Raptors’ Powell playing like a starter
Raptors guard putting the team ahead of himself
There are only five starting roles on a basketball team.
Not everyone who wants to start or who even deserves to start gets to start.
That’s the biggest difference between the pro and amateur ranks. No one is trying to be fair. The goal is only to win. It’s a business.
Norm Powell began his fifth season in the NBA believing he should start.
Powell is not starting now nor will he be barring a sudden change in direction by the Raptors coaching staff led by Nick Nurse or another injury.
Powell started 11 games in a row with Kyle Lowry sidelined with a fractured thumb. Tuesday night, with Lowry back in the lineup, it was back to the bench for Powell.
It’s not an easy thing for a guy who has been bounced around throughout his young NBA career, starting at times and then back to the bench. It can mess with your confidence if you let it. Powell refuses to let it.
Powell made it clear during training camp he thought this was the year he could become a full-time starter with the departure of two such players.
Asked about his goals at the time, Powell ran them off like they were bullet points.
“Starting at the two spot, trying to put in the coach’s head that I should be a starter, separate myself from everybody else who sees the opportunity in front of them,” he began. “Come out here and compete, help the young guys … Definitely separate myself and become the starting two guard.”
Powell said he had not been promised a starting role, but in his head he was going to make it happen.
With a quarter of the season gone, Powell knows that isn’t going to happen.
Nurse, a coach who values players understanding their role and team chemistry, went to Powell ahead of Tuesday’s game, a game in which he would play almost 35 minutes coming off the bench, and laid out the plans going forward.
“I just kind of told him, I said, ‘Norm, great job, you know, great, great job filling in (for Lowry as a starter), but this is in reality your role. Your role is an off-thebench guy for this team, so let’s go kick some butt in this role and start getting used to it,’ ” Nurse said. “And I was proud of him for doing that Tuesday night. And he was huge. He led the comeback, I thought.”
Powell had 23 points off the bench in a 121-110 overtime loss to the Miami Heat and was the only reason the game even got to extra time thanks to his 15 fourth-quarter points.
There have been times as recently as two weeks ago and on occasion before that when Powell’s ability to perform consistently has been questioned.
Nurse, in the most recent example, suggested a couple of weeks ago that Powell had to even things out a bit.
“I wish we could pencil him in for about 16 each night rather than 26 (in) one and zero the next,” Nurse said at the time. “Twenty-one and four or whatever. But he’s certainly … capable.”
Since that time — again in a starting role for Lowry — over eight games Powell’s had just two games in which you could say his consistency wavered. That was a seven-point performance against the Knicks Nov. 27 in a Raptors blowout and two nights earlier against Philadelphia when he had just 10 points in a tight win.
Every other game he has been between 15 and 33 points and over 50 per cent shooting from the field.
Powell may not see time with the starting five again this year, but his role is an important one. Last Friday with the entire roster in a shooting funk, it was Powell’s 33 points that saved the day. Tuesday night again, with the rest of his teammates in a shooting funk, Powell’s 23 points kept the Raptors in a game they had no business being in.
All Nurse knows is he’s fortunate to have a guy like Powell who puts team ahead of self.
“I think he understood,”