National Basketball Association

No more Mr. Nice Guy for Raps;Triano ramps up game-day intensity and says of Bargnani: 'Maybe he's

Published Oct. 11, 2010 10:05 a.m. ET

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If Raptorland resembled a country club last season, Jay Triano, the club's head coach, might as well have been the towel boy.

All around him, from the season's outset to its sad conclusion, players showed no end of disrespect to the franchise and to the game. But while Hedo Turkoglu sloughed off training camp and loafed through games - and while Chris Bosh mysteriously lost his will to play after the all-star break - Triano, employed to be a leader in a very public arena, was as publicly-silent an employee as the guy who validates parking in the under-arena garage.

While the coach has been all too happy to criticize the departed Turkoglu and Bosh in hindsight, he scarcely held either to account while last season was still theoretically salvageable.

Raptor fans can only hope that, lessons learned, he won't make the same mistakes this year. And barely two weeks into pre-season training, Triano's reputation as a pliable pushover is already taking some serious hits.

Consider the way the Raptors spent the hours leading up to Sunday's 91-87 exhibition loss to the Celitcs. For the second time in two game days, they turned their morning shootaround into a full-contact practice, complete with taped ankles and all-out sprinting and maybe a raised eyebrow or two.

NBA shootarounds, after all, are typically sleepier affairs than the pair of workouts Triano has presided over before his club's first two exhibitions. There is usually, on the typical game-day morning of the typical NBA club, some jogging and stretching and half-speed run-throughs of various plays. There is usually some shooting around. There isn't usually any call for game-speed grinding.

But Triano isn't making any apologies; he reasons that, with his players playing a maximum of 25 to 27 minutes in these glorified rehearsals, they can certainly afford to put in an honest hour of work in the morning. And the players, although none of them can remember participating in such a high-pitched day-of-game session, aren't complaining, at least publicly.

"Shootaround's a lot tougher than in the past," said Reggie Evans, the eighth-year NBA forward. "We're just going hard. A lot of banging. It's totally different than anything I've seen."

So much work at such an early hour certainly would not sit well with a more veteran NBA team (although the Raptors aren't exactly brimming with rookies). And it will be interesting to see how long Triano keeps demanding the game day sweat-fest. Triano said he won't put his team through such a tough workout before Tuesday's game in Chicago because the Raptors play the next night at home against Philadelphia. He also said - contrary to the assumptions of the players who figure these workouts are strictly an October phenomenon - that he wouldn't rule out using a shootaround as a hard practice during the regular season.

"If we're not playing well, yes," Triano said.

The coach's new-found sternness was on display in the wake of Sunday's game, too. While Triano pronounced himself mostly happy with the way his team competed, he acknowledged that the Celtics outhustled the Raptors in the first half and had their way with Toronto's defence in general, shooting 53 per cent from the field.

"We're going to be accountable at the defensive end," Triano said. "So it's pre-season - we've got to send some messages."

He sent them by punishing lapses with time on the bench. Amir Johnson got yanked for forgetting a play; DeMar DeRozan for allowing the man he was guarding to drive where he wasn't supposed to drive - specifically, to the middle. And then there was Andrea Bargnani, whose 1-for-8 shooting line looked better than his sluggish defensive work.

"(Bargnani) is not doing things as quickly, and with as much urgency as we'd like him to," the coach said. "Maybe he's not in shape. ... Maybe these practices are taking a toll."

Maybe they are, although Bargnani insisted he's in fine shape and simply searching for his "rhythm."

Nobody, it seemed, wanted to use the morning run as an excuse for Sunday night's sloppiness - perhaps because, with the new Triano in charge, complaining might be a crime punishable by more morning runs.

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