DENVER’S THIN AIR THICK WITH CHALLENGES
If the sheer distance travelled and all the flights haven’t already worn down the Toronto Raptors, there’s still one more element waiting for them on both the final two legs of this marathon journey to trip them up.
It’s altitude and in Denver and Salt Lake City, they are heading to two of the highest major cities in the U.S.
By the time the Raptors return home from this trip, they will have logged a total of 13,134 kilometres for a trip that made stops in San Antonio, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Denver and Salt Lake City.
They are through the bulk of that, but the final two stops in Denver and Salt Lake provide the unique issue of extreme elevation.
Denver is known as the Mile High City because it has the highest elevation of any city in the U.S. at 1,609.3 metres. Not far behind is Salt Lake City with an elevation of 1,319 metres.
Conditioning at these altitudes is tested especially for teams coming in from lower-lying cities like Portland or L.A.
The rule of thumb is that as altitude increases, performance decreases. Unless you are accustomed to living at this altitude, it’s just harder for your body to pump oxygenated blood from the lungs into the bloodstream, leaving you short of breath.
Raptors coach Dwane Casey has navigated teams through these altitude changes for years. He does not take the change lightly.
“It will be a little different because we want to keep the rotations short, make sure the guys have their proper wind with the altitude and that sort of thing,” Casey said Wednesday morning.
This could actually work out in a way for Casey, who is bringing back two starters coming off injuries in centre Jonas Valanciunas and Serge Ibaka. Valanciunas has missed the past four games with a sprained ankle. Ibaka had some knee swelling that cost him the last game.
In their absence, Lucas Nogueira, Pascal Siakam and Jakob Poeltl have played extended minutes and performed well.
Normally once the starters return, it’s right back to spot minutes or no minutes for those who have filled in, often regardless of how well they have performed.
In this case, the altitude factor provides incentive for Casey to limit minutes individually by spreading them around through more bodies.
“It will work out just because of the fact that we are probably going to use more bodies in our rotation than we normally would just so we can keep fresh bodies on the court,” Casey said.
Casey will bring his team to these high-altitude cities a day earlier if possible just so the players can acclimatize themselves to the change.
In this case, he didn’t have to worry about that as the team flew direct from the win in Portland to Denver, arriving Tuesday at about 2:30 a.m., ironically about the same time both the Nuggets and the NFL’s Broncos touched down from their own games in New York City and Kansas City respectively.
Getting the visits to Denver and Utah out of the way in consecutive games is likely better than spreading them out on the schedule.
“We’ve done it before and it is a challenge,” Casey said of the Denver/Salt Lake City combination on a trip. “It’s good and it’s bad. It’s bad because it’s altitude. But it’s good because you are in two spots with similar problems. A lot of teams I’ve been with, when that second wind kicks in you are ready to roll and you have to push through it. But that’s the main thing, push through the burn and try not to make it a federal case that you are playing in altitude.”
So look for a quicker hook for the starters who normally play the first nine or 10 minutes and then an earlier return than they would normally have coming back in for that second unit of C.J. Miles and the young Raptors. And in all likelihood a little of Nogueira and Siakam sprinkled in helps, as neither player appears to have a home in either the first or the second unit at the moment.