
But as the Raptors get set to open the 2023-24 season, they have three core players on expiring contracts, with Siakam, Anunoby and Trent Jr. all extension-eligible and unsigned beyond this year. Ujiri confirmed the Raptors are yet to have contract discussions with any of the three aforementioned players, wishing to see how they fit into incoming head coach Darko Rajakovic’s new system first.
“Yeah, it is difficult to navigate,” Ujiri said about having three players on expiring deals. “We do believe in these players: that’s why we got them, that’s why we drafted these players, the players that you are talking about. I think as the year goes on we will figure out which way we’re going to go in terms of how they adjust to the new coach, new system and how we’re going to play.”
That makes sense for Anunoby, who is unlikely to sign the four-year, $116-million extension that he is currently eligible for. It also makes sense for Trent Jr., who is yet to prove himself flexible enough to adapt to any situation and play style, especially on the defensive end.
But when it comes to Siakam, a two-time All-NBA player and the longest-tenured Raptor who has proven adaptable enough to fit into any system and any role asked of him, playing the waiting game is a risky strategy when Siakam could follow in VanVleet’s footsteps and walk in free agency for nothing next offseason.
“We do believe in Pascal. We believe that a lot of our players didn’t play the right way last year and we want to see them play the right way,” Ujiri said about Siakam’s lack of long-term extension. “I said that we were selfish, I’m not running away from that. We were selfish and we did not play the right way. So, let us see it when we play the right way.”
Meanwhile, the three players all refused to comment on whether or not they would even sign a long-term deal if their maximum contract was offered by the Raptors this summer. But there was a palpable sense of frustration and anxiety in the air as media day unfolded — one uncommon for the start of what should be a new and exciting season as the Raptors get set to fly to Vancouver for training camp Monday evening.
“I’ve never been a selfish player in my life,” Siakam said. “I’ve always played the game the right way and that’s from the first time I started playing basketball. I’ve always been a team player. All the things that I do on the basketball court is about the team and I’ve been like that my whole career.”
When asked about his contract situation, Siakam said: “For me, I’m under contract, right? I’m a Raptors player. That’s literally what I’m focused on. I’m focused on the present and that’s all I can really care about right now.”
Siakam acknowledged that as a kid who grew up in Cameroon, he is living the dream right now. But sometimes the business of the NBA can take a toll on him, saying “I want to keep enjoying it. It gets so super sometimes stressful because of all things that are happening, but I’m actually living my dream.
“I always want to be the best I can be. At the end of the day, that’s what I focus on,” he added. “There are a lot of things I can’t control. I try to focus on the things I can control and the things I can control are me going out there every single day, being a great human being and working hard to be the best player I can be.
“So yeah, I’m focused on the basketball and being happy and being with people I care about. And that’s all I’m focused on.”
Hollinger: Raptors, Grizzlies and 3 more NBA teams that will exceed expectations – The Athletic
Toronto Raptors (over 36.5 wins)
Of all the preseason expectations I’ve seen, this is the one that absolutely floors me the most. The prognosticators have the Raptors finishing more than five games worse than last season and landing nearly 10 below .500. Apparently, most people think the Raptors are going to suck this year, which I presume is the result of the reductive math equation: “Average team minus Fred VanVleet equals suck.”
To me this is a triumph of The Narrative over common sense. This roster still strikes me as playoff-caliber, especially in the NotGreatBob assemblage that is teams No. 3 through No. 15 in the Eastern Conference.
Yes, going from VanVleet to Dennis Schröder is a downgrade (FIBA competitions aside), but that’s not the only change. Remember, relative to last season’s Raptors, the biggest positional difference isn’t at point guard, it’s that they get a full season with a real center.
Toronto only played 26 games with Jakob Poeltl after acquiring him at the trade deadline; the Raptors went 15-10 with him as a starter and had a plus-3.2 average scoring margin in those games. Yes, the usual disclaimers about March basketball apply, but that’s a decent proof of concept for the “Raptors with somebody bigger than 6-foot-9” approach.
Meanwhile, check out the rest of the team. The Raptors have a looooong way to go before they become a 35-win team; they had everything go wrong last year and still went 41-41 with a plus-1.5 scoring margin. Pascal Siakam is an All-Star, O.G. Anunoby is an all-world defender who should look even better now that he doesn’t have to masquerade as a part-time center, Scottie Barnes could be poised for a breakout and the most important players are all in their 20s.
