Clint Dempsey is on the short list for the greatest players in USMNT history. He did this despite never being the fastest, or the strongest, or the quickest, or the most skilled person on the pitch. And yet, Dempsey is beloved among those who support the Yanks, thanks in large part to a famous quote given by one of his former managers.
Once asked about what made Dempsey so good, now-former USMNT gaffer Bruce Arena summed it up in three words: “He tries sh*t.”
No three words better explain the ethos of the Toronto Raptors, which are one of two undefeated teams in the NBA’s bubble in Orlando. Unlike the other undefeated side — the wonderful Phoenix Suns — it’s no surprise that Toronto has raced out to this sort of peerless record.
Ok, so that’s not quite right. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who didn’t think the Raptors would be a good team this year. They are, of course, the defending NBA champions, and while they lost two starters off of that squad, a number of pieces of that core remained. Having said that, the players they lost were really good — Danny Green was a very respectable 3-and-D wing who could get scorching hot from deep and always competed on the other end of the floor, while Kawhi Leonard tossed his hat into the “best player in the world” discussion during last year’s playoffs.
Yet Toronto sits at 49-18, the third-best record in the league and five games back of the Milwaukee Bucks for first place in the Eastern Conference. They’ve been the best team in the bubble thus far, picking up comfortable wins over the Lakers and Magic with a hard-fought win over the Heat squeezed in between. And in every game they’ve played this season, the Raptors have carried themselves like champions, even after losing the pair of aforementioned starters this past offseason.
That aforementioned quote is one that can apply to this Toronto squad just as easily as it applied to the guy who did this. Head coach Nick Nurse is willing to have his team try just about anything that might help them win a game — they busted out a box-and-one during the NBA Finals! — and more importantly, the entire roster is totally bought into the fact that they might need to sometimes do funky things to win.
Added to this is that the Raptors are an extremely smart, extremely versatile basketball team, something that is evident on both ends of the floor. On offense, Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet are two of the savviest point guards in the league, while Marc Gasol’s passing is still top notch for a player of his size. Few, if any, teams are scarier in transition than Toronto, which get up and down the floor better than anyone else in the league. This is a luxury that’s afforded when Gasol can rip down a rebound and pick a pass, or Lowry can get the ball and somehow know exactly what to do, or guys like Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby take off and beat defenses down the floor. They’re fourth in the league in three-point shooting percentage, and while they’re 12th in the league in offensive efficiency, they have a whole bunch of smart passers and cutters who can free up space on the perimeter.
The thing that makes Toronto so good, though, is what it can do on defense. Playing basketball against them seems like an absolutely miserable experience. Everyone they throw out is either really, really good on that end of the floor, or competes like someone who wants to be really, really good on that end of the floor.
Anunoby and Siakam are two of the most versatile defensive wings in the league. Lowry and VanVleet are pitbulls who seem to take joy in annoying the hell out of opposing players (one of the funniest things that happens is when big men think they can back Lowry down and just … can’t). Gasol has lost a step, but might be the smartest defensive big in the sport and is a gigantic human who knows how to use his size to his advantage. Serge Ibaka isn’t the shot-erasing big he was at the start of his career, but he still can protect the rim admirably. Some of their ancillary guys — Chris Boucher, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Stanley Johnson, Terence Davis — will battle on that end of the floor in the minutes they get. Boucher is especially fun, because he is 6’9 with a 7’4 wingspan and really enjoys doing stuff like this.
Chris Boucher PACKED Harrell 😱 pic.twitter.com/rkYDAY4GM0
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) November 12, 2019
It helps that Toronto doesn’t defend as a bunch of individuals as much as they defend as a five-person unit. The controlled urgency that everyone on the court has at a given time is something to behold, as is their willingness to try and make opposing teams completely confused — on a recent edition of “The Lowe Post,” ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz perfectly explained their approach as “guerrilla warfare.” As the Houston Rockets have shown, chaos can be a winning approach if you’re dictating what is happening. The difference between the Rockets and the Raptors is that the former’s brand of chaos is incumbent on hitting a whole lot of threes. The latter’s brand of chaos is incumbent on having players who can make it work. Threes don’t always fall, but Toronto always has the players it needs to tilt the odds in its favor by dictating how a game will play out, because they are extremely willing to try sh*t.
This makes for an interesting dynamic come the postseason. The Raptors are all but locked into the 2-seed in the Eastern Conference and should be able to handle one of Brooklyn or Orlando fairly easily in the first round before a second-round tilt against, as things stand now, Boston or Philadelphia, two teams they play in the bubble during the lead-up to the postseason. Toronto is better than all the teams it could face in the first two rounds, even if a fully-healthy and fully-function Sixers side (odds of this happening four times in seven games: no) can give them problems and the Celtics are a tremendous defensive team in their own right.
But to win the East, all roads run through Milwaukee. Yes, the Bucks are the best team in basketball, and yes, they are 2-0 against the Raptors this season, although they play one another on Aug. 10. The thing with Milwaukee, though, is that it’s very much a squad that is dependent on being in a certain rhythm. The calculus is that their ability to efficiently hammer teams in the paint and the sheer number of shots they will take from downtown, in addition to having the league’s stingiest defense, makes them impossible to beat four times in seven games. If any team can find a way to gum up the works and make it extremely difficult to get into that rhythm, though, it just might be a confident Raptors team that kept them from getting coronated despite taking a 2-0 lead in the last Eastern Conference Finals. The big question, of course, is whether the combination of Anunoby/Siakam/whomever else can somewhat replicate the defense that Leonard played on Giannis Antetokounmpo last postseason, and if they can, the thought of Toronto winning the East for the second year in the row suddenly gets a whole lot less absurd.
For much of the season, the thought has been that the Bucks would win the East, even if some teams could give them headaches come postseason. That still may happen, but despite losing the reigning NBA Finals MVP, the Raptors have done an admirable job coming up with ways to position themselves as Milwaukee’s top challenger. With the swagger they boast, both due to their current run of form and the pride this group obviously takes in being champions, and their willingness to try whatever sh*t they need to in order to win, Toronto just might be able to make it to the Finals again.
