Racial equality, not basketball, on the minds of those in NBA
On his to-do list, Nick Nurse has a championship to defend, a roster to get back in shape after an unprecedented midseason three-month layoff and the prospect of convincing 17 somewhat spoiled athletes that three months in a confined area of Orlando is not worth whining about.
But all of that right now is taking a backseat to the current struggle for racial equality that is consuming all of our worlds right now.
On a conference call with reporters this week, the Raptors head coach admitted the vast majority of his meetings either with his players, his staff, fellow league coaches and representatives is dominated with talk of ridding society of the pervasive racism that came to a head with the recent murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
“There’s been, like, very little, if any at all, talk about basketball,” Nurse said. “I think we must have had four teamwide calls before we got to a quick 10-minute one yesterday to say this is this possible re-start. We’ve just given you kind of a heads-up here, but we’ve really been entrenched in the issue. Again, making sure everyone’s OK, everyone’s safe, listening to their ideas and thoughts, etc.”
It’s a strange time, really, to be doing anything else, given how wide-reaching and allconsuming the protests and marches have been all over the continent and throughout the world these past weeks.
“As tragic as all these recent events (have been), this has been going on for a long time,” Nurse said. “This is an historic opportunity to make some lasting change and I think we all have to take part in that.”
Nurse believes there is plenty of time to get everyone up to speed and locked in for basketball when it officially resumes with games on July 31. As it stands now, the Raptors are still in the decision-making stage of where and when its pre-training camp period begins and takes place.
“We’ve made plans on both sides of the border, just for doing it as safe as possible. That’s kind of our first and foremost priority, then maybe as quickly as possible too,” Nurse said. “We’re going to hopefully be in the Disney situation for quite a while, so we’ve got to take that into consideration, as well.”
Disney, of course is the venue where the league will conclude the season, beginning with eight regular-season games and then a full slate of playoffs.
Nurse and his team will get there the first week of July and, if all goes according to plan, won’t leave until they have defended their championship on or about Oct. 12.
Nurse says he is very much in favour of the return-to-play plan, mostly because it sticks as closely to the traditional NBA way of doing things as much as pandemically possible.
Nurse can take some comfort in the fact he has a mostly veteran roster that knows exactly what it takes to win a championship. But even that will get a little lost with all the games taking place in one location and over the course of almost two-and-a-half months, and that’s after the training camp period.
He anticipates having to do a lot of adjusting on the fly but, fortunately for the Raptors and their fanbase, that happens to be one of Nurse’s greatest strengths. Even so, he knows there are going to be lots of first-time scenarios he’ll have to navigate.
“Your attitude day-to-day is going to get challenged in a different way, so how are you going to be able to — for lack of a better word — keep people from just complaining?” Nurse asked. “‘Man, it’s too hot, the sun’s out’ or ‘it’s too cold, the air-conditioning’, whatever. You’re going to have to try to keep an extra positive attitude for starters and you’re going to have to go with the flow a little bit and understand going in that this is going to be different.”
With that all being said, Nurse likes his team’s chances now, just as he did before this pandemic shut the world down for a spell.
“I love — I mean we are right in the same position that we were a year ago going into it,” Nurse said of the low expectations. “Nobody was talking about us — ‘Yeah, they’ve got a decent team up there’ — but they weren’t really talking about us as a serious threat and long may it continue. We are looking forward to it.”