With the Toronto Raptors taking off for Boston after their practice on Tuesday afternoon, the focus was on the steady play of the Celtics and the youth movement that is in effect. There was also an update on Rudy Gay (back stiffness) and Andrea Bargnani (sprained right elbow).
Gay, who did not play against the Cleveland Cavaliers in a Raptors victory on Sunday evening, did make the trip to Boston where he will be a game-time decision on Wednesday night. Bargnani did not make the trip with the team. Both players had diagnostic testing on Monday, but results have not yet been released.
When talking about the surprising play of the Celtics even after losing All-Star point guard Rajon Rondo to a torn ACL, Alan Anderson was quick to point out that the players in the Raptors locker room have not counted them out, nor do they intend to take them lightly.
“I don’t know why y’all overlook them,” Anderson said with a laugh. “Maybe it’s because you have a player like a Rondo go out and you all think, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s their team.’ But you forget the jersey says Celtics, not Rondo. Even though he’s an unbelievable player for their franchise you know they still have guys who have been following him and he has been mentoring who are there to step up in his place. But I don’t know why you would overlook them. Y’all have to stop doing that.”
Pressed about what specifically makes the Celtics such a solid team, even without their best player, Anderson had plenty of compliments for the men in green.
“It’s the system, it’s the players, it’s the coaches, it’s the whole organization,” Anderson said. “They have guys that rally around each other and guys that have each others’ backs. One guy falls, the next guy picks him up and steps in for him.”
When Raptors coach Dwane Casey talks with his team about the Celtics, veteran Mickael Pietrus will lend a helping hand. Pietrus played for Boston a season ago and is familiar with what his former coach Doc Rivers will try to do against the Raptors.
“He played with them last year so he knows,” Casey said “The physicality on both ends of the floor. They get after you defensively. They want to slow the pace down, slow the tempo down. We want to speed it up. We don’t want to get in a grind-it-out game with them. They are one of the top defensive teams in the league. The faster we can play, the better.”
Youth movement
While fans were treated to an uptempo game against the Cavs on Sunday, with the athletic Terrence Ross on the floor alongside DeMar DeRozan and Jonas Valanciunas, look for the pace to be pushed on Wednesday night.
With young players on the floor, mistakes are going to happen. Have young players playing an up-tempo game, expect those mistakes to multiply. Still, Casey is adamant that he will coach Ross and Valanciunas through the end of the season, teaching them to earn their minutes and develop the right habits while on the floor.
“No question there is an opportunity for them to be on the court, but you also have to do the right thing,” he said.”You can’t come down and just OK, do willy-nilly things that are outside our schemes and expect to stay on the floor. Now you are developing bad habits and that’s what we don’t want to do. There can be two or three mistakes but not multiple mistakes… They will play but it’s going to be teaching, coaching instead of just giving playing time. At the end of the day we do them a disservice moreso by leaving them out there when they’re making mistakes and letting them get away with it.”
Casey praised the Celtics’ organization and gave a nod toward where he’s trying to guide the Raptors to.
“We know what we are up against Wednesday night and that’s what we are trying to build here,” he said. “That type of toughness because that’s what the Eastern Conference is about. That type of resolve and toughness whether it’s in a half-court game or a full-court game, defensively, offensively or whatever it is. That physicality we are trying to develop here and that’s where we are going.”