Analysis | For the Raptors, the pre-season also lets coach Nick Nurse play a little

You can call them centres or big men or frontcourt players, or anything your heart desires.

The collection the Raptors have put together up front is unique and multi-faceted, and presents head coach Nick Nurse with myriad options.

Before Sunday night’s lone Scotiabank Arena stop, Nurse had used centres — Chris Boucher and Precious Achiuwa — as the first two players off the bench in the NBA pre-season. It was partly because of the complementary components of their game, and partly to make sure they pile up minutes. And the coach figures, “What else is the pre-season for?”

“That’s the beautiful thing about trying to figure all this stuff out, is that every day you show up for the game it changes,” Nurse said before the Raptors faced the Chicago Bulls on Sunday. “It’s good to have lots of possibilities and not get so (locked in for) one half of one game, or think you found something. You’ve just got to keep working it all season long, I think.”

The plan to experiment with two bigs immediately off the bench is on hold for a few days, however, with Boucher sitting out Sunday’s game with a hamstring injury.

“Don’t think it’s super-serious but, just like with Otto (Porter Jr., who has yet to play this pre-season because of bad hamstring), those things are touchy,” Nurse said. “(Boucher) will be not with us for a little bit.”

For a spell in the 2021-22 season, Nurse brought Boucher and Dalano Banton off the bench in tandem because he felt their size, athleticism and speed were integral to changing the pace of every game. It’s not precisely the same with two big men, instead of a big and a guard, but the theory is the same: try things out, see how they work and be adaptable either way.

“I’m not sure, again, it’s ideal position-wise or matchup-wise to just do it without giving it any thought,” he said of the Achiuwa-Boucher tandem. “(It’s not) ‘This is the way it is, no matter who we’re playing and whatever’s happening’ … It has been in the pre-season because I’m just trying to keep those guys ready, get ’em in the game as quick as I can and get ’em playing, get their minutes in the pre-season.”

Sunday’s game was Toronto’s third in five nights, quite a heavy pre-season load for an NBA team. Throw in a week in Victoria and Edmonton right off the bat and that’s a lot of long flights and late nights before the grind of the regular season arrives. It’s just a fact of life for a team that really represents an entire country.

“I would never complain about being Canada’s team, but part of it is we’re going to go play these games in other cities in Canada and that causes us to have a heavy travel schedule.” said Nurse, who also coaches the national men’s team.

“The reality of it is that, it’s not that easy to get (other) teams to … play us somewhere in Canada. So in return, we have to (return the favour) at some point and that’s just how it lands sometimes. It’s been a lot of travel and a lot of late nights already, but that’s OK. We’ll be just fine.”

And if the grind costs them a game or hurts them in some facet of play, that’s a price they’re willing to pay.

“We’ve probably done things a lot differently than we would have in the regular season,” Nurse said. “We really put them through a tough (practice) coming back off the west coast — like a real long, physical, tough one going into Boston. It’s because it’s training camp mode. We have to continue to do things at a speed in practice that makes us better. If that was the regular season, it wouldn’t have looked anything like that.”

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