Raptors opting for late-season rest over practice time The 2018-19 Toronto Raptors have taken “load management” to another level but they know this team will not be defined by anything they do – or don’t do – during the regular season. They’ll be judged on how they fare in the playoffs, so holding fewer practices is one way to ensure the team remains healthy and rested, Josh Lewenberg writes.

Josh Lewenberg TSN Raptors Reporter Follow|Archive

TORONTO – Roughly 90 minutes after scoring 38 points and hitting the game-winner against Portland last week, Toronto Raptors star Kawhi Leonard offered up a candid and controversial take on the NBA’s regular season.

“There’s 82 games and for me these are just practices,” the veteran forward told reporters Friday evening. “And playoffs is when it’s time to lace them up.”

That’s not exactly music to the ears of the league, its partners or even the organization – all of them tasked with selling tickets and generating interest in the product from October to April each year. However, he’s got a point.

This Raptors team will not be defined by anything they do – or don’t do – during the regular season. They’ll continue to be judged on how they fare in the playoffs, when expectations and the stakes will be at an all-time high for the 24-year-old franchise.

Leonard, a former Finals MVP and NBA champion, understands that more than most. And so, every decision they make, particularly as we get closer to the postseason – which opens on the weekend of Apr. 13 – is being made with the end goal in mind.

That doesn’t mean that these are easy, straightforward decisions.

Truth is Toronto doesn’t have much left to play for over these final 17 games. First place is still within reach, though catching Milwaukee will be difficult. The Bucks have a 2.5 game lead atop the Eastern Conference, they own the tiebreaker with the Raps, and have been remarkably consistent – their current two-game losing streak is their first of the season. The Raptors will likely finish in second, where they hold a 4.0 game lead over Indiana.

Their priorities over the next five weeks are far less tangible. The checklist is as follows: continue to build chemistry and integrate their new players, establish a functioning rotation, go into the playoffs with momentum and confidence, and most importantly stay healthy.

While the games themselves are not crucial, the time and how they use it could be. So the question becomes, what are they doing to prepare for what lies ahead?

When Leonard said the games are his practices, he may have meant it more literally than you would think.

Since that win over Portland last Friday, the Raptors have declined three opportunities to practice. They had a session scheduled for Saturday afternoon but cancelled it late on Friday. They opted not to practice on Monday, following Sunday’s 112-107 overtime loss in Detroit, even though the game started at 6 p.m. ET and they flew back that night. Then, they took Wednesday off after a disappointing showing against Houston on Tuesday. They also chose not to hold a morning shootaround ahead of the Rockets game.

This approach isn’t entirely unusual, especially this late into the season. You see it around the league, as veteran playoff-bound teams look to maximize rest for their players where and when they can.

“It’s just that time of year,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “I think we’ve played some really tough games lately, really tough, close, physical, good teams, high level. There’s just not much use [in practising some days]. We got home at 12:30 [a.m. Monday morning], you’re gonna drag ’em out of bed and what are you gonna get out of the main guys anyway? We do a lot of skill work on those days, anyway, and treatments, and just about every guy hits the gym anyway.”

Welcome to the new NBA. There’s been a meaningful shift in the way teams manage their players’ workloads over the last decade. We’ve seen it play out on the court, where stars are routinely missing games for rest, but it’s also going on behind the scenes. Studies across professional sports have revealed the toll a long season can take on an athlete’s body and mind. With a greater emphasis on physical and mental wellness, as well as all the money and jobs at stake in their business, teams are erring on the side of caution.

The days of coaches running their players into the ground with long, physical practices appear to be over. That doesn’t mean there isn’t work being done. Instead, that time is spent watching film and on individual skill development and maintenance.

Like most teams, the Raptors have lived this shift in philosophy. When former head coach Dwane Casey first came to Toronto in 2011, his practices would often exceed three hours and skipping a session was rare. Of course, those were bad teams, they were young and culture around the league was very different than it is today. That’s the way Casey was raised in the game and seemed most confortable as a coach, but even he began to lighten the load on his teams as they got older, got better and the league started to change.

The 2018-19 Raptors have taken “load management” to another level, on and off the court. Leonard has missed 12 games for rest – an unprecedented number for a healthy player, even one coming off a serious injury and even in this era. As for the team, it’s never had fewer formal practices.

Since the start of the Raptors season, there have been 70 days without a game, excluding Christmas Eve and the all-star break. They’ve only practiced on 34 of them. Generally, teams don’t practice following back-to-backs or after travelling back from the West Coast. If you subtract those days from the 36 they took off, that leaves 24 days that they could have practiced but opted not to.

Some of those would have been league-mandated days off. The NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement requires each team to provide their players with a minimum of 18 days off during the regular season. On those days, according to the CBA, players aren’t obligated to participate in any team directed activities, including games, practices, travel, etc., though that doesn’t prohibit them from coming in to workout voluntarily.

The Raptors would have already satisfied that requirement with just over a month remaining in the regular season. Over the next five weeks they’ll have 14 possible practice days, at least some of which they’re sure to take off.

There’s a method to the madness, so to speak. The Raptors are confident in their talent, but the know they’ll only go as far as their best players take them. If those guys aren’t healthy and as fresh as possible come playoff time, all the work they’ve put into this over the last five months will be for naught.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed. Sitting Leonard out of a game or cancelling a practice won’t necessarily prevent an injury, but ensuring players aren’t overworked is proven to mitigate the risk, at least to some degree.

Even outside of Leonard and his unique situation, Kyle Lowry will turn 33 later this month and Marc Gasol is 34. Danny Green and Serge Ibaka are both veteran players that have accumulated plenty of mileage and logged big minutes this season. If they’re going to continue to play significant minutes down the stretch, it makes sense to closely monitor their off-court workload.

However, while this approach has merit, it’s not without risk. The primary takeaway from the Raptors’ last two games – losses to Detroit and Houston – is that they still have work to do. Even after 65 games, there’s a newness to this roster. Leonard and Lowry have only played 35 games together. Fred VanVleet is still out and won’t be back until just before the playoffs, at the earliest. OG Anunoby has been in and out of the lineup all season. Jeremy Lin just arrived three weeks ago, and Gasol a week before that.

Thanks in large part to the injuries, rest nights, roster turnover and the coach’s desire to tinker, Nurse’s rotation has been all over the place this season, and at times it shows. On certain nights this team shows glimpses of its enormous potential, on others it looks like they’re meeting each other for the first time.

The devil’s advocate might argue that any time they choose not to spend in a gym together is a wasted opportunity to build chemistry and get on the same page. The challenge for Nurse and his team is figuring out how to balance their rest-of-season priorities without allowing one to come at the expense of another.​