CHANGE IS KEY FOR RAPTORS.
MERE RELIABILITY WON’T WIN TITLES IN THE NEW NBA. TO TRULY CONTEND, THIS TEAM MUST REMAKE ITSELF
These are your Toronto Raptors, as t r aining camp is about to begin: Same man in charge, same coach, same big name stars at guard.
They’re in need of change, and talking change — sort of.
It’s simple and it’s complicated. The Raptors are a good team — maybe a very good team, but just not good enough. That’s the unusual dilemma. The number of games they’ ll win over the season — probably in the 50- win range again — will not define their season in any real way. They know that.
The key between now and April is to change with the same people, keep the focus, grow, hope that some of the young players will become better players, but really, it all comes back to Dwane Casey, DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry.
It always comes back to the stars in the NBA, and their coach.
Casey’s teams in recent years have played a predictable, successful offensive game, with a stunning lack of ball movement. In the playoffs, they were badly exposed with a l ack of three- point shooters, and passing inefficiencies.
DeRozan and Lowry are terrific one- on- one players. Just give them the ball and watch them score. That works particularly well on a Tuesday night in Philadelphia in November. What’s been proven, last year and the year before, is it doesn’t work when it matters most. Can Casey change as a coach and can the Raptors change under him after all these years?
Casey emphatically says yes. Masai Ujiri basically says the coach has to.
“You don’t know until ( a coach) does it. He’s coaching the team. I think he has a good feeling for what he wants to do,” said Ujiri, the team president. “You don’t know ( if you change) until you do it. That’s the challenge of the business: You have to evolve. Everyone agrees we have to make little changes. They don’t have to be dramatic.”
DeRozan has heard about change almost every year he’s played in the NBA. He had to change, grow, evolve, add aspects to his game, and for the most part he has accomplished that.
He’s heard so much about changing his game — being less old school and more modern — that he kind of rolls his eyes as he talks about it on media day.
“At the end of the day, if you get a different haircut that you’re not used to getting, you’ll look a little different but you’re still you — whatever that means. You trim it down a little bit, they’re gonna say you look a little different, but you’re still you.
“You might walk with a little bit more of swagger, but you’re going to feel a little bit more confident about yourself. That’s the route whenever you hear the word change.”
Hearing it is one thing. Managing it is the difficult part.
DeRozan has made a career of being doubted and then dunking on the skeptics. He’s way past that point now. The next step: Discovering Playoff DeMar, and becoming the kind of scorer in the post- season that he is in the regular season.
“We’ve been through hell at times,” he said about his career in Toronto. “We’ve seen the highest points, felt the lowest. This is my ninth year — seeing so much, having success, having failures. We all have to come together and help each other. If we do that, the sky is the limit for us.” If only they can change. Lowry said he wants to be a better leader this season, wants to shoot better, be a more considerate leader, and he reiterated what Ujiri reiterated earlier on media day. He wants to win a championship. That’s the goal — as far away as that may seem.
And he knows, the whole team knows, there needs be some kind of change.
“I t hink I ’ ve changed t hroughout my c areer,” said Lowry. “I think Dwane Casey has changed throughout his c areer. I t hink D e Ma r DeRozan has changed throughout his career.
“We adapt to anything and we have to adapt to anything — a bad call, a missed call, a defensive scheme. That’s one thing about this league: We adapt to whatever circumstance we are put in.
“We have to go into tomorrow with an open mind. This is what they want us to do, so let’s go out there and try it and figure it out.
“Things have changed,” Lowry added. “We lost players. We traded players away. We got guys back. Coach said last night he’s going to preach coaching more than anything. I think that’s a start, a positive start.”