For more than a month now—from day one of training camp, throughout the pre-season and into this first week of the 2014/15 campaign—two words have been synonymous with the Toronto Raptors: chemistry and continuity. That’s what will propel Dwane Casey’s crew to a higher life this season.
But fondness and familiarity generally mean very little on a basketball court without maturity. And Casey believes his team got a first-hand lesson in growing up in the NBA in the form of last year’s post-season loss to the Brooklyn Nets.
“They understand, now, a little bit better how important spacing is,” said Casey of his team’s first-round playoff exit last May. “I thought [that series] did give us maturity more than anything else; maturity in being able to play a physical style the way Brooklyn did. Getting beat up. They understood that and they understood how precious a possession is. All of those things are really brought to light if you don’t have an attention to detail.”
Thus far, the Raptors are showing signs of the lessons they learned.
Though it is a very small sample size, Toronto has committed the fewest turnovers per game in the league so far this year (9.7). That’s a product of the familiarity that results from returning last year’s core and key bench pieces, and it’s also a great indication of the value the team is putting on protecting the ball and cherishing possessions.
The Raptors have also come out of the gate as a top-five team offensively, averaging 108.6 points per 100 possessions while leading the league with a whopping 40 free throw attempts per game.
“That’s one thing we’ve consciously tried to do—attack,” said Casey. “I think we’re stronger with the ball, more confident with the ball. I think that’s a product of getting a taste of playoff basketball last year.
“Before, I think, if you even breathed on us a little bit, we’d cough it up. But now we’re stronger with [the ball] and we’re creating contact and finishing plays. That’s just a part of maturity.”
Make no mistake, though, Toronto is still a work in progress in many ways. Look no further than Sunday night’s loss to Miami as an example of how quick and slippery the slope can be for a young team that isn’t yet in the secret society of the league’s elite.
The Raptors allowed the Heat to breeze through the first three quarters, as Miami hovered around 60 percent shooting from the field for most of the night. It wasn’t until the final frame that Toronto mustered any kind of defence—forcing their way back into the game, but eventually falling short, 107-102. For a Miami team that was supposed to take a step back in the wake of LeBron James’s departure, Toronto made South Beach look like championship real estate again.
In fact, defensively, the Raptors have been sub-par so far in spite of their 2-1 record. That’s probably a product of circumstance more than anything else, because Casey doesn’t believe his team is already getting lax and believing the hype around their 2014-15 season.
“You’re in the NBA, everybody is going to get better,” he said. “If you don’t get better, you’re going to be lagging behind. That’s one of the things our guys took to heart [after the playoff loss to Brooklyn]: We had to improve. We haven’t accomplished anything. We’re still getting better and we’re still striving. We have to keep clawing and scrapping because the moment you think that you’ve arrived is the moment somebody is going to step up and knock you upside the head.”
Toronto has a chance to make up for its miscue in Miami, as their schedule is stacked with a ton of home games over the next three weeks. Eight of their next nine contests will be played at Air Canada Centre, with five of the nine coming against teams that failed to make the playoffs a year ago. November could provide the Raptors with an opportunity to get a jump on the season, rather than being forced to play catch-up like they were last year.
That the starting five from 2013-14 remained intact and the key pieces of the second unit came back as well, means that Casey doesn’t have to teach on the fly or wait for new teammates to get to know one another.
“Continuity with terminology, continuity with schemes, continuity with play calls [and] continuity with the familiarity with each other,” said Casey of his 2014-15 Raptors. “In San Antonio, it’s the same thing. They’ve had the same cast for I don’t know how many years. Same play calls, same schemes, same general manager, president—whatever. That means a lot to a program in any sport. I think the teams that do that and stick with that have been successful.”