Talk isn’t cheap for the Raptors
Players say they have to communicate more on the floor to win
It was in the days leading up to the start of the NBA season that Danny Green set the 20-to-30 games in as a good place for teams across the league to gauge where they stood when it comes to rapport and team chemistry.
He hoped the Toronto Raptors would be hitting their stride by late November or early December; that, he said, is when player should feel more comfortable consistently and “kind of gel.”
There have been moments this season when the 12-3 Raptors looked like they might be overachievers in that department, particularly as they clicked over the course of two six-game win streaks. They’ve yet to put together a complete game, but have found ways to win nonetheless.
But Toronto is still at least five games, or a week, away from that mark set by Green, and there is still work to be done, as shown by a two-game skid against the New Orleans Pelicans and the Detroit Pistons at home this week.
“I think just talking, man,” Kyle Lowry said when asked about the Raptors’ lack of execution against the Pistons both offensively and defensively on Wednesday night. “Communication. Open your mouth. We’ve gotta speak, we’ve gotta talk, you’ve gotta say something. Can’t play if you can’t say nothing.”
Building that foundation takes more than just 48 minutes on the court, said Kawhi Leonard.
“Yeah, we’ve got to work toward something,” he said. “We can’t just try to win tonight or the next game. It’s about us building a chemistry, continuity going forward, you know what I mean? We just have to have a mindset and a goal on what we’re trying to be.”
Coach Nick Nurse didn’t see many similarities between the loss to the Pelicans and the loss to the Pistons. Toronto was on the back foot for much of the game against New Orleans, and left believing it was the second best team on the night, as well as the victim of some unfortunate bounces and whistles.
The Raptors started strong against the Pistons but gave up a 19-point lead in the second half. It was a disappointing recurrence, Nurse said.
“I just think we’ve done this a little to often and I was hoping it wasn’t going to bite us in the butt,” he said.
“We’d have these 20-point leads and cut it back to six, and it was a really similar pattern to what we’ve seen. We just took our foot off the gas a little bit defensively and all of a sudden they’re shooting a couple of wide-open threes and that just sparks them . ... All that work you’ve done for, say, 34 minutes is gone quickly because you just took your foot off the gas a little bit.”
Green was in the locker room getting treatment for lower back stiffness as Toronto surrendered its lead to the Pistons and eventually conceded a last-second, game-winning shot to Reggie Bullock. He didn’t like what he saw on television from the training table.
“We didn’t lose that game at the end of the game,” Green said. “It was well before that. You could just tell. I was watching it as I was getting treatment. You could tell body language and just the atmosphere or how the guys looked; it didn’t look good. It kind of looked how we were the other night against New Orleans only we had more energy, better kick to start the game. But once things don’t start going our way, we still have to find ways or still conduct ourselves in the same way and not getting down and letting last plays affect our next plays.”
Green joked that there must have been a full moon on Wednesday night, a night of strange results league-wide with losses for the Philadelphia 76ers, Milwaukee Bucks and Portland Trailblazers, among other hot teams. Leonard, for example, booted the ball out of bounds on the Raptors final possession, in a quarter where he had five turnovers. Green said his longtime teammates “doesn’t get the ball taken from him like that.”
Whatever was at play, though, Green said the team still has a ways to go when it comes to communication and the maturity needed to close out games, even though it’s early in the season.
“They talk at certain times,” he said. “Important times we need to talk more. I think that is what stood out the most (on Wednesday) because our communication hasn’t been the greatest when you have a situation like that.”