Bring it on!
With the pre-season almost over, the battle to earn regular-season minutes is heating up
With as many as 12 players fighting for minutes on this Raptors club, spirited practices are becoming the norm.
This was CJ Miles’ reply when asked if this team was close to being ready to start the 2018-19 season which is still a full week away.
“If we play as hard as we’re playing in practice, we’ll be fine,” Miles said before the team headed off to Montreal for a next-to-last pre-season game with the Brooklyn Nets tonight.
“It’s been chippy in here, the last couple of days,” Miles revealed. “But that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We’re competing and we have a lot of depth so all the games are good and (head coach Nick Nurse) has been finding ways to make sure we’re equally matched and mixing the teams so guys are playing with everybody, so it’s been fun.”
Now Nurse’s reaction when told of Miles description seemed to suggest he might like things a little more chippy than they are right now, but he’s got plenty of time to ratchet things up if he so chooses.
Miles, though, saw things chippy and he wasn’t backing away from that description.
“It gets chippy, but it’s a little bit more than usual with your own teammates this time of year because you’re thinking about getting ready to play your first game, but it’s good, I like it,” Miles said.
On a team that will revolve around the play of Kawhi Leonard, it only makes sense that the style of play should resemble the game closest to the one he plays and make no mistake, Leonard is as physical as they come in the NBA.
Miles said everyone has been forced to be physical because of the presence of guys like Leonard and Kyle Lowry, Serge Ibaka, OG Anunoby, and Jonas Valanciunas.
“Competitive fire, man,” Miles said explaining the rise in intensity. “Everybody’s competitive. No one wants to lose. Screaming at the coaches because they’re refereeing ... at the end of it it’s fun, but during it everyone’s at each other’s throats. Not to the point that it’s dangerous, but we’re playing as hard as we can in a controlled environment.
Miles concedes playing time is the most likely motivator. Tough, physical play can help a guy standout but on this team almost as important is an ability to play whenever and wherever you are asked.
“You have to be ready,” Miles said. “Everyone has to know what we’re doing, what we’re trying to do, different positions. The game now, there’s no positions. There’s the point guard and the centre and everyone else is just out there. It’s interesting to see guys move around and figure out spots and how to play with each other.”
Nurse seemed somewhat skeptical that things got that chippy the past few days but he does know he’s been focussing on some very specific areas of the Raptors approach and he’s looking to see some payoff over these next two days in Montreal and New Orleans (where veteran minutes will be limited).
“I wanna see some improvement on things we’ve been really stressing,” Nurse said. “And there’s a number of them, mostly at the defensive end. I told you guys I was painting in broad strokes trying to cover areas that I saw over the last few years that I thought I could do better. They weren’t very technical, they were hitting people on rebounds, contesting shots better, things like that, and we spent a lot of time on that.
“But you guys know, this is a nitty-gritty league where you’ve got to get to the nittygritty,” Nurse said. “You’ve gotta be able to show them how to cover this, cover that, this play, that play, scouting reports, all that kind of stuff you’ve got to get to and get ’em prepared. And those are some of the things we’ve done, and I wanna see how that looks.”
Unlikely to play in either game tonight in Montreal or Thursday in New Orleans is Norman Powell. The hardluck guard suffered a right thigh bruise in Friday’s game and while he was able to do some light work Monday was held out of practice completely on Tuesday.
That does not bode well for a guy who fell out of the regular rotation last season following an injury and needs every opportunity he can get to show his team what he can do for them.