Carroll goes on the defensive
Raptors understand playing without the ball will have major impact on season
The near month-long wait for meaningful basketball having passed and with the Toronto Raptors’ seasonopener in front of him Wednesday, DeMarre Carroll admitted that training camp has happily run its course.
“I think we’re all tired of playing each other,” the Raptors’ prized freeagent acquisition said, before he got into the across-the-board theme of the team’s off-season and this year’s training camp: defence.
The six-foot-eight forward said that coach Dwane Casey’s camp has been more defensive minded than the previous ones he’s been a part of in his six-year, five-team career.
“Coach Casey is definitely a defensive-minded coach and that’s the type of coach that I like,” Carroll said. “I like defence, that’s my forte. We’ve been focusing on defence and not so much offence, but we’ve got so many scorers that the offence will take care of itself.”
The concession throughout training camp has been that the team has been a step ahead defensively over the offence. The byproduct of a hardlearned lesson in their first-round playoff exit to the Washington Wizards, the emphasis on defence makes sense. You might be able to win a whack of games in the regular season without being able to shut people or teams down, but the playoffs inevitably become a much more ferocious animal that requires taming.
Casey has harped on defence but what he’s hoping for this season — and as he demonstrated with hands raising and falling throughout — is a balancing act.
“You like to have balance. The key is balance,” he said. “I don’t want to get into a situation where now your defence is clicking at a high rate and your offence is off rhythm or off kilter.”
His hands go here from one above his head and the other at his waist level to meet in the middle.
“We’re trying to get it here,” he said. “Our defence was so bad last year. We got caught up in our first couple of games and our defence got better and our offence stunk. We want a balance and that’s the only way you can be successful in this league.”
Through seven (meaningless) preseason games, where lineup experimentation, rested vets, vanilla defences and random acts of rust-shedding all factor in, the Raptors averaged 94.7 points per game and gave up 88.9 per. When the ball goes up Wednesday night and beyond, Carroll feels like strong defensive play will spark the offence.
“I think everyone in our starting lineup can score the ball. That’s not the hard part, I think the hard part is defence. Trusting each other on defence, covering for each other. If we can get stops we’ll come down and score. We’ll learn the offence as we go but I think first and foremost we’ve just got to keep focusing on defence.”
Part of the Atlanta Hawks’ 60-win team a year ago, Carroll said he sees a big difference in the Raptors that he went up against in years past.
“The way we played in the second half (in Friday’s win in Montreal over the Washington Wizards), that was the best defence we played in the whole pre-season,” he said.
“We covered for each other, we got blocks and we got steals and I think that’s what we’ve got to do now. We’ve got to be one of those gritty, grimy teams that get in passing lanes, take charges, get steals, those types of things. If you can do those types of things the defence can go a long way.”
“We’ve got to be one of those gritty, grimy teams that get in passing lanes, take charges, get steals, those types of things.” DEMARRE CARROLL TORONTO RAPTORS FORWARD