Is Toronto the Warriors’ biggest threat?
Stephen Curry was 11 years old when his father, longtime NBA sharpshooter Dell Curry, signed with the Toronto Raptors.
After watching the first half of games in the stands at Air Canada Centre, Stephen spent the second half mimicking what he’d just seen as he sparred with his younger brother, Seth, on the arena’s practice court. In those days, Toronto fans were ecstatic if their team escaped the first round of the playoffs.
Now, after five years of failing to parlay regular-season success into an NBA Finals appearance, Toronto won’t be satisfied with anything less than an Eastern Conference title. Armed with a league-best record of 18-4, the Raptors enter Thursday night’s matchup with the Warriors at Scotiabank Arena as perhaps Golden State’s biggest championship threat.
Stephen Curry will not play
in Thursday’s game — missing his 11th consecutive game because of a nagging groin injury — but head coach Steve Kerr said Wednesday that the point guard will play in Saturday’s game at Detroit.
His absence makes the Warriors’ task Thursday night all the more difficult.
Toronto is the only team in the NBA that ranks in the top seven in both offensive and defensive rating. With a franchise-changing superstar (Kawhi Leonard), an All-Star point guard (Kyle Lowry), a rugged 7-footer ( Jonas Valanciunas), high-upside youngsters (OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam), savvy journeymen (Serge Ibaka, Danny Green, CJ Miles) and solid role players (Fred VanVleet, Delon Wright), the Raptors might boast the league’s most complete roster.
“They built chemistry together really fast,” Warriors forward Kevon Looney said. “They play hard for each other. They look for the open man, and they’re great on the defensive end.”
Few can fault Toronto for being circumspect about its torrid start. The Raptors averaged 55.3 wins over the past three seasons, only to fall to LeBron James’ Cavaliers once in the conference finals and twice in the second round.
The breaking point for Masai Ujiri — Toronto’s president of basketball operations — came in May, when the East’s top seed got swept by James and Cleveland in the second round. Being very good was no longer palatable for Canada’s only NBA franchise.
Two days after his peers tabbed him the league’s Coach of the Year, Dwane Casey was fired as the Raptors’ head coach. Ujiri named Nick Nurse — the assistant coach credited with overhauling Toronto’s offense — as Casey’s successor.
In mid-July, Ujiri took a large gamble, sending All-Star guard DeMar DeRozan, center Jakob Poeltl and a protected firstround pick to San Antonio for Leonard and guard Danny Green.
It didn’t dissuade the Raptors that Leonard had been limited to nine games the previous season with a mysterious quad injury, or that his representatives had made it clear that Leonard planned to join the Lakers in summer 2019. Ujiri was banking that, like Paul George did with Oklahoma City, Leonard would come to appreciate his new home and decide to stick long-term.
A quarter of the way through the season, Toronto’s grand experiment appears even more formidable than many anticipated.
The way Leonard is moving and asserting himself has eased concerns about his quad. A “3-and-D” wing, Green has started all 22 games and made a team-best 51 three-pointers. Siakam is an early front-runner for Most Improved Player of the Year.
In his first season as an NBA head coach, Nurse has helped his team tune out the speculation about Leonard’s future. Lowry is averaging a leagueleading 10.4 assists per game. Little more than two years after going undrafted out of Wichita State, VanVleet is one of the NBA’s best backup point guards.
The most pressing questions won’t be answered for at least five months, when the Raptors will try to outdo all their recent postseason results.
Can Leonard finally help Toronto win the games that matter most? Will a franchise defined by playoff failure dispatch worthy contenders like Boston and Philadelphia in a potential seven-game series?
Though the stakes can be only so high in late November, Thursday’s Warriors-Raptors game offers an early — albeit, imperfect — barometer for just how ready Toronto is to face the back-to-back reigning NBA champions.
With their wing-loaded lineups, propensity for threepointers, switch-heavy defense, star power and strong supporting cast, the Raptors have drawn comparisons to the Houston team that pushed Golden State to seven games in May’s Western Conference finals. What makes Toronto especially daunting, however, is that it seeks redemption — a motive the Warriors can’t rival.
“They’re going to be a great test for us,” Golden State guard Klay Thompson said. “Who knows? It might be a preview of June. They got something really special up there in Canada right now.”
That Toronto is playing for far more than a playoff berth is still a bit surreal for Dell Curry, who didn’t make it past the second round in his three seasons (1999-2002) with the Raptors.
“Whenever I go up there, all the Toronto people remember Steph and Seth as youngsters, playing on the practice court,” Dell Curry said. “Back then, I’m not sure any of us could have foreseen something like this.”