Take it from Nets, Raptors are good
our mindset. Hopefully the offensive side will take care of itself.”
Whether the offense takes care of itself or not rests on how quickly Irving and his teammates get on the same page. Chemistry is something that can’t be rushed or jump-started.
It has to happen organically over the course of the season.
But now that the dress rehearsals have passed, the Nets must now take whatever chemistry they’ve developed and build on it — starting with opening night.
An exasperated Kenny Atkinson took the podium after three successful preseason games were undercut by a brutal beat down at the hands of the reigning NBA champions. The Toronto Raptors, of course, lost Kawhi Leonard in free agency over the summer, but his Raptors still pummeled the Nets in a game they led by more than 21.
Atkinson could have had his pick of excuses: This was the Nets’ first game after a long, draining trip to China, and it was also Kyrie Irving’s first full game in a Nets jersey, the exclamation point on an offseason that welcomed eight new players to the team.
Instead, the Nets coach tipped his hat to the other team.
“I think the first part of it is they’re really good,” Atkinson conceded. “I think they’re one of the top teams in the East. I think they’re gonna compete for one of the top spots, so that’s kind of the respect I have for them.”
Toronto opened its title defense Tuesday night with a 130-122 overtime win over New Orleans. Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet each scored 34 points to lead the way.
If the Raptors lost one of the best players in the NBA, they sure as hell didn’t look like it that night against the Nets. The ball whipped from one hand to the next, to the next until it found the best shot. This process repeated, over-and-over again, a well-oiled mach- ine still functioning without its engine.
The Raptors’ engine may have been replaced. It’s Siakam — who signed a four-year, $130 million max extension in Toronto — who has become the face of the franchise: a double-edged sword wreaking havoc on both ends of the floor. But what the Raptors did last season will largely remain the same.
The Raptors were 17-5 in games Leonard did not play last season, and Atkinson said to prepare for them, his team watched film from the moments in last year’s NBA Finals that Leonard spent on the bench. “I’m watching it in our locker room and Siakam, and Gasol, and VanVleet,” he says, laughing. “My point is I think they’re a really good team. I think they’re gonna be really good.”
The Raptors would agree. They know what they lost in Leonard, one of the best two-way players ever to play the game, a crunch-time bucketgetter on one end who can shut down any player at any position on the other. But they also feel the offense is fluid enough to generate shots for others in Leonard’s absence.
“I think we move the ball more. We had several 30-plus assist nights when he wasn’t playing, and that’s how we’re gonna have to play without him,” Nick Nurse said. “I think it’s a lot more equal opportunity. Obviously, it’s a whole lot of shots there that we’ve gotta divide up. We gotta start figuring out how we’re gonna divide them up.”
“It’s a different team. With a different team, you’ve got different challenges,” VanVleet told The Daily News. “I think it’ll look similar to what it looked like last year without Kawhi.”
It sure did against the Nets. It may have been an exhibition game, but both teams treated the final preseason outing as a dress rehearsal for their respective regular season openers. In the first half, both teams played their starters heavy minutes and simulated what we could expect the substitution patterns to look like for opening night.
The two teams were tied at the end of one at 28. By halftime, the Raptors were up by 21. Toronto finished the night with 31 assists to Brooklyn’s 16. “They played with freedom, made some shots and made our bigs go out there and contest some of their threepoint shots,” Kyrie Irving admitted. “Or kind of getting downhill and their guards were making passes. They were making shots. You have to give them credit. They had a great rhythm.”
“They’re a championship team, until somebody takes that away from them,” Caris LeVert added. “They’ve been playing together for a long time.”