For the Raptors, silence could be golden

Lacking any competition on the court, the Toronto Raptors continue their unabated war with expectations.

This team has suffered for years under the weight of ill omens – always needing to fall back before attempting to move ahead; always reverting to the bad, old, the-rim-is-as-wide-around-as-a-tea-cup Raptors at some point. It became an awful tick.

That’s getting harder to do now, up two games to none against a Washington team that played Tuesday night as though they have booked vacations that begin in a week.

The Wizards haven’t entirely rolled over yet, but they’ve shifted their collective weight onto one hip and are swinging round. If John Wall goes motivationally AWOL – a serious possibility – this thing could get ugly.

That leaves the Raptors with a philosophic question: If they aren’t underdogs, what are they?

On Wednesday, coach Dwane Casey talked about a team meeting held in “the middle of the season” when the Raptors were informed they had a new goal. It was to win the Eastern Conference.

“That’s when the messaging changed somewhat,” Casey said.

Having achieved it and more, they now want to take a rhetorical step back.

Example No. 1 is the Raptors’ unresolved cold war with ESPN.

No matter where the Worldwide Leader in Sports schedules their games, the Raptors know it is their duty to take offence. Their tipoff could pre-empt the State of the Union, and the Raptors would complain that it’s not their job to set U.S. foreign policy.

No scrum may pass without some mention of the way in which the United States fails to rate this basketball club. Usually, it’s a jokey aside that is meant to be taken for serious and may, by this point, have come all the way back round to being a joke.

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Casey talked up the team developing the “mental toughness you have to have to be the favourite,” but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

Later, he tried to backtrack as best he could.

“I don’t know how many games we’re going to walk in, if you’re watching the Las Vegas line – I’m not a bettor – where we’re the favourite.”

He’s right there. Vegas has Washington as narrow favourites on Friday night. Apparently, nobody working on the Strip subscribes to League Pass.

Then Casey doubled down.

“[Friday’s game] is probably going to be even tougher than Game 1, to get over that Game 1 jinx.”

The Game 1 jinx lasted a quarter century. It was buried so deep in the team psyche, you could quite literally see them seizing up in games. And beating a Washington team that’s already had their will broken will be harder than that?

We’re at the point where you wonder how much of this is performance, how much is habit and how much is useful.

Coaches everywhere have a deep fear of providing bulletin-board material for their opponents. It’s not so much that it might provoke a better showing, but that it will be used post-facto as a cudgel with which to beat the coach if things go wrong.

There’s a word for people who talk big and fail to deliver in the NBA – unemployed.

But some teams find a way to deliver the message in a way that skirts insult, without indulging false modesty.

The players seem to have gotten there by themselves. No more head-hanging, no more post-game thousand-yard stares.

DeMar DeRozan is the tip of that spear. There was a point in Game 1 where it felt like he was tipping over sideways, going in for another one of his two-for-whatever playoff shooting games. But DeRozan continued to distribute the ball and eventually found his space. He was as good as he’s ever been in Game 2.

Throughout the season, DeRozan has been flying back and forth to his home in Los Angeles to visit his father, who is gravely ill. Casey said that the elder DeRozan recently sent the team an encouraging video from his hospital bed.

“It brought tears to my eyes,” Casey said. If he is not yet willing to endorse the whole unreservedly, Casey’s not shy about praising the most important part.

DeRozan has gone from “a snotty-nosed kid” to “the man he is today.” Largely, that was about DeRozan’s willingness to accept this year that his approach would alter entirely. No more low-percentage, mid-range jumpers – DeRozan’s incurable tick. He’d learn to shoot the three, and pass whenever he ran into obstacles on his way to the basket rather than try to tunnel through them.

DeRozan’s conversion apparently happened after an early season game in Utah (a good place for that sort of thing).

“I implored him,” Casey said. “ ’Let’s give this a chance.’ ”

This implies DeRozan was a reluctant adopter of a revamped offensive model the Raptors promised way back in May, 2017. It wasn’t until six months later, and whatever it was that happened in Utah, that he changed his mind.

More so than the “We are going to win now” midseason speech, this will have been the moment the Raptors flipped their internal script.

Because it was only after DeRozan decided he no longer wanted to hero-ball it whenever things got tight that the supplementary players would have room to breathe. It’s a straight line from there to the 12-man bench that is currently swamping the Wizards.

This change happened quietly. DeRozan didn’t bring it up. His stat line remained the same. The team had a better record, but the swing wasn’t remarkable. The only evidence of what was happening was out on the court.

That trend has carried over to the playoffs – same messaging, same clichés – but everything feels this different. This Raptors team plays like a team that knows it will win.

As long as that continues, maybe it’s okay if they never find the mental gear to stop talking like a team that expects to lose. And maybe it’s better still if they just say nothing at all.