It was Terence Davis’ turn to speak with the media on Wednesday.
He listened politely as the first question was asked and then just as politely informed the media gathering that he had a little more on his mind right now than just a basketball game.
“This week, man, me personally, I think you guys have seen, a lot of the guys, we’re united right now,” he said of the NBA’s efforts to keep the issue of social injustice front and centre despite the looming return of the sport they all love.
“We’re just keeping the focus on Breonna Taylor’s killers. That’s what I want to keep the focus on this week. I can answer all of your guys’ questions — it’s nothing against you guys — and I can answer all of you guys’ questions post-game or any time after we’re playing but right now I just want to keep the focus on what’s really going on in the world.”
Davis is just the latest member of the NBA fraternity intent on showing they are serious about using the platform they have as professional athletes to make meaningful inroads in the issues that plague society as a whole.
“There’s a lot of social injustice going on and I just want to make sure that I’m doing the right thing and using my platform, as well as other athletes, to just continue with this thing, man,” Davis said. “We all stand united. We don’t all have to be on the same team but we’re still united in the league. So, like I said, I just want to keep the focus on Breonna Taylor’s killers and just keep that going, man, because (social injustice) is still going on in the world.”
Norm Powell had a very specific phrase for the back of his jersey where his name would normally go for this NBA restart. But he won’t be able to use it and he’s not very happy about it. In acknowledgement of the huge emphasis a vast number of NBA players and the league itself is […]
Maybe it’s the bubble living, or all that time away from the game. Maybe it’s because the playoffs are so close and this Raptors team, despite the lack of respect from south of the border, really is locked in on repeating as NBA champs. Whatever the reason, the intensity or ‘the juice,’ as head coach […]
Kyle Lowry emerged from a prolonged absence just as you would expect.
The Raptors star was feisty and as combative as ever, which is about par for the course when he’s dealing with media types as he was on Monday.
When Raptors GM Bobby Webster happened to stroll past the media location and spotted Lowry being interviewed, you could hear him teasing his team leader about finally relenting and sitting down for one of these never-ending Zoom conference calls with the scribes back in Toronto.
“Don’t worry,” Lowry fired back at his GM. “They won’t hear from me for another month.”
Clearly four months away from the media has done nothing to change his attitude towards us.
But Lowry admits there has been change in him. Really, how can anyone say they haven’t changed as we’ve all been going about our daily lives in a much different way since the pandemic began.
For Lowry, it has meant the first time in his children’s lives that he has been able to be at home with them in Philadelphia at this time of year and really experience family life and all that comes with it.
“I got to put my kids to bed almost every single night,” Lowry said. “I haven’t done that in their whole lives. To be home and be around them and to see them grow and to help them with their schoolwork and to sit there with them on Zooms, to be able to be there and interact with them all the time, it helped me grow even more as a father, as a man. It made me appreciate my wife a little bit more and my family a lot more because my kids, they’re a handful. But they’re awesome. My time at home was great.”
Basketball, the love of his life long before he found his wife and had his kids, was on the periphery for a while, but it was still there too.
Lowry, in fact, wound up having a rather large say in how this NBA re-start would go.
Initially, he was a member of the competition committee, but that role morphed into a working group consisting of Player’s Association president Chris Paul along with Lowry, Russell Westbrook, Jayson Tatum and Toronto native Dwight Powell, who worked hand-in-hand with commissioner Adam Silver in developing the health and safety protocols for the recently opened NBA campus at Walt Disney World in Orlando.
“It kind of fell into my lap a little bit with how it happened,” Lowry admitted. “But it was interesting to come up with some of the concepts and to talk that over, and understand (not just) what we’re trying to do but how we’re trying to do it, and make sure that it’s done the right way for all the players, coaches, and it’s safe and in the most healthiest way we possibly can do it.
“I think that we’ve done a good job so far with the safety aspects, the health aspects. I think there’s definitely going to be some adjustments that need to be made, but that’s the one thing about our league and our professionals, is that we make adjustments on the fly and we’re able to.”
