Arriving in the visitors' locker room before Monday night's overtime loss in Boston, various Raptors found hand-written notes awaiting them in their stalls. The notes resembled recipe cards – as in, recipes for theoretical success.
The bullet-point messages were, according to players, a mix of encouragement and constructive criticism from the Jay Triano-led coaching staff. At least one Raptor, mind you, was puzzled by the origin of the scribblings.
"Who's doing this?" Jamario Moon, waving his card in the air, hollered across the room to teammate Anthony Parker.
"Who do you think?" said Anthony Parker, shaking his head in resignation. "You don't have to be CSI to figure it out."
Unperturbed by Parker's sarcasm, Moon, without the help of television's Crime Scene Investigation unit, eventually surmised that his note was penned by Alex English, the Raptors assistant coach.
"It sounds like Alex," he shrugged, going over the contents with a reporter. "I look at it as just reminders. `No reaching,' `Rebound.' ...
"I guess it's to keep (the coaches) from getting hoarse."
Somewhere Sam Mitchell, the former head coach who was fired after an 8-9 start to the season, is counting his millions without the throat strain that came with his old job. Now it's somebody else's pain and there is, in the ongoing attention to detail in Raptorland, the requisite optimism. The recent good work of, say, Andrea Bargnani and Roko Ukic, keeps hope alive.
But as the season lumbers to its midway point – tonight's game at the Air Canada Centre is No.40 of 82 – the club is 8-14 under Triano. And while it saw an early bump in defensive prowess playing Triano's pack-the-paint style, every scheme, once scouted, has its weakness. Under Mitchell, too often a beaten Toronto defender got no help from his teammates. Under Triano, the sin of the moment is being termed "over-helping" or, to use Chris Bosh's phrase, "unnecessary double-teaming." Either way, open shots – three-pointers, recently – seem to abound for many opponents.
So while the Triano-era defensive field-goal percentage is 44.4 per cent – down significantly from 46.9 per cent in 17 games under Mitchell – the effective defensive field-goal percentage under Triano, taking into account the value of three-balls, is less an improvement. It's 49.6 per cent, creeping closer to the 51.1 per cent under Mitchell. If the message from the coach has changed, the players haven't. So it's back to the recipe cards, even as the man who does the grocery shopping, GM Bryan Colangelo, faces big decisions.
"Part of our job is to win games and part of our job is to develop players," said Triano. "(By writing the notes), we just want to make sure we're covering all the bases with those guys."
Not all the guys, apparently, get covered. When Kris Humphries was asked to share the contents of his personalized note Monday, he spent a few moments overturning every scattered sock and scouting report in his locker's vicinity. There was, he concluded, no special message for him.
"What do you think it means that I didn't get one?" said Humphries.
Somebody guessed it meant Humphries had it all figured out; or, alternately, he didn't figure into the evening's game plan. Humphries, without the benefit of bullet-point catch phrases, actually played 20 minutes of generally spirited basketball, putting up nine points on a night the Raptors bench outscored Boston's 39-24. In a season short on victories, it was a small triumph.
"It's good to play well," said Humphries, "but we can't be happy to be close."
Perhaps there'll be a hand-written note to that effect when the Raptors arrive at their lockers tonight.
Just thought this was cool and a different way of getting your message across to the players, a creative way that they might respond better to. I really like how hes coaching this team