Additionally, the disaster bench of last season should be much better (and can’t possibly be any worse) via the offseason additions of Gradey Dick (an actual shooter!) and Jalen McDaniels. You still wish there was another reliable point guard on this roster, one more shooter in the mix and a more efficient leading man than Siakam and/or Barnes. But we’re not calling a title shot here. We’re just saying the Raptors are more than good enough to tread water.
Finally, try this exercise: What would it look like for the Raptors to win any fewer than this number? For any draft lottery scenario, incentives matter, and I don’t see a repeat of the 2020-21 Tampa Tank season. It’s possible the Raptors cash in their Anunoby stock in February before he hits free agency, but by then, the season is two-thirds over.
Additionally, remember that Toronto owes a top-six protected pick to San Antonio this season. The Raptors would have to be pretty awful to guarantee keeping a top-six pick with the new lottery rules, as you don’t feel good about your chances without a bottom-three record and aren’t a lock until you’re bottom two. The Raptors aren’t anywhere near bad enough to get into that hunt, even with trades and/or injuries.
This takes us back to the other big reason to like Toronto’s over: incentives. With the draft pick already committed to another team, if the Raptors do anything substantial, their best move is to push forward, not go backward. Witness their recent pursuit of Damian Lillard as a proof of concept. As a result, they’ll keep pursuing a Play-In spot even if they fall short of my expectations and are trending toward 35-ish wins. But I think they’ll end beating that number rather comfortably.
Josh Lewenberg: Toronto Raptors open training camp under cloud of uncertainty | TSN
Ujiri got defensive when pressed on his team’s uncertain direction and underwhelming off-season, which saw them lose Fred VanVleet to Houston in free agency. Coming off a summer of trade speculation and heading into a contract season, Pascal Siakam was non-committal about his future in Toronto. You could feel the weight of an ugly legal battle, a failed half-hearted pursuit of Damian Lillard, three pending free agents and waning good will amongst an increasingly impatient fan base hanging over the franchise like a dark cloud.
It was not exactly an encouraging start to the new season. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on where things go from here, it was only the first day at the office. On Tuesday, the Raptors open training camp just outside of Vancouver in Burnaby, B.C., and there will be plenty of pressure on incoming coach Darko Rajakovic to block out the noise and establish a new identity and culture under difficult circumstances.
Looming as potential distractions before the campaign even tips off at the end of the month:
There’s the unsettled lawsuit, which implicates Rajakovic and several others in the theft of proprietary information by a former Knicks staffer, who remains employed by the Raptors.
“I know who I am,” said Rajakovic, who maintained his innocence but couldn’t elaborate on an ongoing legal matter. “I know how my parents raised me, I know what I see every single day when I look in the mirror and I know there’s nothing that I should be worried about.”
There’s the absence of VanVleet, the all-star point guard and long-time team leader, and the void he leaves behind, both on and off the court, without an obvious replacement.
Then there’s the contract status of Siakam, O.G. Anunoby and Gary Trent Jr., three-fifths of Rajakovic’s possible starting lineup, each of whom could become an unrestricted free agent next summer. That’s a precarious situation for any team to be in, let alone one that just watched VanVleet walk out the door. As things stand entering camp, the ever-patient Ujiri is in no rush to find a resolution.
While their names were frequently mentioned in rumours ahead of last year’s trade deadline, and then again over the off-season, Ujiri has been reluctant to deal Siakam and Anunoby – players he drafted, watched develop and values highly. So, if a trade isn’t coming, an extension or two must be, right? Not necessarily.
Due to the structure of his current contract and a wrinkle in the league’s collective bargaining agreement, the Raptors can offer Anunoby an extension that tops out at $117 million over four years, well below his perceived market value. Even if it’s offered, expect Anunoby and his representation to turn it down, regardless of his long-term plans (and, for what it’s worth, he had this to say about his future with the team: “I love Toronto, so I want to be here.”).
Word was that the Raptors were nearing an agreement with Trent shortly after he opted into the final year of his current deal in July, but those talks have stalled since. As for Siakam, Ujiri confirmed that they’ve yet to open negotiations.
