TORONTO – Play-in for what?
A year ago at this time, the Raptors had already made the decision to cut their losses and look to the future. The pandemic had forced them to play their home games a long ways from home, a slow start set the tone, and then a team-wide COVID outbreak dashed any hope of salvaging a lost campaign.
So, instead of trying to squeeze into the play-in tournament, they opted to take a strategic step back and play for lottery balls in lieu of wins. Not an easy call for a championship-level organization that prides itself on its winning culture, one that had qualified for the playoffs in seven straight seasons prior to last year.
However, as Masai Ujiri explained following what he would later refer to as the “Tampa tank,” if everything went according to plan, they wouldn’t be down for very long.
“Everybody’s like, ‘why don’t you get in the play-in?’ Play-in for what? We want to win [another] championship here,” the Raptors president said, famously, after his club’s disappointing 2020-21 season came to an end last May. “We have to put ourselves in position [to do that].”
They’ve spent the last 12 months or so taking steps in that direction. Their time as a draft lottery team was short-lived, but highly successful. With the fourth pick, they added Scottie Barnes, a superstar in the making, to a young core that used this season to get back on track, individually and collectively. Fred VanVleet blossomed into an all-star, and Pascal Siakam didn’t just rediscover his pre-pandemic form, he’s exceeded it.
Once again, they’ve avoided the play-in, but this time it was because of ambition, not attrition. A year later, they are back where they want to be.
With Tuesday’s win over Atlanta, and Cleveland’s loss to Orlando, the Raptors clinched a top-six seed in the East and a guaranteed playoff spot.
“It means a lot,” Fred VanVleet said after the 118-108 victory. “It’s one of those things where we gotta just appreciate the journey. The first four or five [years I was here], you kind of get a little jaded, a little spoiled, with just expecting the win and excellence it takes to be good every night in this league. That was taken away from us last year, so sitting at home in [May] and watching the first round of the playoffs, or even the play-in when we all felt like we were capable enough to be there, stung a little bit and I know that is something that we spoke about.”
“Fast forward to having a group that nobody thought was going to be any good, being here in this position is good. We did what we set out to do in the regular season, which was have a good regular season [and] get us a spot where we feel like we belong, and now it’s time to go see what we can do.”
One of the youngest and most inexperienced teams in the league, these Raptors came into the season with modest expectations. Vegas had their win total set at 36.5. They projected as a .500 team, at best. Most figured that if everything broke the right way, if they got some good injury luck and the young guys developed quickly, they would be in the mix for the play-in tournament.
Instead, they hit the over on that win total early last month. They’re 46-33, and with three games left to play, they’ll have a shot at surpassing their win total from that 2013-14 season – the year that launched the most successful run in franchise history. Who would’ve thought that was possible back in October?
“Every year that I’ve been here they always seeded us lower than what we thought we could be and it just made us work harder,” said Chris Boucher. “I feel like we all knew what we were capable of doing… When I saw the talent that we had, it was just about putting all the pieces together.”
Ujiri, Bobby Webster and this Toronto front office turned some heads and raised some eyebrows by selecting Barnes over presumed top-four pick Jalen Suggs and building this unorthodox roster made up primarily of long, interchangeable forwards. It took some time to figure it out and build an identity, but this group has come a long way since Washington ran them off their own court on opening night.
“They've grown a lot and tonight was a really good example,” head coach Nick Nurse said following Tuesday’s win. “The first 25 games of the year we could not execute switching our defensive schemes. We just couldn't do it. Every time we switched to zone it was wide open, every time we switched to blitzing, we weren't making the rotations, every time we were trying to do whatever we were trying to do, we just weren't doing it at all, which was concerning. But tonight we flipped out of man, we flipped to a bunch of different screen and roll coverage, we flipped to the box-and-one, and so they've grown so much in that area.”