Lowry has been on the campus since the team arrived on Thursday and likes what he sees.
“I think our protocols and our health and safety measures have been top notch. I think this thing will work perfectly, I think the league, the player’s association has done a great job, a phenomenal job of making sure that we’re doing everything that we can possibly do to make sure that we’re healthy, we’re safe and we’re in an environment where we can be successful and to do our jobs at a high level,” Lowry said.
Now obviously not everything about the setup is ideal. First and foremost, for it to have a chance of working, the actual number of bodies inside the NBA campus had to be kept to a minimum and that means no family members until after the first round of the playoffs, at which point 14 of the 22 teams will have already been sent home.
“It’s going to suck,” Lowry said of being away from his family. “But my boys understand the sacrifices that have to be made to live the type of life that we live, and they understand that their dad has to go to their job and he has to go to work.”
Lowry spent about 15 minutes on the call, but very little of it was about his own game and where that stands now.
Head coach Nick Nurse filled in those gaps for Lowry, pointing out that Lowry arrived in tip-top shape and has been putting in the kind of work one would expect of a guy who is seriously looking at repeating last year’s championship run.
“He’s practising hard. Shooting the ball at an incredible rate. He looks great,” Nurse said.
But as good as Lowry has already been this year prior to the shutdown, Nurse said there’s a very real possibility that there is another level to be reached in the coming playoffs given how fresh he is after that long break and certainly given the changes in this year’s team from last year.
“I think … he knows he’s got to be kind of a main cog, right?,” Nurse began. “He’s got to, you know, produce offensively for us. You know he’s always going to play hard and make the defensive plays, but he’s got to be a main factor in the offense and he kind of carries himself that way I think this year a lot more.”
In a year with plenty of growth for a man already well into his career, it would only be fitting to find some more at the most important time of the year.
Toronto’s aspirations of a repeat may depend on it.
‘WE NEED TO BE HEARD FROM’
When Lowry wasn’t enjoying family life in Philly or helping the NBA find its restart button over this pandemic, he was in the streets fighting the fight of social injustice through protests and marches.
Lowry said that part of this really abnormal year is only just getting started.
“We are in a time where we need to keep that conversation going,” he said of the protests that began following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. “We need to be heard from. We need to speak loud and clear. We need to understand that things need to be done for the situation to be changed, laws to be changed.
“Opportunities need to be given for things to be better. It wasn’t just about one person. One person kind of set it off, but a lot of other people have gone through this (trauma) of getting killed by police. This time we needed to speak up and needed to do something.
“For me to be a part of that, that’s who I am. That’s how I am,” Lowry continued. “That’s how I grew up. I grew up a Black man in America. It’s definitely a tough thing to grow up that way, because you never know what could possibly happen to you. You never know if you’re going to make it out.
“For me to be able to talk to you guys is a blessing. So for me to be able to do that, it’s my right, my duty and my honour to represent the Black culture.”
Toronto Raptors guard Terence Davis emerged this season as a key contributor for the defending NBA champions and the rookie has spent much of the year learning from his veteran teammates.
With a roster featuring the likes of Marc Gasol, Serge Ibaka, Kyle Lowry and others, there has been seemingly plenty of wisdom to go around for a young player like Davis. The process has allowed Davis to not only grow on the court but off of it, as well.
Davis told reporters on Sunday following practice at the Walt Disney World Resort that he has learned how to become a professional from the veterans on the roster and is constantly soaking up their knowledge.
It goes a lot of ways with taking care of your body because that’s what’s going to take care of you; that’s your moneymaker right there. Eating right, putting the right things in your body, being on time and doing things the right way. … I’m a sponge right now being a rookie. That’s the nature of this game, you gotta climb the ladder. Just being a professional is one way to keep you in this league.
Davis added that he has become a better player in pick-and-roll situations thanks to working with Gasol and Ibaka. The spacing that they can create allows Davis the ability to make a play and he has often taken advantage of those scenarios.