Paraphrasing his message to the two-time all-star and All-NBA forward, who is eligible for a maximum extension worth north of $200 million and can sign it up until the end of the season: if you want a new deal, you’ll have to earn it. It’s a bold, albeit unusual tactic to take with your best player and one of the top 20 or so players in the league, but Ujiri wants to see how he (and the others) fares in a new system under a new coach before committing that kind of long-term money.
The question of selfishness hangs over Raptors at media day – Toronto Star
Much will be made of the fact team president Masai Ujiri suggested — again, as he has since last April — there was a level of “selfishness” that derailed last season’s team.
He’s not wrong. It was obvious to anyone who watched the 2022-23 Raptors that something was off for most of the season. But to suggest that criticism was levelled solely at Siakam is ludicrous — “I always said last year that we didn’t play very well as a team, but individually our players do well,” Ujiri said — but there’s also no denying Siakam felt it.
“I could see it,” he said. “We just have to have better chemistry and understand each other, play well off each other. When you see a lot of teams play, you understand what they do and you know how things happen and the way they follow through.
“Everyone plays their role and that’s mostly like how it is. It has to be that way (here).”
Much will also be made about Siakam’s contractual status as he enters the last year of his deal. He’s eligible to negotiate a new one that could stretch out to four years and about $189 million (U.S.) which is crazy money, indeed.
But he also could wait. If he ends up making one of three all-NBA teams this season he’d be in line for a five-year, $286-million super-max deal. It might be worth betting on himself because even if the all-NBA honours don’t materialize, $189 million is a pretty good fallback position next June.
No one is publicly discussing where negotiations might go — “I’ve talked to Pascal. We haven’t talked contract extensions yet,” said Ujiri; “I think those types of questions will be left to those people that represent me. That’s kind of why I pay them, so I don’t have to answer that,” said Siakam — and no one knows what might happen. But what isn’t in dispute is how Siakam sees himself with this group and what he feels he’s become in seven seasons with Toronto.
“I don’t have any selfishness in me,” he said. “I’ve never really had coaches tell me that I wasn’t coachable or I wasn’t listening, or I wasn’t doing the right things on the floor. And when I didn’t do that, every time a coach told me I wasn’t doing something right, I’ve tried to rectify it.
“That’s kind of why I’m here today anyway, as a player, just learning from mistakes and getting better.”
Siakam and new coach Darko Rajakovic also have a familiarization process to go through, one that began with a dinner meeting last June and continued last month at open gym runs.
“We had a great meeting talking about style of play, exact style that we are talking about now and he’s really trying,” the coach said. “He’s really trying to buy into that and to make quicker decisions, and to be more aggressive when he catches the ball. That’s going to be an ongoing process, it will not change overnight, but I think he has a great willingness to play this style of basketball.
“He knows that’s the right way to do it to win basketball games.”
Contract extensions loom for three key Raptors, but team won't rush it | Toronto Sun
WHO TAKES VANVLEET’S LEADERSHIP ROLE?
Just as VanVleet’s on-court point guard role is likely to be filled by more than one Raptor, his role as team spokesperson and locker room general looks like it’s going to be filled by a collective rather than one player.
Scottie Barnes says he’ll be one of those guys stepping into that leadership void.
“There’s more opportunities for me to step into that leadership role,” Barnes said. “I feel like that’s something I really trying to step into. I don’t think it’s going to be that hard to be a leader. I feel I can lead. It’s just about me using my voice and being able to play hard and just being more focussed on my job on the floor.
“And then of course we got so more vets on our team as well. These guys have been through it all so they can help out a lot as well.”
Anunoby said he will also put it on himself to be more outspoken and take on more of a leadership role.
Veterans such as Thad Young, Otto Porter Jr. and Garrett Temple may have expanded roles in terms of leadership with few of the current starters possessing the kind of vocal leadership a team often needs.
Raptors Aren't Ready to Commit to Pascal Siakam Long Term – Sports Illustrated
Here’s the situation: Siakam is eligible for a contract extension worth up to a maximum of 30 percent of the salary cap, or roughly $202.28 million over four years following this season. Typically, players of Siakam’s stature sign those extensions before they enter free agency. It’s why so few star players these days ever hit the open market in free agency. And yet, Toronto is in no rush to actually sign a deal and has yet to engage the 29-year-old in serious contract discussions.
