How long has it been? A decade? More? How long has it been since the city of Toronto has had a group of athletes as easy to cheer for as the Raptors — even without the, um, endearing quality added by their slow starts and frantic rallies?
But that doesn’t mean head coach Dwane Casey wasn’t right on Wednesday when he grumbled after another seat-of-their shorts win that to be a championship-calibre team — not playoff-calibre, understand, but championship-calibre — the Raptors shouldn’t need him “to say giddy-up.” They shouldn’t need him to lay into them to develop what he calls “a playing personality,” capable of staking a claim in the opening 12 minutes of a game.
The Raptors return to the court Friday night against the Washington Wizards at the Air Canada Centre in what is the most intriguing matchup of the early season, because so many NBA observers see the Wizards as something of a mirror image of the Raptors in the wide-open Eastern Conference – a team on the up with the potential to be a pace-setter when Bradley Beal returns from his broken wrist. There will be times this season when the Raptors won’t be able to sell themselves as the hunter instead of the hunted. This is one of them.
The Raptors understand the issues slow starts have created for themselves through the first five regular-season games; they say all the right things afterward and send out all the necessary signals. Those who observe them have their own ideas, with many of them focusing on Terrence Ross’s lack of defensive initiative early in the contest.
Casey’s very public expressions of disappointment go beyond simply feeling the need to shock the system. In any sport of flow, be it hockey or basketball, coaches take a particular pride in how their team opens a game. After all, they’ve had the players attention up to that point; they’ve been able to draw up things and make last-minute adjustments. The first foul hasn’t been called; the first shot hasn’t been missed or made; the first defensive assignment hasn’t been blown.
Even in baseball, with all its stops and starts and a 162-game schedule, there is a particular pride on the part of a manager in how his team comes out of the gate. A slow start reflects poorly on the manager. In some cases (think 2015 Toronto Blue Jays, for example) a slow start could mean a lost job. Even worse for Casey, who won an NBA title as the assistant coach responsible for the Dallas Mavericks defence, it is the defensive part of the game that is often most wanting in the first quarter.
The good news – beyond the Raptors ability to rally – is that Casey has a better handle on his bench after five games than he likely expected. Tyler Hansbrough, in particular, has shown he will be a bigger contributor than he was in his first season with the team while re-discovering ‘Psycho T.’
But it is one of those bench players, Greivis Vasquez, who wondered earlier this week whether the absence of Amir Johnson – missing for three games with an ankle injury – wasn’t a large part of the explanation. Johnson was a good first-quarter performer for the Raptors when the team blossomed into a contender in 2013-2014, collecting more steals and rebounds and posting a higher field-goal percentage in the first quarter than any other player on the team. True, he logged more first-quarter minutes, but Johnson’s energy and ability to produce without needing plays drawn up for him is an important first-quarter asset for any team. Few players on this team have as many recipes for chicken salad as does Johnson, if you catch my drift.
“Amir … we’re all just so used to having him out there,” Vasquez said. “It’s not just his energy. It’s what he does. He might not get 40 points but we need him for the rest of us to get baskets.
“Plus, it messes up our rotation early in the season. If it was the middle of the year, we’d be able to adjust to who is going to come into the game early, for example, or who is going to be coming in late.”
The Raptors can only hope this early-season bout of ankle issues isn’t a harbinger. Johnson, who is in the final year of a five-year, $27-million contract, spent part of the off-season working out at a performance centre which essentially did a diagnostic study of his movements in order to alleviate his propensity for ankle and foot issues. I don’t know how Casey and his staff can change these starts — maybe Chuck Hayes was right when he told NBA TV that “since I’ve been here last season, this is our m.o.” — but I have to think having all hands on deck would be a start.