The rise of Davis in just his first year in the NBA has been remarkable. Raptors head coach Nick Nurse has often used small rotations this season, sometimes only eight or nine players deep, and Davis was among those players used off of the bench.
The Raptors will kick off the season restart on Aug. 1 against the Los Angeles Lakers. They are among the favorites in the Eastern Conference and could find themselves competing for yet another championship this season.
It will be an experience Davis will likely be ready for.
You might have forgotten Alan Strickland’s name by now, but Raptors president Masai Ujiri hasn’t. Nor has karma, apparently. Strickland is the would-be opportunist and an Alameda County sheriff’s deputy whose attempted lawsuit against Ujiri following a Game 6 altercation last June never saw the light of day. In the lawsuit, Strickland claimed Ujiri “hit […]
You might have forgotten Alan Strickland’s name by now, but Raptors president Masai Ujiri hasn’t.
Nor has karma, apparently.
Strickland is the would-be opportunist and an Alameda County sheriff’s deputy whose attempted lawsuit against Ujiri following a Game 6 altercation last June never saw the light of day.
In the lawsuit, Strickland claimed Ujiri “hit him in the face and chest with both fists” as he was trying to check Ujiri’s security credentials following Toronto’s 114-110 victory over the Golden State Warriors to win the NBA championship.
The lawsuit died when Alameda County District Attorney’s Office declined to press charges.
Now Strickland is back in the news, this time because the County wants the money back they paid him in workers’ compensation as he tried to sell his suit to the public.
The County is seeking the return of $142,000 in compensation Strickland collected following the incident as he remained off work claiming physical, mental, emotional and psychological injury from the incident.
Ujiri had steadfastly denied the allegations that he was in any way the aggressor in this incident.
The rookie season Terence Davis has been working through had already reached unbelievable status well before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
An undrafted first-year playing substantial minutes on the roster of the defending NBA champions — even getting the odd start — certainly qualifies for the unbelievable category.
But then to have your first go-around at professional basketball stopped in its tracks and put on hold by the pandemic for almost four months is definitely out of the norm.
The stoppage was problematic for a 14-year vet like Kyle Lowry, let alone a first-year player still trying to navigate the trials and tribulations of an entirely new experience.
Davis though returned to supervised individual workouts last week in Naples, Fla. as the team prepares to enter the NBA bubble in at Disney World in Orlando next week, anxious to get going, again looking to continue what he started.
“I do come into this season, as you say, the second season, I would come into this more mature, being that I went through three-fourths of a season,” Davis said. “Just growing up, man, maturing, taking the steps in the right direction. These guys, Fred (VanVleet), Kyle (Lowry), Marc (Gasol), Norm (Powell), all these guys man, they make sure the young guys are where they need to be, because to them, it’s everything. These guys are defending their title. You wanna be a part of that, so definitely.”
And while he may still feel like this is his rookie year those veteran teammates he looks to for guidance and advice no longer view him that way, at least not from what Davis can see.
“I definitely don’t think so, man,” he said. “These guys, if I make a mistake, I’m not a rookie anymore. I think I heard someone say that. So definitely, man. These guys are in tune. I think (Gasol) is already in playoff mode right now. That right there’s your anchor, you get everyone in playoff mode. We’re locked in over here, man, for sure.”
Davis wound up playing in all 64 games the Raptors played, the only Raptor who can make that claim. He started two games and over the year averaged 17 minutes. Not bad for a guy who was passed over by every team in the league on draft day.
But Davis doesn’t measure himself that way. His entire approach is to earn and keep the trust of his coaching staff and his teammates so that there is no hesitation to put him in any situation that arises.
Raptors’ assistant coach Adrian Griffin says there’s no doubt in his mind, or any of the other coaches that Davis accomplished that goal.
“If you went back and watched some of our games, Coach Nurse has unbelievable trust in him and so does the entire coaching staff,” Griffin said. “ As I mentioned before, he started in a couple games, he started in the Charlotte game and had one of his career-highs, he had an excellent game at home where he shot the ball very well. He’s just a complete, all-around player and he’s still improving. And I think that’s the scary part about it, I think he’s already positioning himself as one of the elite scorers and shooters in this league as a 2-guard and he has a phenomenal attitude. He’s fun to work with, has a great work ethic with all our coaching staff.”
