Raptors fined $25,000 for rest, injury reporting
Team accused of sitting top players in bid to move into a better draft position
TORONTO — It's pretty clear Raptors' head coach Nick Nurse is fed up answering the tanking question.
It's also pretty clear the NBA is just as fed up with the way the Raptors have gone about resting and sitting out players of late.
Nurse, for his part, is really the wrong guy to ask about tanking.
If it's happening, and clearly the league believes it is based on the $25,000 fine they handed the team yesterday for failing to comply with league policies governing player rest and injury reporting, it's not Nurse's call to begin with.
But as the man who faces the media almost daily, it has been Nurse answering the question in various forms about the perception that his team is strategically resting players in order to enhance their draft position on nearly a nightly basis. Saturday afternoon he made his position as clear as he possibly could.
“I want our guys to play the right way,” Nurse said when asked if his approach to the remainder of the season has changed now that the Raptors are right back in the thick of the hunt for a spot in the play-in tournament. “I don't know who's in or who's out or who is coming back when or whatever. I just want to ... there are some standards we would like to play to and it's as simple as that.”
Raptors' management did not respond to the fine handed down by the league last night. The media availability with Nurse and point guard Fred VanVleet Saturday was over by the time the league handed out the fine.
Toronto management may respond to it tonight or more likely there won't be a response.
Obviously the $25,000 is not going to put even a tiny dent in any team's NBA budget, but the message has been sent. The league is watching the Raptors. Further loose and fast play with rest days is likely to be met with increasing fines.
The Raptors did not file an injury report with the league last night for today's game with Oklahoma City.
Nurse could not say definitively who was in or out but a quick talk with Alex McKechnie, Vice President, Player Health and Performance, on the way to Nurse's media availability had him believing Gary Trent Jr. might be able to play after sitting out the last two, but Fred VanVleet might not be able to play after returning from a seven-game absence due to a hip injury and then a one-game suspension.
Nurse though admitted nothing had been firmed up.
Toronto went into last night's play in a three-way tie for the 10th and final spot for the play-in tournament in the Eastern Conference. They were even with Chicago and Washington with both of those latter teams playing last night.
As rough as this season as been a playoff spot is still there for the taking.
But their pattern of resting players of late strongly suggests draft position has become the driving force behind roster decisions.
Again no one has said that, but that does appear to be the pattern.
From Nurse's perspective there is only one approach he will ever take.
“We go out there and we play hard, and we play defence,” Nurse said. “We share the ball and we execute to get the shots that we want. Sometimes a lot of them go in, sometimes they don't. But as long as you continue to work that way, let the chips fall where they may.”
This is probably the most unpure year of basketball I've ever been apart of, just from the whole league and rushing the season back.” Fred VanVleet
WHEN MONEY TALKS
Fred VanVleet will look back on this 2020-21 season regardless of how it ends up knowing it was not the kind of NBA season he ever envisioned happening.
Playing through a pandemic has resulted in all kinds of twists and turns from everyone from the guy riding the end of an NBA bench and making the league minimum to the max player pulling down 35 minutes a night.
VanVleet admitted a lot of the purity of the game has been forsaken in the process.
“To be honest, this is probably the most unpure year of basketball I've ever been apart of, just from the whole league and rushing the season back,” he said. “It's pretty much all about business this year on every level and it's hard to hide it, you know what I'm saying?
“The NBA is a great balance of like the pure love and joy of one of the best sports in the world mixed with a billion-dollar industry, and I think this year the industry side has taken precedent over some of the love and the joy,” VanVleet said. “But there's good days and bad days. I've been saying that all year. Just dedicating yourself to the craft, to your work, to your teammates, and allowing yourself to be human and take some of those good and bad days. But it's definitely been a trying year, for sure, ups and downs across the board.”
VanVleet isn't pointing fingers. He knows that business approach to the game has helped make him a very wealthy man at a young age and the current circumstances in this pandemic-ravaged world the league operates in have shifted the balance more in the money direction.
“I'm certainly not blaming them for anything that they've done but it's a fact that business has taken precedent this year,” he said. “Just the way it is for now and hopefully we can get it back to a better balance somewhere in the near future, but this is the world that we're in right now.”