Extra precaution
Raptors will likely give Leonard night off on road
The Raptors will continue easing Kawhi Leonard into the mix, which likely means a night off on Monday in Utah.
Leonard has been sitting parts of back-to-backs so far and the team plays a night earlier in his native Los Angeles against the Lakers and in Phoenix on Friday.
“(His body) feels good, just don’t want to overdo it too early since I missed out on a year, it’s just injury prevention, so just not playing back-tobacks for right now,” Leonard said after participating in an optional practice on Thursday.
“We’ll see what happens and what they have on the menu but I’m pretty sure I’ll be playing (in Los Angeles),” Leonard said.
“I’m going into this assuming he’s going to play in Phoenix and L.A. at this point, unless somebody tells me different, those are the next two,” head coach Nick Nurse said, pointing out that this will be Leonard’s first road trip with the team of the season.
“If they tell me different when we get to L.A. that he’s going to wait and go to Utah then I’ll go from there.”
That would be one scenario, but it seems more likely he’ll face the Lakers, even if that presents a potential media frenzy, given all of the reports that the Clippers will put on a full-court press to try to land the unrestricted free agent in the summer.
Fellow starter and former San Antonio teammate Danny Green hopes it won’t be too big a deal.
“Nah, I’m not really expecting a circus in L.A. Should be just another game,” Green said.
“It’s a big city and they have a lot going on, so I don’t see them doing a lot of recruiting, but they might, you never know.”
For Leonard, keeping the big goals in mind is the key, even if he’d love to play every night (he said he enjoys the competition and challenges of back-to-back sets).
“Yeah, you want to play, but I’ve been through the league long enough to know where the important games are, and that’s April, May and June,” Leonard said.
After a home-heavy start to the year, Leonard is eager to get into the familiar road aspect of NBA life.
“This is where you build your chemistry for the playoffs, you need road wins and it’s going to be great for us to go out and play these four games,” he said.
“It’s time to test what we can do on the road,” Green added.
“We haven’t played our best basketball on the road. We haven’t had 100 percent health but still, no excuses. Hopefully we can get some guys to come back and play better basketball on the road.”
With Delon Wright back in the lineup, OG Anunoby at practice on Thursday and Fred VanVleet potentially in the lineup at some point on the trip, Toronto might finally even get to full strength for the first time this season.
“I’m looking forward to that more than anything,” Green said.
“Over the course of 82 games, someone is always hurt, but if we can get 90-95 percent of the guys healthy, that would be great to see and to play with.”
Nurse agreed.
“Those are three really good players (that have been absent for large chunks so far), and Fred and Delon kind of go together a little bit (as a bench combination), so I think it’ll help us a lot,” Nurse said.
“I think our second unit has been a little disjointed. Some of that’s my fault, changing it all the time and searching and all that kind of stuff. I think it’ll help all of those guys to be back.”
Toronto’s bench, with VanVleet, Wright and Anunoby each only on the floor sporadically, has shot just 40.3% from the field (28th out of 30 teams), with nearly as many turnovers (45) as assists (53).