Dunk Base

Coming into the season, Toronto’s problems were obvious. They had nine new faces, a franchise player looking for reasons to stay, did not look scary defensively and had an inexperienced head coach. There were also concerns that their big free agent acquisition, Hedo Turkoglu, would not mesh well with their current PG, Jose Calderon. Up until a few weeks ago, most of these issues were still seen as problems. Toronto was one of the worst defensive teams in the NBA, the rotation had yet to be defined and many were pointing fingers at the likely target, Coach Jay Triano. What was worse is there were rumours that there was a cultural divide in the Raptors locker room between the North American players and the Europeans. Apparently, due to lack of familiarity with their teammates and cultural differences, some players were afraid to call out others for their defensive mistakes and communicate with each other on the floor. The team called a meeting to air out any lingering concerns and address the issue and since then it has not appeared to be a problem. This meeting played a big part in bringing this team together, however, they still seemed to struggle a little and still appeared to be soft defensively.