Reloaded after blowing their last shot
New coach, new superstar. Raptors start it up again
TORONTO — It was a couple of hours before Game 4 in Cleveland, the game where the Toronto Raptors as we knew them were finally, formally washed away. By mid-July coach Dwane Casey would be fired, and all-star guard DeMar DeRozan would be a San Antonio Spur.
But, there were still a couple of hours before the deluge, and Jonas Valanciunas, Toronto’s big bearded Lithuanian brute, was sitting on the bench. He tapped his temple. “It’s not physical,” he said. “It’s mental.
We have a mental problem.”
LeBron James and his ragged Cavaliers had gleefully stolen Game 1 as the Raptors choked down the stretch, then he tortured them in Game 2, then he hit the buzzer-beater in Game 3, and, by Game 4, the Raptors were waiting to be blown out. Casey said: “Ten days ago we had all the confidence in the world.”
They had their shot. They blew it.
Ask Valanciunas about that today and he says: “We just couldn’t get over the Cleveland hump. It was there for us. But physically, basketball-wise, we had the talent. Mentally, we were struggling. I don’t know. I’ll say it in a not-nice way, but when the sh-t was breaking down, we were breaking down. When we’re supposed to be doing the opposite way, right? When the sh-t goes down, we gotta man up, and do it ourselves. So I was right.”
So now Kawhi Leonard is a Raptor, and Nick Nurse is the head coach, and the team is different. Maybe by a lot.
Nurse seems willing to walk the high wire, letting his deep and versatile roster figure out how it works, collectively and individually, within strong team principles. Leonard has been what he said he would be: open-minded, a little rusty after months away from the game due to injury, engaged.
Kyle Lowry has been grumpy in the wake of the trade of his best friend — his trust in the front office is, shall we say, damaged — but is in tip-top, five per cent body-fat shape. He says the goal’s the same. “You know my answer to that,” he said. “We’re going to try to win a championship. Gold ball, you know, trophy, Larry O’Brien. That’s what I say.”
And Toronto finally has the true, galactic superstar that team president Masai Ujiri has been chasing his entire Raptors career. That star, Leonard, can leave in a year. There is a luxury tax looming, young players to sign. Lowry turns 33 before the season ends. They want to compete for a championship, finally. They are guaranteed — partially, anyway — one season, one shot.
“I honestly don’t think about it as being one shot,” veteran wing C.J. Miles says. “I think about us as being as good as we can be, and we’ll figure the rest out when we get to it. Everything changes. We all know, in this league, winning cures everything. And it might not. It might just be, ‘I got whatever I got, it was good, it was fun.’ But might be a personal thing that makes some people want to change.
“And it might not just be Kawhi. It could be someone else, a trade, an opportunity comes up. I just know the league changes, teams change, coaches change, players change. So my thing is in the moment. Given that power now, all it becomes is a burden. Because then you’re like, did I do something wrong, or did I do something that offended him? Play basketball. Do stuff you were going to do regardless. Win games.”
•••
They have so many guys, so many options.
Beyond Leonard and Lowry, wing OG Anunoby had a full, healthy summer for the first time since his summer after high school. Pascal Siakam’s super-twitch athleticism is being explored, and he is being granted some playmaking freedom. Delon Wright is long and skilled; Fred VanVleet is the team’s heartbeat; Danny Green and C.J. Miles are deadeyes. Valanciunas smashes teams now in the minutes he gets, if the matchup works. Serge Ibaka even looked frisky in pre-season, after feeding his teammates monkey brains on his cooking show.
They can play big or small, and they should be able to shoot and switch.
If they really play together, that is. If they truly fit, in heart and body and commitment.
Last year, as VanVleet put it, it was like a football team: two near-separate units, starters and bench. Now they have to figure out different patterns, different ways to make basketball as seamless as it can be, for the biggest moments.
As Miles puts it: “Just learning how to play basketball together. It weighs more than people think.”
“It takes a little more time, for sure,” says Green, who won a title in San Antonio. “All of that depends on your coaching staff and the players you have around helping, being leaders and grooming those new guys or young guys into learning the system. The more you have those people around, the faster they learn, adapt and adjust.”
“Getting to the playoffs, I think that’s gonna help us as well. The key for us is getting those young guys mature, getting better as we go along and getting that mindset and mentality, the grit and grind to win those 50-50 balls.”
Maybe it will help that the new superstar is easy to play with, so far.
“I don’t think anything’s hard for him,” says Miles.
“Obviously, he has to find a rhythm a little bit, but when a guy’s as talented as him, a lot of the time, get the heck out of the way. And, the way he plays, he slows the game down tremendously. Nobody speeds him up. He plays at his pace. He slows guys down when he guards them. He’s an MVP-calibre player because he can play in any situation.”
So, does Leonard’s blank-faced murderous toughness set a tone for this team? Do he and Lowry mesh?
“We got two great guys. I’m not saying DeMar wasn’t here, but those two: (Leonard) is a quiet killer,” grins Valanciunas. “I like him. He’s doing good things. He doesn’t talk much, quiet, but when it comes to him, you can count on him.”
Maybe. If he’s all the way in, people can follow.
So how does it fit? How ready are they when the real stuff comes, when the playoffs start, when they face down a rising Milwaukee team, or the young twin stars in Philadelphia, or the tough talent of Boston?
A new star, a grumpy sidekick, kids trying to grow, a rookie head coach, the swirl of the NBA. How sturdy will they be, in the heavy weather?
“We have this,” Valanciunas says, miming a crossover. “We have this,” he says, tapping his temple. Then he reaches out with a long arm and taps a reporter in the chest, over the heart.
“But this is what we need to get. And I think good teams have mind, basketball stuff, physique, whatever. But really good teams have everything. So we have to somehow out everything in one place.”
“Put the balls in, put the heart in. Connect everything, it’ll be good. Learn to put the foot on the neck. To do the small things. To be cool, but not too cool. Can’t be too cool.”
The puzzle is closer to completion than it has ever been, but then we’ve said that before. Time to assemble the pieces, and see how well they stick together.