So yes, he has that trust now but he says he continues to work every day to expand on it and become a guy no one else on the team even thinks of as a rookie.
“I had to gain these guys’ trust and I would say it means a lot,” he said. “I wouldn’t say this is something that’s normal, but for me being an undrafted guy playing with the defending champions it’s just unbelievable. So I honestly don’t know what to say, it’s just like you can’t make it up. That’s something that you want as a young guy. You want these guys to be able to trust you and that’s something that I’m working towards every day. So I’m excited about the process, going to Orlando and really finishing out the season because we really have a chance to do it again, for sure.”
The one area Davis has yet to perform is in the playoffs. He’s very much looking forward to that chance once the Raptors get to Orlando.
GASOL LEANER, STRONGER
If there is one guy getting plenty of attention and second looks in the Raptors’ temporary home in Florida, it is big man Marc Gasol.
Or maybe we should say not-so-big Marc Gasol.
Yes, he’s still 6-foot-11 but Gasol has returned from Spain a leaner, stronger player than he was when he left.
Raptors assistant coach Adrian Griffin wasn’t even sure he was looking at the same player when he first came across him in Florida last week.
“I had to do a double take. I won’t lie,” Griffin said. “I was so impressed about the way he looks. He just looks phenomenal. I know that it’s not easy. As someone, myself, who as a player always struggled to maintain a certain weight, it’s not easy. It really isn’t. He could have been doing anything during the quarantine, during the pandemic. That shows you what kind of person he is, a high-character guy, that he took it upon himself to get in the best shape possible.”
And Griffin said that transformation could be the difference for the Raptors once they get to Orlando and start taking on the rest of the NBA.
“Truth be told, I think the team that wins this championship is going to be the team that’s in the best physical shape,” Griffin said. “You’re not going to have those months, ideally during an NBA season, where you can work yourself into shape. The team that comes in the best conditioning is going to give themselves a competitive advantage. My hat goes off to Marc. I kind of miss the big fella, though. He was just so likeable, but I’m getting used to the new Marc.” — Mike Ganter
Having run his troops through mostly individual workouts the past week at Florida Gulf Coast University, Nick Nurse says he is pleasantly surprised by both their approach and their conditioning. The Raptors head coach admitted he wasn’t sure what to expect from his team after a near four-month layoff. “I think I would say I […]
Having run his troops through mostly individual workouts the past week at Florida Gulf Coast University, Nick Nurse says he is pleasantly surprised by both their approach and their conditioning.
The Raptors head coach admitted he wasn’t sure what to expect from his team after a near four-month layoff.
“I think I would say I kind of came in here open-minded,” Nurse told reporters on a conference call from the team hotel in Naples, Florida where the team convened and will remain until the NBA campus opens in Walt Disney World just over a week from now.
“I didn’t know if we were going to be not really in the right frame of mind or whatever and whatever it was I was going to kind of deal with it, but I would say I am pleasantly surprised with the frame of mind, I am pleasantly surprised with the conditioning and I just think you have a bunch of guys who have a high care factor,” Nurse said. “They love to play, they are guys that are concerned about getting better individually, about their own careers, and it just seems like they are doing a really professional job. I just think there is a strong love of the game there for a lot of these guys.”
And in a season that was going along rather nicely for the Raptors before the world was stopped in its tracks by the Coronavirus pandemic, that should bode well for the team going forward.
In fact Nurse sounded very much like a guy still waiting to see the best from his team, and for obvious reasons.
