News now comes from afar
Lowry and Griffin shipping out, while other ex-Raptors help new teams
For a few moments Tuesday, it seemed as though the big NBA news of the day would involve a former Raptors all-star.
Kyle Lowry, Toronto’s all-time leader in assists and steals, not to mention the heart-and-soul point guard of its only championship team, was traded by the Miami Heat to the Charlotte Hornets. The move was a stark acknowledgment that Lowry, at age 37, can no longer carry the load as the lead guard of a franchise with championship aspirations like the Heat.
Removed from the starting lineup to his chagrin two games ago — and shooting 0-for-18 from three-point range in his most recent five games for a Miami team struggling to find offence — Lowry and his expiring contract were packaged with a lottery-protected 2027 first-round pick to acquire Terry Rozier, a highscoring guard most of eight years Lowry’s junior. With the Hornets languishing near the NBA basement, it’s considered likely that Lowry will be on the move again soon, either in a trade or a buyout, to join a contending team in search of a veteran hand off the bench.
So, big news, sure. But not as big as the NBA news that involved a former Raptors assistant coach.
If it wasn’t hard to see Lowry’s future somewhere beyond South Beach, it was more of a shock to hear that longtime Toronto bench presence Adrian Griffin had been fired Tuesday by the Milwaukee Bucks a mere 43 games into his first season as the club’s head coach. Milwaukee management apparently wasn’t overly impressed that, under Griffin, the Bucks owned the second-best record in the league. Of understandable concern was the Bucks’s 22nd-best defensive rating, even if that was an obvious byproduct of the October trade that brought the defensively challenged Damian Lillard to Milwaukee while simultaneously shipping out defensive stalwart Jrue Holiday, who is now with the league-leading Celtics.
In any case, Milwaukee’s obvious personnel holes were made to be Griffin’s problem. And the fact the Bucks don’t have an elite talent poised to take over Griffin’s gig, instead naming longtime assistant Joe Prunty as the interim head coach, speaks to the air of panic around the move.
If the Bucks are in disarray, mind you, it’s the kind most franchises would envy. It’s a rare luxury to condemn as inadequate a record of 30-13. Certainly the Raptors, 16-28 heading into Friday’s home game against the L.A. Clippers, presumably don’t appear to be holding daily referendums on the tenure of rookie head coach Darko Rajakovic with every mounting loss, even if Rajakovic is a long way from proving himself as a viable head coach.
Still, if the championship-or-bust Bucks couldn’t be sure they could win a title with Griffin at the helm, why on earth did they decide to hire him, a rookie head coach, less than eight months ago? The mind boggles.
For fans of the Raptors, this is the state of the basketball news cycle. It speaks to the enormity of Toronto’s 2019 championship legacy that the Raptors have built a stellar alumni network now fanned out across the league. It also says a lot about the current state of the franchise that, if you’re keeping track of the Raptors, the most compelling storylines are being written by folks who don’t base themselves in Canada anymore.
On Friday, for instance, Toronto is scheduled to host Clippers star Kawhi Leonard, who signed a threeyear contract extension worth $152.4 million (U.S.) earlier this month.
The 2019 NBA finals MVP is having his best year in a while, in no small part because he has competed in 90 per cent of the Clippers’ games, more than double his 44 per cent attendance rate in his previous four seasons in L.A. combined. Mr. Load Management is finally, adequately managing the load for the first time since he helped coin the term in his one season with the Raptors. If form holds, he’ll be in the lineup alongside fellow ex-Raptor Norman Powell, the Clippers’ dependable sixth man, on Friday.
And the alumni-network storylines get better:
In the days since OG Anunoby was traded by the Raptors in the deal that brought RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley to Toronto, Anunoby is being heralded as a defensive missing link in New York, where the Knicks had won nine times in 11 games heading into Tuesday since Anunoby entered the picture.
Pascal Siakam’s arrival in Indiana, though it had been followed to two straight losses heading into Tuesday, has been widely heralded as a solid addition.
Fred VanVleet has helped make the Houston Rockets more competitive than most thought they’d be.
Nick Nurse, excoriated as a negative presence after he was fired by the Raptors in the wake of last season’s trip to the draft lottery, has the Philadelphia 76ers on pace for the highest win total of the Joel Embiid era. Coincidence or not, Nurse’s schemes also have Embiid playing some of the most awe-inspiring basketball of his career — or maybe that’s simply recency bias in the wake of Embiid’s 70-point explosion on Monday night.
Add it all up and you come to the sad grand total. Members of Toronto’s 2019 championship roster have remained central to the NBA conversation. At the same time, the Raptors have slipped into irrelevance. They’ve lost seven of their past eight games. They’re maybe tanking and maybe not. Whatever they’re up to, one thing is certain: They’re in a rebuild, and it’s probably going to get uglier before it amounts to anything else.
It goes to show how the margins can be unmercifully slim in the NBA. Last season, for instance, the Heat finished with 44 wins to Toronto’s 41. The Raptors were heartened when they went 15-11 after acquiring Jakob Poeltl at the trade deadline. The Heat, meanwhile, went 14-13 over that same span. Both teams lost their first play-in game. And, while the Raptors missed the playoffs, the Heat, by virtue of a better seed, rebounded to advance all the way to the NBA finals.
Half a season later, the Heat have upgraded at point guard by trading Lowry for Rozier and look like a threat to repeat as champions of the East. Meanwhile the Raptors, having waved the flag of surrender and dismantled their roster, are orchestrating a rebuild on an uncertain timeline.
In the NBA, the most exciting seasons come when it’s championship or bust. In Toronto, there’s understandable nostalgia for a championship team now busted.