Back home, Raptors focused on defence

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With the Kyle Lowry era now consigned to the team history books – or at least until his new employer, the Miami Heat, ventures north of the border next February – the Toronto Raptors will embark on their 27th NBA campaign next week.

Arguably more important, for fans and club accountants alike, this season will unfold on Canadian soil, with Wednesday’s season opener at home to the Washington Wizards in the first competitive NBA action at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena since Feb. 28, 2020.

In the interim, the team relocated to Tampa, where, despite playing in the same area code as the back-to-back Stanley Cup-champion Lightning, the Super Bowl-champion Buccaneers and the defending American League-champion Rays, the Raptors couldn’t build on their four-year run of reaching at least the second round of the playoffs. Worse, their 27-45 record wasn’t even enough to earn a spot in the NBA’s new play-in round, and their seven-year playoff run came to an end as a result.

But the changes extend beyond geographical borders. With Lowry gone, just four players now remain from the 2019 NBA championship roster. While head coach Nick Nurse will lean heavily on Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby and Chris Boucher to provide much of the team’s offence, he will also be relying on that core four to ensure the Raptors maintain their usual standard of tenacious defence.

That calling card slipped somewhat last season, when the Raptors committed 21.2 personal fouls a game, tied for the second-worse mark in the NBA. The need for strong defence has only heightened with the departure of Lowry’s playmaking, with Nurse saying on Friday that the “offence is still really a work in progress.”

The new recruits have been undergoing a crash course in Nurse’s defensive schemes through training camp, with rookies such as fourth overall pick Scottie Barnes and Toronto native Dalano Banton – the first Canadian drafted by the Raptors – on the receiving end of much of that instruction.

As Nurse explained, it can be a steep learning curve.

“I always keep saying [to] new guys or young guys in this league, defence is different in the NBA for sure,” he said. “And they’ve got to learn how fast things happen and where those rotations are and that just takes time of daily practice, the games, the film, back to practice, you know, over and over, usually.”

Thankfully, Nurse has players such as VanVleet and Boucher to lean on as he tries to bring the new arrivals up to speed.

“Obviously we believe in making our opponents take contested shots,” he said. “We also know that you’ve got to protect the rim, and my stance on that is we’ve got to do both. It’s part of our core belief and philosophy and stuff we work on every day.”

Blocking shots is easier with the presence of the six-foot-nine Boucher, who was sixth in the NBA last season with 111 blocks. But while Nurse would love it if all of his players could apply themselves as well as Boucher to that facet of the game, he admits that the Canadian has a special knack for it.

“Chris has certainly got an eye, you know, clinical timing on that stuff, and I’m not sure it’s like teachable or transferable,” Nurse said. “I think there’s something in there where he knows when to stop running and take off, you know, to get a piece of some of those.”

While Banton says he feels “like I belong in the NBA,” the 46th overall pick says the difference between playing defence in college, where he played for both Western Kentucky and Nebraska, and the NBA is night and day.

One particular point of emphasis for Nurse is drilling his defenders to always have their hands out in an attempt to block passing lanes. Having players the size of the six-foot-nine Banton should only help with that tactic.

“Having guys who are a lot bigger, a lot of size on the court, you feel like it discourages people from making passes just by us having our hands up like this, guys that are six-foot-eight, six-foot-nine, and versatile, I feel like it can go a long way for us on the defensive end,” he said.

While the Toronto native is understandably excited at the prospect of playing his first game at Scotiabank Arena, others will spend the weekend sweating their chances of making the team’s opening-day roster, with Nurse confirming the team will almost certainly take up until Monday’s deadline to decide the remaining spots.

Yuta Watanabe, Ishmail Wainright, Isaac Bonga and Sam Dekker are all in contention for the last couple of spots on the bench. Nurse admitted all have played well from what he has seen during pre-season, where the team went 3-2, and it will come down to experience and fit.

“You can make a case probably for all of them. I think they’re all quality people, they’re all hard workers, I think they can all chip in when needed and it’s just going to be a matter of us figuring that out.”