“We went into this last season obviously missing a couple of really key pieces to our team (Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green), so you were kind of selling an opportunity to a few guys, there’s some opportunities for some growth and even usage and chances and stuff like that, but you’re not sure how that’s going to turn out,” Nurse said. “Could this guy go to there and this guy go to there? Fortunately Pascal (Siakam) took a jump, Fred (VanVleet), Norm (Powell), Serge (Ibaka) is playing amazing, OG (Anunoby) has been fabulous, so that opportunity there in the middle, the 3-4 spot, there’s a lot of guys that have taken it. I expect to kind of come back into this and see what we are going to look like coming back here but we have a little cheat sheet to know there is a place we’ve been with this group. So I think if it isn’t all holding hands and skipping rope at the beginning we just have to stick with it and see if we can get back to that level. I think there’s another level this group can go.”
Health will certainly be a factor and that’s before anyone even begins to consider the possibility of the Coronavirus overcoming all the precautionary steps the league has taken inside the Disney bubble.
For starters the Raptors were on pace for 60 wins this season pre-pandemic and that was with just about every regular missing a month or more save for Anunoby.
The near four month break has brought everyone back fully healthy, including Marc Gasol, who looks like he went back to Spain and lived in his gym eating nothing but the healthiest of foods.
Powell confirmed on Tuesday during his call that Gasol, in fact, is the envy of all his teammates these days.
“He looks great, man, he’s moving great. He’s feeling great, in talking to him,” Powell said. “I’m supposed to be playing tennis with him either tomorrow or the next day, so hopefully I’ll still be able to give him a run for his money.”
Now granted these are still early days in the re-start. The Raptors haven’t had and won’t have a full team workout until they get to Disney but all indications point to the defending champs having weathered this pandemic rather well and sit in a nice position to make a real run at repeating.
It’s only been a week but Nurse doesn’t sense or feel any angst within the team that could be at the beginning of a four and a half month road trip, albeit one minus any real travel.
“The days go by pretty quickly,” Nurse said of his initial assessment of this elongated road trip. “We’re trying to mix in some days off. We’re trying to mix in a lot of different activities, as much as we can do under the conditions. We had a barbecue the other day. It was kind of nice. It takes an evening. It was good. There’s ping-pong. There’s pool. There are a few other things we’re trying to mix in, too. I don’t really sense much anxiety or people worrying about, ‘Man, this is going to be a long time. The language has been positive.”
It all has to sound almost too good to the Raptors fan at home anxiously awaiting that first game on Aug. 1. But then who among us doesn’t deserve a little good news given how these past four months have unfolded?
Fred VanVleet has been back to work for just over a week and he can sum up the experience in one word.
“Different,” VanVleet said. “I think that is the word I will keep using. It’s just different from the norm, from what we are used to.”
VanVleet was one of the first Raptors to arrive in Florida for a two week stay in Fort Myers before the Raptors head north to Orlando to enter the NBA campus. If all goes well there, that could amount to another 100 days stay.
For now the Raptors have taken over a hotel they were fortunate enough to find that had been closed and was just re-opening. It means they have the entire compound to themselves which is really the only way anyone would want it in the state of Florida right now.
The Coronavirus remains rampant in the sunny state but it’s also home to Disney where the NBA believes it can do the best job of keeping their players and staffs and employees safest within the campus or bubble inside Walt Disney World.
Obviously there are no guarantees how safe anyone will be and each player had to make his own decision.
For VanVleet it was a matter of deciding to trust both the league and his organization that he would be protected. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t still concerned.
“Pretty concerned,” he said following his daily morning workout. “It sounded good a month or two ago, not so much right before we got ready to leave. I think for the most part I just put the trust in the organization and understand that I don’t think they would put us in extreme risk, trust the NBA. That’s where my trust lies right now. Hopefully they prove me right and not wrong … I’m trying to be optimistic about it. It’s not the most ideal situation but it’s kind of the times we are in. It hasn’t been an ideal for anyone.”
VanVleet fully understands those players that have opted out of the opportunity to resume play this summer. Some have done so for health concerns. Others over the concern that the fight against racial injustice needs their attention now. VanVleet sees that battle as a long term one and one he is fighting even now as he awaits the opening of the NBA campus at Disney in the south of Florida.
“I definitely respect guys that took the stand to sit out for whatever reason,” VanVleet said. “But my choice was to come play. I’m not right and they’re not wrong. It’s just a personal choice for everybody.”
