Team still a contender, no ifs, ands or buts about it
For years there were only reasons to doubt the Raptors, no matter how much success they enjoyed during the regular season. These days, there are only reasons to believe.
As improbable as it may seem, Toronto has maintained its position in the upper echelon of the Eastern Conference without the services of not only Kawhi Leonard but also key pieces of this year’s rotation, Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka.
With each win, the Raptors are proving last year’s success wasn’t because of one man. The title run never happens without Leonard, that much is obvious, but it’s also becoming clear it wouldn’t have been possible without guys like Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet and Marc Gasol as well.
Most of the talk at the start of the season centred around the inevitable rebuild. Siakam was locked up as the cornerstone of the franchise, a building block for the next era of Raptors basketball. OG Anunoby was considered another valuable piece, but outside of that there didn’t seem to be much reason to hope, even in a conference that was there for the taking.
Well, what a difference a few weeks can make. The Raptors are not only surviving without Lowry and Ibaka, they are thriving. The season is barely a month old and already Toronto has signature victories over the Lakers and Sixers, with narrow losses to the Celtics, Clippers and Bucks on the road. The overall record of 12-4 is good enough for fourth place in the conference. A perfect 7-0 mark at home matches the franchise record set last year.
There’s a lot to like about this current roster and yet it’s clearly not getting much respect. In ESPN’s latest power rankings, Toronto wasn’t even included in the top 10 despite its strong start. The underdog status isn’t going away any time soon, despite being the reigning
NBA champions, but at least some people have started to take note.
“They’re a good team,” Sixers star Joel Embiid said after being held scoreless for the first time in his career on Mon
day night. “They’ve got guys that can do a lot of things on the basketball court. They’re well-coached and they do their jobs and they made sure that they stuck with the plan they had, especially taking me out of the game. Defensively, they’re everywhere. They’re so long and they make sure they pack the paint.”
Other years, the early season success likely would have been brushed aside, because whenever this team did something good it always came with a but. In the Chris Bosh years, despite winning the Atlantic Division title, there was a belief the Raptors would never get past arch nemesis Vince Carter and the Nets. In the DeRozan era, each victory came with an asterisk because LeBron James would inevitably be waiting for them in the playoffs.
Well, despite the diminished expectations, those roadblocks no longer exist. First-place Milwaukee owns the conference’s best player in Giannis
Antetokounmpo, but the Bucks might be more vulnerable than they were a year ago following the departure of Malcolm Brogdon. Boston has injury concerns of its own and Philadelphia, the early season favourite, has yet to figure things out after replacing JJ Reddick and Jimmy Butler with Josh Richardson and Al Horford.
Is another run to the NBA Finals likely? Probably not, but the point is it’s possible and the optimism has been noticeable in the fan base. There was a playoff-like atmosphere at Scotiabank Arena during Monday’s 101-96 victory over the Sixers. Try telling anyone in attendance that the Raptors’ results this season are a foregone conclusion. Instead of saying “yeah, but” in response to Toronto’s success, more and more people are simply asking: “Why not?” Kawhi’s long gone, but the rest of the core is much better than it was at the start of last year.
“Our menu of the things we can do at this point, compared to this point a year ago, quadruple, if not more,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said.
“Last year, we were playing fundamental, foundationbuilding defence, and we had no schemes in. Now we have too many. We have so many we don’t know what to do with half of them.”
The biggest reason to believe has been the level of buy-in Nurse received from his players on the defensive end. Just look at how the Raptors have been able to handle some of the game’s biggest stars over the last two-plus weeks of action.
James was held to 13 points after hitting five of 15 shots on Nov. 10. The next day Leonard was limited to 12 points on two-of-12 shooting. Two days after that, four-time all-star Damian Lillard couldn’t even reach double digits. Then there was Monday’s dominating performance against the oversized Sixers, despite Toronto not having one of its best post defenders in Ibaka.
Toronto has been accomplishing this in a variety of ways. There have been boxand-one defensive schemes, triangle-and-two, a two-three zone. When the Raptors are matched up man to man, they don’t hesitate to send an extra defender to force the ball out of a star player’s hands. All of this is a testament to Nurse’s schemes and how much he is willing to adapt his planning to match up against a specific opponent.
It also reveals how much his players have bought in, not only during games, but during the countless video and practice sessions. If Nurse plans like this in November, just think about what he can do with another best-of-seven series in late April.
“Our job is to look at what is coming at us, talk about the many variations of what could possibly work defensively,” Nurse said.
“Simplify that a little bit, get some type of order in which you may want to use this one and then this one and then this one, and then try to relay that to the team and then tell them why.”
Seems to be working out well so far. If this keeps up, the Raptors might end up becoming more than a one-year mirage after all.