Raps entering season with lots of youth
For Year 23, the Toronto Raptors are going with a type of roster we haven’t seen here before.
On the one hand, there’s a veteran core led by all-stars Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, along with Serge Ibaka, C.J. Miles and Jonas Valanciunas, aiming to compete in the East again. But the rotation also will include at least one player 25 years old or under at every position.
There’s a junior varsity squad, but it just happens to double as a part of the big team.
How does Dwane Casey and his staff make it work? It’s a huge question heading into this campaign. The familiar faces will carry these Raptors, but if there is any ground to be gained, a couple of the prospects will have to step forward and seize the opportunity. It’s a concept that appears to be on the mind of most Raptors employees.
“I think one of the biggest challenges for us as a coaching staff is we have two teams and the challenge for us is how do we mesh that once the games start,” assistant coach Jama Mahlalela told Postmedia on Monday.
“They’ve spent countless hours working on the skillset that we need them to play with to be good and playing in NBA games. Their shooting, their passing, their ability to defend, but now it’s merging the two and finding the lineups where we have maybe one or two young players with the vets, or one or two vets with the young players and finding that combination I think is really going to be the challenge of at least these first 1015 games for us.”
And maybe even longer than that.
“There’s going to be difficult times with the young players,” but at some point, we have to see them,” said the architect, team president Masai Ujiri.
“We can’t keep saying we have these young players and not know who they are. We have to know who they are.”
So, who are they?
At this point, Norman Powell (24) is the presumptive breakout player. Delon Wright (25) and Fred VanVleet (23) the intriguing backup point guards. Pascal Siakam (23) and Jakob Poeltl (21) the big hopes up front. Bruno Caboclo is still only 22 and the Raptors still don’t know what they have there. Rookie OG Anunoby, just 20, is a long, athletic work in progress who has the franchise thinking of what could be down the line once he gets a better feel for what to do and where to go while on the floor.“Those are things we are going to coach him and teach him as the days and weeks go on,” Mahlalela says.
“What I’m most excited about is his work, his push. He played a pickup game with us, he just sort of got in, he just started and he hit two corner threes, had two dunks, blew up two (dribble hand-offs) defensively and we’re like, ‘whoah,’ there’s something there. We’re really excited with what it is and I think we’ve got to polish it off to see what it’s going to be in NBA games, but we’ve definitely got something special there.”
Mahlalela, a Canadian who has risen through the ranks in Toronto through his player development work, also spoke highly of Powell.
“He is sort of that burgeoning player who is working his way into that vet, sort of stardom role, and his challenge is going to be how does he take all that individual work that we’ve done this summer and all that 3-on-3 and now turn it into 5-on-5 against other NBA teams.”
Expectations are high for Wright. “It’s his time,” Casey says of the former Utah star.
“He’s one of our better passers, and that is an NBA skill that’s overlooked. But we’re looking for big things out of Delon and, again, the opportunity is there for him.”
But VanVleet was the player mentioned most in terms of who turned heads this summer.
“Fred is a miniature Kyle. His growth is unorthodox, unusual, but his journey is on the same path,” Casey told Postmedia between team photo shoots.
“(He) grew tremendously as a basketball player. He matured, he really fine-tuned his game in a way that’s really going to work for our system.” added Mahlalela.
Lowry even went as far as to say that he believes VanVleet is a better player than he was at the same point of his career.
“It’s big praise from a guy that I obviously respect and owe a lot to for the way that he carried me last year, helped me out,” VanVleet said.
Like Lowry, VanVleet is a tough, driven competitor.
“That’s just what I do. I come in to work every day and I challenge whoever it is in front of me to be better than me every single day,” VanVleet said.
That attitude has apparently spread throughout the young group.
“There is a ton of internal competition which as coaches makes our jobs easier because we can just throw them out there and they are going to be internally motivated to go, and we just get to watch and see … It means we get their full effort every single time and we have all summer because of that,” Mahlalela said.
“They push each other and the goal for us is everybody gets better in that process.”
Going only with veterans is not an option. Still, Casey takes umbrage at the notion that his Raptors didn’t previously put young players on the floor.
“(Siakam) started 38 games. I don’t care if you played one year, two years, three years, whatever. If you can help us win, you’re going to be out there,” said the coach.
“It’s time for them to step in, step up.”