Why?
“We do believe in Pascal. We believe that a lot of our players didn’t play the right way last year and we want to see them play the right way,” said Raptors president and vice-chairman Masai Ujiri. “I said that we were selfish, I’m not running away from that. We were selfish and we did not play the right way. So let us see it when we play the right way.”
Siakam, for his part, said he’s never been a selfish player. He plays the game the “right way,” he said.
The question for the Raptors is does that way jive with what the organization and new head coach Darko Rajaković is looking for?
“We’re going to try to move the ball more, we’re gonna try to implement .5 offense,” Rajaković said. “I never liked heavy ISO style of basketball. I don’t think it can be winning on the highest level. I think my biggest thing is going to be to get guys to buy in that doing less is actually doing more.”
While Siakam wasn’t a heavy-ISO player, per se, he did average nearly four ISO possessions per game last year with nearly 16 percent of his possessions coming in isolation.
This season, it appears the Raptors want to move away from that. Take the ball out of Siakam’s hands a little more and create a more egalitarian offense with ball movement. Yes, the ball will still find the best players’ hands, Rajaković said, but it will look different than it has in years past.
For now, the Raptors seem heading for what is essentially a trial period with Siakam. They “believe” it can work with him, but until they see what he looks like in this new system, that belief isn’t strong enough to extend the kind of offer a player of Siakam’s caliber would usually command. He may end up being the guy for Toronto, but it appears right now that the Raptors aren’t quite sure.
Expect a more generous Raptors team than the one you saw a year ago | Toronto Sun
Management has altered the team makeup enough to make sure that is easier, starting with a new head coach, but under no circumstances will a repeat of the 2022-23 season be tolerated.
That selfish play of a year ago? Consider it a bad memory. Team president Masai Ujiri guarantees it.
“There’ll be no selfishness this year,” Ujiri declared at a Raptors’ media day that was far less comfortable for Ujiri, in particular, than any we can remember since he arrived following an off-season that saw him make changes to make up for losing Fred VanVleet for nothing.
New head coach Darko Rajakovic’s approach won’t allow there to be any selfishness, at least that’s the hope.
Rajakovic has already had most of his players in open runs through the month of September at the team practice facility and has taken great pains to stress the importance of playing fast, making quick decisions and above all else sharing the basketball.
And if that’s not enough, Ujiri has been in the players’ ears as well, expressing his displeasure in that “selfish” play from a year ago and making sure players know they would be held accountable should a repeat of that play out.
Rajakovic alone can ensure there it happens again. He wields the only power a team really has anymore over the multi-millionaires playing for them in his control of minutes.
Those that don’t get in line and follow his up-tempo, share-the-ball philosophy can be reined in with a seat on the bench.
Clearly, it’s a tougher message to send if it’s one of your core bucking the team trend, but it does seem like a hill worth dying on (or in this case potentially losing a player) if the behaviour continues.
That ‘selfish’ play of a year ago led to a lot of inner discontent on the team until ultimately those chemistry issues became big enough to sidetrack what was a talented basketball team.
Ujiri maintains that individually the team made progress last season, but the ultimate failing was their inability to work together as a cohesive unit.
Reading between the lines, if that starts to happen again this season, it won’t go unchecked.
Raptors Share Comments on Ongoing Legal Battles with Knicks – Sports Illustrated
The Toronto Raptors weren’t going to say much about the ongoing lawsuit levied by the New York Knicks at the organization due to allegations of intelligence theft, but if it’s something that’s worrying the organization, Monday’s Media Day certainly didn’t show it.
It’s been just over a month since the Knicks filed the suit alleging a former member of the organization Ikechukwu Azotam shared thousands of proprietary files with his new employers in Toronto. The suit suggested Azotam acted a “mole” as part of a larger conspiracy that involved new head coach Darko Rajaković who New York suggested needed help creating a gameplan for Toronto as a first-time head coach.
“I was surprised. I was shocked,” Rajaković said of his reaction to the suit. “I did not know where it was coming from.
“What I can say is, I know who I am. I know how my parents raised me. I know what I see every single day when I look in the mirror. I know that there’s nothing that I should be worried about. And I cannot wait for this lawsuit to be over so everybody can find the truth.”
Raptors president Masai Ujiri was more dismissive of the suit.
