The speeches remain the same on the Ontario side since the training camp. The Canadian franchise has its sights set on the final stages of April and the goal is to progress through the season, to be ready for that fateful time that the Raptors have so lacked in recent years. Although they make a historic start to the season, we should not count on Nick Nurse and his men to be satisfied and to consider themselves already arrived.
I would say 35% of our defensive patterns are not in place, the coach said. And it’s pretty much the same for our attack. There are still a lot of things to be done and a lot of things that we want to try to see if they can be effective later.
This is certainly what is most exciting about this team, although it displays a sometimes exceptional level of play, the image of Kawhi Leonard, the player and the Toronto collective are still far from reaching their full potential.
We have a lot of potential, he said. I think we can be even better. We haven’t hit our ceiling, with me not even familiar with some of our offensive patterns. We have Kyle on the court most of the time. He controls the ball and the tempo. When I get to know our offense better, I may even be able to give him some rest and give him easier shots, even though he’s playing well now. He’s leading us to victory right now. […] Absolutely that we have potential. And it is the same in defense. I think we can communicate more for rotations. I mean, you got to see sometimes the miscommunication with Kyle or the others in the field. It’s all about chemistry and I think we can improve ourselves to that level.
It is certain that Kyle Lowry has achieved the best start to the season of his career, by comparison, he even has better stats than a certain Steve Nash during his MVP season!
Tonight (8:30 p.m.), this team of the New York Knicks in a very different dynamic that is presented at the Scotiabank Arena. Deprived of their Unicorn Kristaps Porzingis, the men of the new coach David fizdale are worth at the start of the season, with a record of 4 wins for 8 losses and have not won a match against a team above 50% victory. To top it off, a misunderstanding between the coach and his star has caused a lot of talk this week on the Big Apple side, with a Fizdale saying that Porzingis was slowly progressing in his rehabilitation and that he shouldn’t expect a comeback this year. . A statement to which the star of the team responded, on social networks, with a post in which he showed that he had indeed resumed the race, prompting Fizdale to apologize because he was not aware. .
In short, not to change, it’s a bit of a mess on the side of NYC and except for a big collective underperformance, we do not really see how the twelfth victory of the season could escape the Raptors.
The likely starting five:
Toronto : Lowry – Green – Leonard – Siakam – Ibaka
Absent : Powell (paule)
New-York : Ntikilina – Hardaway Jr. – Dotson – Vonleh – Robinson
Absent: Porzingis (knee), Thomas (knee)
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