National Post (National Edition)
All quiet on the (northern) front
RAPS FINALLY START FRESH AFTER WILD SUMMER
During the last of his illfated playoff runs in Toronto, Dwane Casey used the analogy of a swimming duck to describe the business of preparing for post-season basketball.
Above the waterline, everything looks calm and serene, but below there is a bunch of furious action taking place.
The head coach’s duck-related explanation came to mind on Monday as his former team opened training camp. For the Toronto Raptors, there is everything that everyone is saying publicly, and then there is a whole different series of subplots taking place below the surface.
And so, here was Kawhi Leonard, finally speaking as a member of the Raptors for the first time since the team acquired him in July. To the extent that the famously quiet former NBA Finals MVP said anything at all, it was colourless and anodyne. He comes to Toronto “with an open mind,” he’s excited to play here, he’s healthy and ready to go.
But could he really see himself in Canada beyond this last year of his contract? And what actually happened in San Antonio, anyway? Those kinds of inquiries went nowhere.
He’s taking it day by day, Leonard said, and also the past is the past. “My focus is on this year,” he said.
And: “If you look in the future, you’re going to trip on the present.”
That line, amid a series of brief, bland answers, was so incongruously profound that you got the sense Leonard must have memorized it beforehand. When questions about next season arise, befuddle them with philosophy.
And so, there was Kyle Lowry, also speaking to local media for the first time since his team shipped out his best friend and backcourt mate, Demar Derozan, in the swap with the Spurs.
He’s excited to be back, he said, and to try to win a championship and to start playing with teammates old and new. But what about the summer of discontent? Was he mad about the trade? Was he hurt? Is his relationship with the team forever fractured?
“I came to work,” Lowry said, in several different ways.
He’s here to play hard and all that other stuff doesn’t matter. His silence since the trade? “I’m a quiet guy during the summer.”
The truth about what is likely to happen to the Raptors during the next year lies somewhere among all those things left unsaid. The ceiling is as high as it has ever been, with a team that set a franchise record in wins. But they moved out a key piece for a true superstar who only became available because of injury — and because of however that injury affected his relationship with the Spurs.
But the floor has dropped down, too: If Leonard is unhappy or unhealthy, if Lowry isn’t the same guy without Derozan, if new coach Nick Nurse struggles, if the culture that was so carefully cultivated goes sideways, then this could be a turning point season for the Raptors, and not in a good way.
Perhaps this is why the most striking moment of Monday’s introductions came not from Leonard or Lowry but from team president Masai Ujiri, who became downright feisty at the suggestion Leonard and his former Spurs teammate, Danny Green, had a chance to change the perception of the Raptors — and of Toronto — in the NBA landscape.
“The narrative of not wanting to come to this city is gone,” Ujiri said. “I think that’s old and we should move past that. Believe in this city, believe in yourself.”
He went on to say we could stop talking about whether NBA players are willing to come to this city.
We can’t, though. It is true that under Ujiri’s watch the Raptors have been transformed from an afterthought to a perennial playoff team, one that has been to a conference final and earned a top playoff seed. The days of Tracy Mcgrady and Chris Bosh leaving and Vince Carter forcing his way out of Toronto have been replaced by all-stars such as Derozan and Lowry choosing to sign big contracts here even after they had reached free agency.
But even though it was just last spring that it seemed like the Raptors had truly ascended to the NBA’S elite, with a new style and a deep roster that had turned on its ear the conventional wisdom that the only way to win was with superstars. But the club’s subsequent flame-out against Lebron James and the Cavaliers punctured the notion that the franchise had achieved a new level of relevance.
Ujiri himself admitted as much when he fired Casey and then traded Derozan.
For all the Raptors have accomplished during the past five seasons, the team’s fans are back to hoping that one of their players won’t leave at the first chance he gets. No matter how much the president might wish for that narrative to be dead, it has been brought back to life by the trade he made.
Can Toronto be an NBA destination like Los Angeles or New York? Can it compete with the climate and tax rates of Texas and Florida? Is it doomed to be a great place to play, as long as there aren’t teams that can offer both warm weather and cap space? The questions that used to dog the franchise are back now.
At least there will be games to distract from such things, soon.
“We all feel good when basketball starts,” Ujiri said. “The summer was crazy but, you know, it’s basketball and we’re excited.”
Probably more than a little nervous, too.