The Raptors showed their maturity against a red-hot and highly motivated Hawks team that had won five straight games and was jockeying for position in the East’s play-in race. Toronto looked like it was pulling away early in the fourth quarter before going scoreless for more than five minutes. With Trae Young leading the run, Atlanta turned a 12-point deficit into a one-point lead in the blink of an eye.
However, the Raptors outscored them 15-5 over the final two minutes. Barnes grabbed an offensive rebound and hit a baby hook shot around the rim. VanVleet, who missed 10 of his first 11 three-point attempts, knocked down a clutch triple. Siakam drained a couple free throws to put a bow on another brilliant performance. That’s not a game that they would’ve pulled out a few months ago, but they found a way.
And that’s the identity they’ve built. They don’t quit. They don’t back down, regardless of the opponent or the situation.
Things haven’t gone perfectly for them this season. They’ve had to overcome injuries – first to Siakam, who got a late start to the campaign after undergoing off-season shoulder injury, then to VanVleet, who’s been battling a nagging knee ailment, and now to OG Anunoby, who’s out with a thigh bruise. COVID hit again in December, forcing three of their games to be postponed and decimating their roster in a loss to Cleveland. They’re the only team in the league that’s had to play in an empty arena this season, on account of provincial attendance restrictions.
They haven’t just endured. They’ve thrived. On February 26, the seventh-place Raptors were six games behind the first-place Bulls. Since then, Toronto has won 14 of 20 contests while Chicago has dropped 13 of 19, and on Tuesday, the Raptors passed them for fifth in the conference.
They’ve done it the same way they managed to steal this latest win over Atlanta, by using effort and hard play to make up for a lack of shooting and half-court offence. On Tuesday, they missed their first 12 three-point attempts and shot 9-for-35 from beyond the arc, but they scored 24 second-chance points on 20 offensive rebounds. More often than not, that’s been the formula in their wins.
That game, against this very tough Atlanta team, was a good indication of why they had worked so hard to avoid the play-in. The Hawks went to the Conference Finals a year ago and feature one of the most lethal scorers in the NBA, the Hornets are dangerous, and then there’s the Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving-led Nets, who nobody wants to face in a win-or-go-home scenario.
Now that the Raptors have punched their ticket back to the postseason, they can use these final three games to rest some of their banged up stars. An added benefit is that they’ll have six days between Sunday’s regular season finale in New York and Game 1 of the first round, which is scheduled to begin on April 16. That’s one of the reasons why VanVleet has opted to play through his knee injury. Now, he, Anunoby and others will have a chance to heal up and get closer to full strength ahead of the playoffs.
The next five days will determine whether they finish fifth or sixth and who they’ll face in the opening round – after Tuesday night’s games, Boston, Milwaukee and Philadelphia were locked in a three-way tie behind first-place Miami.
They’ll be heavy underdogs in a series against any of those opponents, but that’s unlikely to faze a team that’s been defying the odds and proving people wrong all season.
“I think they’ve formed some kind of identity,” Nurse said. “It’s a little quirky and a little different, but it’s a hard-playing, competitive identity and they found a way to grind out enough wins to get ‘em in this situation. I don’t think they were picked to get here so that’s always a good accomplishment.”
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMifGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRzbi5jYS9qb3NoLWxld2VuYmVyZy10b3JvbnRvLXJhcHRvcnMtYXZvaWQtcGxheS1pbi10b3VybmFtZW50LWNsaW5jaC1wbGF5b2ZmLXNwb3QtaW4td2luLW92ZXItYXRsYW50YS0xLjE3ODE1MDXSAYQBaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudHNuLmNhL2pvc2gtbGV3ZW5iZXJnLXRvcm9udG8tcmFwdG9ycy1hdm9pZC1wbGF5LWluLXRvdXJuYW1lbnQtY2xpbmNoLXBsYXlvZmYtc3BvdC1pbi13aW4tb3Zlci1hdGxhbnRhLTEuMTc4MTUwNT90c24tYW1w?oc=5
2022-04-06 05:10:06Z
1369694020
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar