TORONTO

If there indeed was a conversation about shutting down Rudy Gay for the season at some point in the past 72 hours, the conversation ended rather quickly once it involved Gay himself.

Gay was in Toronto getting some treatment for a wonky back on Saturday while the team was in New York for the tail end of a back-to-back with the Knicks.

Before the game head coach Dwane Casey suggested there would likely be a conversation about shutting Gay down for the year given the fact that he had missed three games with the finicky injury.

The team had Sunday off following back-to-back games but come Monday morning, Gay was back on the court for practice and while he didn’t take part in the full thing, he did participate.

“Rudy went through practice today, what he could,” Casey said, “and his back is loosening up so there is going to be no talk about shutting him down. He will be a day-to-day thing and he’s going to see how his back responds to therapy, working hard to keep it loose. He wants to continue to play and we are going to allow him to.”

Asked afterwards about the talk of him being shut down for the year, Gay seemed to be suggesting it was all a misunderstanding.

“That’s just talk. That’s just talk,” Gay said of the myriad of breathless reports which went from ‘Could be shut down’ to ‘Will be shut down’ depending on where you happened to be looking.

“The only way I’m going to get shut down is if the doctors tell me I need to stop playing,” Gay said. “I’ve been forced out before and that’s not something I look forward to again.”

Gay was referring to the 2010-11 season when with 25 games remaining, he went on the shelf with a partially dislocated left shoulder.

When the shoulder didn’t heal sufficiently or properly, he was forced to undergo surgery but only after consulting with at least four different physicians, all of whom told him surgery was his only option.

In addition to the 25 games of the regular season he missed, Gay was also forced to watch as his Grizzlies knocked off San Antonio in the first round of the playoffs that year and then took Oklahoma City to a seventh game before bowing out in the Western Conference semifinals.

Gay said playing means too much to him to just shut things down early if there are still games to play regardless of the sliver-thin chances of any post-season games with this Raptors team this season.

“Some people are different,” Gay said. “Personally, I’m the type of guy if there is basketball to be played, I want to be a part of it. I love the game, I love my job.”

In truth, there is very little to be gained by Gay playing the final dozen games, outside of the obvious building of familiarity with some of his new teammates.

As head coach Dwane Casey points out, the team is well aware of what the seven-year veteran is capable of doing. They know his strengths and his weaknesses as they do every player who has played in the league as long as Gay has.

“We know what he can do,” Casey said. “But what I would like to have is for him to be healthy to where we could get a rhythm and a style of play established with he and DeMar (DeRozan) and he and Kyle (Lowry) and that group more than anything else.”

There’s also the matter of establishing better chemistry defensively, something that is only achieved through repetition.

“Style of play and our defensive cohesiveness that we have to get because we are all over the board defensively right now with putting people in different spots,” Casey said completing his wish list for these 12 final games. “That would be the only thing I would like to have, some continuity going into the end of the year and that way know what we have coming into next year.”

As for his back woes, Gay can’t be certain they won’t flare up again but after some extensive work with director of sports Science Alex McKechnie and head athletic trainer Scott McCullough, he says the back is feeling better and he’ll “push it as far as I can.”

“Just this last go-around, I want to be a leader out there,” Gay said. “Obviously we are playing a lot of younger players. I’m just trying to help them grow as fast as they can and just be a veteran.”

CAN'T STOMACH BAD D

Raptors head coach Dwane Casey can live with a team having a hot shooting night. It happens.

What he condone is passive defence.

Saturday night in New York, and to a lesser extent Friday at home against the same New York Knicks team, Casey saw his defenders engaged and into the game for the most part.

“The other night was tough because they were making tough shots,” Casey said. “I would dare anyone to say (otherwise). Alan (Anderson) was all over J.R. Smith and Landry had a hand in Anthony’s face but they were making some tough shots. The one’s that bothered you were the blow-by’s.”

For anyone who has followed the Raptors at all, blow-by’s are not a new problem, only now the team doesn’t have Jose Calderon to blame for them anymore. That doesn’t mean they aren’t happening.

“We had like four or five blow-by’s throughout the game and those were the one’s that hurt,” Casey said. “Even the three point shots, young Terrence (Ross) had a hand up in (Steve) Novak’s face so they were in a hot place. They hit some tough shots, but there were like four or five possessions that you don’t want to have in that type of game.

To the surprise of no one practice on Monday was all about the defensive side of the game.