LOTS OF BLAME TO GO AROUND FOR RAPTORS
Too much selfish play, too little intelligent offence, just embarrassing defence and incredible complacency.
One by one, out they came, the Toronto Raptors. That was fitting; that was right. The floorboards that rotted under this once-promising 49-win season came from a defence sabotaged in part by players who didn’t talk to each other, and an offence that devolved into guitar solos or drum solos, whichever. They didn’t exactly present a united front at the end, either.
“I respect Case as a man,” said point guard Kyle Lowry, asked about coach Dwane Casey. “It’s not my decision. At the end of the day, if he’s the coach, I’m a player.”
It wasn’t an open call for revolution, but it was a long way from an endorsement and such words are chosen carefully. There were some points of agreement, it’s true. Several players said they were working on a good thing. DeMar DeRozan said it was just missing one or two things, some veterans. He didn’t say which one had to be LeBron.
But this team ended its season lamenting its flaws, as it should have.
“Frankly, I felt like our offence was good . . . but I felt like in order to win games in the playoffs you have to play unselfish basketball,” said point guard Greivis Vasquez, who is known to launch his share of damn-the-shot-clock jumpers.
“There are a few things internally that probably need to be fixed,” said Lowry, who was simply lousy in the second half of the season after being ridden too hard early, and who claimed he was healthy during his bafflingly vacant playoff performance, and who remains a potentially chaotic element.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to move the ball to the weak side,” said Casey, who is in charge of the players, and holding them accountable. “Or inside.” “No matter how many games you win, we could win 40 games in a row, we’ve got to stick with what got us there from training camp,” said DeRozan, asked for a lesson from the whole thing. “We can’t get comfortable, we can’t be satisfied, we can’t be happy.”
So: too much selfish play, too little intelligent offence, just embarrassing defence, incredible complacency, and a franchise star who refuses to truly endorse his coach. It’s a remarkable mess for a 49-win team.
As Casey put it, “It’s easy to sit here and want blood today. It’s very easy.”
Now general manager Masai Ujiri is free to put everybody on the table, everybody, and he will. He will listen on anybody. He will shop. He will let free agents fly away, clearing them off his cap like so much snow from a front walk. He will weigh what everybody is worth.
Can Jonas Valanciunas’ real potential outweigh his ponderousness in a league full of sprinters, for a GM who loves teams that play with pace? Maybe. Can Terrence Ross be anything other than a reed that waves in the wind? Meh. Can DeRozan’s flawed game be improved by different direction? Bruno is probably safe. Nobody else.
And Ujiri will weigh Casey and Lowry, separately and together. One source says that last season, when Lowry was a pending free agent, the team was informed he would not re-sign with Casey as the coach. That hurdle was overcome, and the two attempted to work together, sometimes very well. Monday, it looked like the gap still exists.
Casey recognized that the complacency existed, too. He said, “There is a level you have to play at the entire year. I don’t think we played at that level. I think we took that for granted after the first part of the season, the winning part. We took practice as punishment, and it’s not.”
That is a stunning indictment of some of the players on this team. How do you get fat and happy that easily, with so little? The Raptors loved each other off the court, they say, but didn’t talk on it, didn’t pass on it. They played the game like it should be easy, were never held accountable enough and it caught up with them. Whose fault is that? Everyone’s. Ujiri has a good reputation around the league, and is firmly in charge, but he’s never been under pressure here, not real pressure; his bosses don’t agree on much, but they agree on him. The accidental success allowed for time to see what could happen, see how assets rose or fell. The flawed second season allowed him to set this team up for a test — here is your platform, he all but said. Let’s see what you do with it.
Well, they showed him. There are pieces here of varying size and shape, but Masai Ujiri now knows this: It’s been fun, and it’s been great. But there is nothing essential here.