VanVleet is very up front about his reasons for playing. He did not make this decision lightly.
“It sucks,” he said of having to choose between focussing on the racial injustice issue and his career. “It’s terrible timing. But that’s been 2020 for us. We all know the right thing to do is to not play, to take a stand. Morally, yes, that makes sense. But life goes on. We’re all young, black guys. None of us want to give any money back. I don’t think that we should. I think that money can be used in a number of different ways. This is not going to end this summer regardless, or over the next couple of months. This issue, racial injustice, social injustice, police brutality, all these things are not ending anytime soon. Our fight was long term. That was part of my decision. But if the league, or more of my guys would have come together and said we didn’t want to play, I would have sat out as well. I wouldn’t have even fought it. I think most of us decided to play. It’s something we’ll have to live with. I trust that my heart’s in the right place and I’m doing enough to make change.”
His days right now are pretty regimented. Up early for an early morning workout but not before his COVID test and all his vitals are tested. Then the workout and then back to the hotel to eat, take a nap and get treatment. After that the rest of the day is his to do as he pleases. Video games, FaceTime calls with his family or whatever he chooses as long as he stays in the hotel. Freedom is non-existent he half jokes.
Whatever freedom he does have right now will likely be further curtailed when he enters the NBA campus on July 9t but he anticipates that and is fine with it.
“If you want to find a million different little things to be wrong, they will be there for you,” VanVleet said. “And if you want to get through it I think you will be able to get through it. My first thought was ‘What are we going to do for food?’ If they are trying to keep us all enclosed for that long, the food options will become scarce pretty quick or bland after a while of eating the same thing over and over again. But we’ll see. I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of still unanswered questions that a lot of guys have had so we’re just going to have to show up and see.
“My hope is once we start playing we just get back into the flow of what we are used to and you will play and eat and sleep and hang out and then play again and before you know it, it will be over.”
The Raptors head will head into the bubble the No. 2 seed in the East and facing the toughest eight-game seeding schedule of any team in Orlando. VanVleet, nevertheless, likes his team’s chances.
“Everybody I’ve talked to since I’ve been here is just looking forward to getting to Orlando and start practising and gearing up and trying to win another one,” he said. “I think we have a really, really good chance and we’re going to be a tough team to beat four times, for anybody.”
The Raptors re-open the season Aug. 1 against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers.
MISSING HIS FAMILY
Fred VanVleet has been away from his kids for less than a week and already he misses them.
The plan right now within the VanVleet family is to have the rest of the fam join dad in Orlando for the second round of the playoffs, the first possible time family members can join the NBA players inside the campus at Disney.
But that decision will be based on what VanVleet experiences over that first month and a half before the NBA opens the campus to family members.
“I will re-evaluate once I’ve been in Orlando for a little while. It it’s something that suits us, then we will do it. If not, then we won’t. But I like having my family around for sure,” he said.0 CommentsShare your thoughtsNBA
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RAPTORS ANNOUNCE RESTART SCHEDULE FOR 2019-20 SEASON
The Toronto Raptors will restart the 2019-20 season Saturday, August 1 against the Los Angeles Lakers, the team announced Friday. Under the competitive format for the restart, the 22 participating teams will have eight “seeding games,” as selected from its remaining regular-season matchups.
The National Basketball Association and the National Basketball Players Association announced earlier today that they have finalized a comprehensive plan for a July 30 restart to the 2019-20 season, which includes stringent health and safety protocols, a single-site campus at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and the goal of taking collective action to combat systemic racism and promote social justice.
In addition, the NBA and Disney have reached an agreement that makes the Arena, the HP Field House and Visa Athletic Center at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex the venues for all games for the remainder of the season, with no fans in attendance.
The NBA and the NBPA confirmed today an agreement on health and safety protocols that will govern the resumption of the season. The rigorous program, which addresses risks related to COVID-19 and focuses on the well-being of players, coaches, officials and staff, was developed in consultation with public health experts, infectious disease specialists and government officials.
The view from left field 