One of the great debates in sports is how much chemistry matters.
Do teams that have strong personal relationships away from work benefit when they arrive at the court? Teams that win often talk about friendships, love and brotherhood. But teams that win usually have tremendous talent, which aids winning—and winning tends to help chemistry.
Losing can be like dropping a cube of pure sodium into a container of water in science class. Things tend to spit, pop and eventually boil over.
The NBA is swamped with examples at the moment, the most vivid being the meltdown taking place in Chicago. Earlier this week, Bulls stars Dwyane Wade and Jimmy Butler basically came out and said that the club’s 4-6 record in their past 10 games before Friday night wasn’t their fault, that they were trying hard.
The rest of the team? Not so much. There is no ‘we’ on this Bulls team, just ‘us’ and ‘them.’
That prompted one of the greatest moments in NBA social media history, when fading Bulls point guard Rajon Rondo took to Instagram to post a blistering attack on the character and conduct of Butler and Wade.
Team meetings ensued, but it’s doubtful the damage can be undone.
The Bulls aren’t the only team with issues right now. Just last week, the Milwaukee Bucks had a team meeting to address their losing ways. They had their own five-game losing streak and, after the Toronto Raptors defeated them 102-86 on Friday night, they left the Air Canada Centre as losers of seven of their past eight.
Bucks forward Jabari Parker made the mistake of telling the media he spoke up at the meeting.
“I spoke up for the first time and it didn’t go my way,” he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “I was getting thrashed, but hey, as long as I give them another perspective I did my job.”
His teammates weren’t impressed with his frankness, and elected to have him come off the bench last week against the Miami Heat as punishment.
The Bucks lost.
Add in the drama in Cleveland, where LeBron James emphatically put pressure on ownership to add some much-needed help, but in so doing basically told the world he didn’t think his teammates were worthy of him, and you have a rare week of the curtain being pulled back on the stresses that can test NBA teams.
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The Raptors have been losing more than their standard share lately. Toronto’s win over Milwaukee snapped their losing streak at five, but instead of pouts and finger-pointing and Instagram roasts, the mood has remained calm and tranquil.
As Kyle Lowry was talking about being named to his third straight Eastern Conference All-Star team on Friday, he drifted into an impromptu tribute to DeMar DeRozan, who made the All-Star team as a starter and represents the other half of the Raptors’ backcourt foundation the franchise is built on.
“That’s one of my best friends ever” said Lowry, who had 32 points and six assists against the Bucks while DeRozan missed his third straight game with a sprained ankle. “I can just go out there, we can hang out, we can go out to dinner, we hang with our families. It’s just that, like, we don’t have to find somebody, we don’t have to search, we just go. It’s like, ‘Alright, do you want to go to dinner? Do you want to go to a movie?’ Whatever you want to do. So it’s a lot easier.”
They weren’t friends before Lowry arrived now, but as their commitment to Toronto deepened, their relationship has too.
“I can’t put my finger on it,” said Lowry, of when they became more than just two guys who worked together. “My first year here, I really didn’t kind of talk to nobody. DeMar had his own thing going on. It wasn’t like we didn’t like each other, just, you know, I was trying to figure my way out and he had his thing going on. It’s not just something we can say, ‘Oh, this is the day.’ It just happened to grow. We became leaders of the team, we took that upon ourselves on this basketball court and we developed a great friendship off it.”
The Raptors have had their share of challenges since they took charge – most obviously getting swept by the Washington Wizards in the first round of the 2015 playoffs. It was ugly, but the Raptors stuck together, with Lowry and DeRozan keeping in constant touch that summer and pledging together to make sure something like that didn’t happen again.
As Toronto struggled at times in the playoffs last year, with both Lowry and DeRozan fighting their way through epic shooting slumps, they consistently put forth a united front, pledging confidently that the other would turn things around.
It helps head coach Dwane Casey breathe a little easier.
“They know that they need each other,” Casey said. “They’re good friends off the floor. They’re right there at the top because they genuinely like each other. I think our team genuinely likes each other. They play cards, compete on the plane in cards and hang out, go to dinner. Their families are close. I think that’s important, too. A lot of them have young families and so they become close out of necessity with their wives and kids. I know my kids are close with Kyle’s son, my son and Kyle’s son are close. It’s kind of a family atmosphere so it’s important. I think it helps Kyle and DeMar and all of the other players that are young parents to have those types of relationships.”
Which isn’t to say the Raptors are in a parallel universe where conflict doesn’t exist or isn’t a few moments away.
It’s not realistic, given how long the NBA season is and how much time a team spends together all the while competing for minutes and opportunities.
Lowry makes it clear that, even on his team, there is always the possibility the burners can get turned up and things can boil over.
“I mean, if it happens, it happens. It’s weird how things can happen,” said Lowry. “[But] at the end of the day if it happened we would handle it. Luckily we have a great group of guys and we go out there and we know what our jobs are and we try to get it done.”
