Davis ready to earn team’s trust again
Rookie will get shot at regular rotation spot when season starts up
Terence Davis II spent the first 64 games of his NBA career proving himself worthy of the trust of his Raptors teammates and nothing, not even a fourmonth hiatus to the season, is going to stop him from continuing that pursuit with a championship on the line.
Davis is unproven but could be asked to play a significant role when the Raptors begin defence of their title later this month in the cauldron of intensity that is the NBA postseason.
It is a big ask of the undrafted 23-year-old guard.
“I would come into this more mature, being that I went through three-fourths of a season just growing up, maturing, taking the steps in the right direction,” Davis said Thursday on a video conference call with reporters. “These guys, Fred (VanVleet), Kyle (Lowry), Marc (Gasol), Norm (Powell), all these guys man, they make sure the young guys are where they need to be, because to them, it’s everything.
“These guys are defending their title. You want to be a part of that.”
There is no question Davis will be part of it. What’s to be determined is how large a role he has in the eight games that will precede the playoffs and the postseason itself.
Through an impressive start to his rookie season, Davis showed flashes of excellence, an above-average spot-up shooter, among the best pure athletes on the team.
But he also showed flashes of being an overwhelmed rookie, unable yet to find the consistency that successful veterans have.
The good did outweigh the bad though and coach Nick Nurse will give him a shot to be a rotation regular when the season starts up again.
“Obviously, the regular season is much different from the playoffs and the championship games are much different from the first, second round, (but) if coach feels that he can trust putting him in that situation, he will,” assistant coach Adrian Griffin said on a conference call from Florida on Thursday.
Earning that trust has been a season-long exercise for Davis.
“I had to gain these guys’ trust and I would say it means a lot, man,” he said. “I wouldn’t say this is something that’s normal, but for me being an undrafted guy playing with the defending champions it’s just unbelievable.”
The specifics of what Davis needs to bring are obvious.
The Raptors need a consistent, reliable ballhandler to go along with Lowry and VanVleet, a role Nurse envisioned for Davis as far back as training camp last October.
It’s hard for a rookie to learn the nuances of running an offence and the attention that comes with being the main ballhandler on the court, something Davis has been working on.
Davis will have a couple of weeks of five-on-five practices and scrimmages and three exhibition games to get up to speed before the Raptors play the first of their eight “seeding” games against the Los Angeles Lakers on Aug. 1.