TORONTO — The story wasn’t that the San Antonio Spurs were in town.
The story was who wasn’t.
The NBA’s beacon of consistency — playing at a 50-win pace for the 21st consecutive season, all under head coach and team president Gregg Popovich – tipped off against the Toronto Raptors without the help of their resident MVP candidate, Kawhi Leonard, their future Hall-of-Famer Manu Ginobili and their second-leading scorer, Rudy Gay.
Yes, that Rudy Gay. He’s a Spur now and has been sprinkled in magic dust. Popovich loves the ball-stopping former Raptor whose trade from Toronto magically unlocked the Raptors’ hidden potential.
The reality is it doesn’t seem to matter who plays for the Spurs. They keep winning.
“I guess it’s a tribute to the character of the guys,” said Popovich. “They just seem to persevere no matter what and try to fulfill their responsibilities. It’s on them and they’ve done a good job of it.”
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On Friday night at the Air Canada Centre, the Raptors, who fancy themselves as Spurs North, did everything just a little bit better on their way to a hard-fought 86-83 win.
It was a slug-it-out game, with each team digging in defensively and the Spurs countering the Raptors’ three-point barrage (9-of-26) by relying on an old-fashioned post attack run through veteran bigs Pau Gasol and LaMarcus Aldridge. The Raptors led by as many as 14 midway through the third quarter but the Raptors were nursing a 63-60 lead to start the final frame.
There was little breathing room after that. A pair of Kyle Lowry free-throws put the Raptors up five with just under four minutes to play but consecutive baskets by Jonas Valanciunas and DeMar DeRozan pushed the lead to nine with 2:39 left. Lowry seemed to finish the visitors with a teardrop with 30.9 on the clock to maintain Toronto’s three-possession advantage.
The Raptors ended up needing it as the Spurs kept extending the game. A Bryn Forbes triple cut the Raptors’ lead to three with 4.6 seconds left and Toronto survived a scare when the normally unflappable DeRozan missed both his free-throws on the next possession. But San Antonio failed to get a shot up before the buzzer, much to the relief of 19,800 at the ACC.
The win improved Toronto to 17-3 at home and 31-13 overall as it headed out after the game to play the second half of a back-to-back against Minnesota, trailing the Boston Celtics by two games for top seed in the East. The Spurs fell to 30-17 and are third in the West despite playing just nine games this year with Leonard, their best player who is out indefinitely with a quadriceps problem.
The Raptors held San Antonio to 34.1 per cent from the floor, although they shot just 40 per cent themselves. The Spurs tried to control the tempo, but they couldn’t impose their will.
Culture has been a buzzword around the Raptors since president Masai Ujiri expressed his urge to reset it at the end of last season. Each franchise has to follow its own path but can only hope it leads to space the Spurs have occupied for two decades: championships earned with class and with an awareness that for everything that goes into winning, there is more to life than winning or even basketball.
“Well, if your whole life is basketball I think that’s pretty boring, to be honest with you,” said Popovich, who has routinely used his platform to criticize United States president Donald Trump and speak out on a number of social issues. He recently arranged for the Spurs to have a private screening of the documentary 13th about mass incarceration in the US. “I think the more exposure your group has to issues such as social issues or trips that you might be able to make here or there when you’re in certain cities, which we’ve done in the past, it helps them grow together. It helps them appreciate each other, know who each other is, be more empathetic about other peoples’ existences and what they’ve gone through, how they got here.
“So if they can have that empathy and understanding for other people it gives them a more meaningful existence, I think, and we all benefit from it. Whether it’s poorer countries or whether we’re going to see 13th or the Holocaust Museum, or whatever it might be, they’re all important outings and issues to be discussed. That makes for a more experienced and interesting group.”
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On a practical level the Spurs have been able to look beyond the short-term concerns that most NBA teams are consumed with and take aim at some higher purposes because they’ve won titles and stacked winning seasons like firewood.
It means they can let a prospect like Davis Bertans – a throw-in in the draft-night swindle that brought Leonard from Indiana in 2011 – marinate in Europe for five full seasons before bringing him along slowly in the NBA.
The result? When bigger names like Leonard or Ginobili are unavailable, there is a strong cast of similarly groomed understudies that Popovich can plug and play, which was the case Friday night as they gave the fully-staffed Raptors everything they could handle.
“Since I can remember, they’ve been that,” said DeRozan. “They’ve been winning and the culture is the culture I think a lot of teams try to take after and be like. Winning seasons, season after season. Just everything about it has always been great. To watch it and ever since I’ve been in the league to see it first-hand, to play against it, you can tell why … everybody just understanding their role and how free they play, you can tell. It’s great.”
The Raptors are heading in the same direction, although they don’t have the rings to show for it yet, or provide the irrefutable evidence that their path is the right one. The organization has been progressive when it comes to hiring women and promoting inclusiveness. There is stability from Raptors president Ujiri on down and there is a strong family thread that runs through the team. They have also been able to think long-term when it comes to player development – hello Bruno Caboclo.
“I think we’ve definitely been working towards that and we have that,” said DeRozan. “Especially with our organization and the quality of guys we’ve had over years that gave us the camaraderie that shows on the court.”
As they head for their club-record fifth-straight playoff appearance and another 50-win season, the Raptors are the beneficiaries of the investment of time and roster spaces on the likes of Pascal Siakam, Delon Wright and the rest of the youngsters.
Friday night’s win turned on the contribution of their most established veterans – Lowry led all scorers with 24 points while DeRozan had 19 points and a game-high six assists and Valanciunas has 15 points and 11 rebounds — but they had help.
The Raptors played some of their best basketball in the first half when they had their second unit on the floor as the ball started whipping around, finding a wide-open C.J. Miles for an easy three. Wright Euro-stepped for a layup on one possession and then hit a three the next. Siakam hit a pair of rare triples while Jakob Poeltl did a bang-up job defending Aldridge in the post.
Down the stretch the Raptors were able to go back to their starting unit, with help from Wright as the Raptors’ depth gave Casey the kind of roster flexibility a short-handed Popovich could only dream about.
The Raptors can only dream about even getting to where Popovich and the Spurs have been so many times – they have five championships mixed in with their 21 years of regula- season dominance – but it’s a dream that looks more real this year than ever before.
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