The Toronto Raptors are a chummy bunch. Their foundation pieces – Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, Jonas Valanciunas and head coach Dwane Casey have been together for five mainly harmonious seasons.
Even their young guys have been together for two and three years, for the most part, playing in Summer League together, group workouts in Los Angeles, and shuttling back and forth to Raptors 905.
In an Eastern Conference where the two teams that finished ahead of them last season — Cleveland and Boston — turned over more than half of their 30 rosters spots combined, they are counting on their continuity and chemistry to pay dividends in the win column once the season tips off Thursday night at the Air Canada Centre against the Chicago Bulls.
“Camaraderie and chemistry is hard to come by,” DeMar DeRozan, the franchise’s leader in games played was saying the other day. “So when you have that sense of comfort, knowing guys as individuals, on and off the court, you have a different comfort zone when you go out there in the big moments, understanding each other. That kind of goes a long way and it wins you games in the NBA. You can tell teams that have been together for years. Just off the strength of that, they can pull out victories over more talented teams, so to speak. Things like that go a long way.”
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But, like DeRozan said, it’s hard to come by.
Take for example those Bulls, already projected to be an Eastern Conference underling but who will start the season without starting power forward Nikola Mirotic and his understudy, Bobby Portis, after Portis punched Mirotic at practice and broke a bone in his face. Mirotic required surgery, has a concussion and is out indefinitely. Portis was suspended by the team for eight games.
Are the Raptors really that harmonious? Are practice fights part of the job in the NBA?
Well, let’s just say they aren’t unheard of and when Sam Mitchell was coaching in Toronto there were a couple of alleged incidents where coaches and players nearly went at it (Rafer Alston) or allegedly did (Vince Carter’s training room body slam on Mitchell).
“I’ve seen a few. You keep that in house. It is what it is,” said Raptors point guard Kyle Lowry. “It’s competition. It happens. You get mad at teammates, teammates get mad at you, you get mad at this. It happens. We’re all grown men in here. A lot of testosterone in here and sometimes it gets like that.
“It just happens. I don’t’ think it’s like, ‘I’m planning to do it,’ it just happens. You protect yourself and you get in the heat of the moment and it happens. Sometimes your teammates control you and you calm down and at the end of the day, you’ve still got to be together every single day. You might be mad at each for a couple of days, but other than that, you get over it.
“You don’t hate each other, you’re brothers. You really are brothers and growing up like siblings. It really is like that. We’re all grown men and come from different parents, but we’re together every single day. Things happen. Maybe one guy screens you the wrong way, some day you’re in a bad mood and things happen.”
DeRozan has seen a few too, though he says most of them were in high school.
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“Have I seen one? High school we fought a lot,” he said. “We used to have to go in the middle of the circle and the first one out of the circle lose. Compton High. If you’re talking smack, one way to settle it. I hope school’s not like that anymore.
“You want to argue and do all that? Coaches will tell you to go in the middle of the circle. A lot of time people would change their mind.”
“[But in the NBA] you can see it. You never know relationships, you never know the pressures, anything. You can catch anybody on two bad days and anything can happen. Who knows? It’s rare you hear about it now, but it’s never out of thought. It’s something that could possibly happen.”
As a coach, Dwane Casey says he appreciates the intensity but says he draws the line at crossing the line:
“You want competition. You want guys to compete, to go at each other,” he said. “But not to the point where you injure a teammate. It’s one thing to have an injury in a game or on your own or accidentally, whatever it is, but to have that at the hands of a teammate is difficult, and you never want that to happen. You always preach ‘have an edge.’ I like edgy practices, guys going at each other in practice. When it becomes physical, and there’s an opportunity to hurt a teammate, that’s where you draw the line.
“We had some doozies in Seattle (where Casey was a long-time assistant). I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We had some fisticuffs. One that started on the court and went in the weight room and went outside, come back in. It was a long one. I’ve seen those.
“The good thing about that, the people that were involved in that were able to come back together and bond back together, which is the hard part. You can’t let what happened yesterday come into tomorrow or next week or next month or hold it inside. That’s the trick and luckily in Seattle we had some of those, but guys were able to get back together and maintain the team chemistry.”
The Raptors, by all accounts have the chemistry part down pat and hope to take the fight to the Eastern Conference.
