When Raptors coach Nick Nurse was describing his team’s preferred style of play in the lead-up to Wednesday’s season opener, he used a phrase you mostly hear around heavy-playing hockey clubs.
He said the Raptors want to be “hard to play against.” To put it in the local vernacular, he’s hoping his team will be something like basketball’s version of the anti-Leafs, defining itself more by its tenaciousness than its talent. Given the philosophy’s obvious endorsement by team president Masai Ujiri, for whom team toughness is a non-negotiable, here’s betting that even in the player-empowered NBA Nurse won’t need to engage in a Sheldon Keefe-esque back-pedal when he deigns to suggest his best athletes haven’t met the expected standard.