National Basketball Association

Too-soft lineup work in progress;Team lacked 'the grit, the desire and the fight' to challenge

Published Oct. 16, 2010 10:51 a.m. ET

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If there is one trademark attribute the Raptors must develop this season in order to have any measure of success, it has to be hard work.

They cannot lollygag. They cannot act like a collection of milquetoasts. If they do, they have no chance to win and if ever that lesson was hammered home, it was Friday night at the Air Canada Centre.

Soft as ever for most of the game and unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to make up the difference in talent, the Raptors dropped a 117-112 decision to the Boston Celtics that was far closer than it ever should have been.

"We got our asses kicked in the first three quarters," said coach Jay Triano, whose back-ups outscored Boston 39-16 in the fourth quarter.

"Are they better than us? Absolutely. So we have to make it up somehow and we have to make it up by outworking teams and we didn't do that. We didn't win that category tonight at all."

The Raptors have known all along that they aren't blessed with the talent they would like. They don't have a dominant scorer or flashy one-on-one stars, and they've been in a collective shooting slump for most of the pre-season.

Triano has been hammering home the need for hard work to make up for the deficiencies and not getting it ticked him off. He doesn't want "dirty," just "hard."

"Guys should not be able to drive down the lane and lay the ball in without getting fouled, especially when it's early in the game," he said. "They tackled us three times when we got layups; we tackled nobody. Until we learn it's going to take a little bit of that ...

"I told them, 'You guys foul out, foul out. Send a message that at least we're not going to allow layups . . . don't let them think they can lay the ball in.' But it was layup line for them."

The toughness level has to come from a very few players on the roster who possess anything resembling a mean streak.

It manifests itself not only in the number of times an opponent goes to the floor but in how the Raptors handle themselves in the scrums that follow missed shots.

Toronto was one of the worst rebounding teams in the NBA last season and changing the perception of them as a group of softies isn't going to be easy.

Triano is hoping a resurgent Reggie Evans, who grabbed eight boards as Toronto tied Boston 46-46 in the rebounding battle Friday night, might be that guy.

"You hope that it becomes a contagious thing," Triano said of Evans's energy. "With his energy and the way he hustles, I hope that becomes contagious and that guys don't take a step back and say, 'Oh, he's going to get it. We don't have to work as hard because Reggie's going to chase it down. Reggie's going to go get that basketball.'"

But after preaching the need for his team to follow that example, the coach sat back and watched them do exactly the opposite.

The Celtics, who rested Paul Pierce and Shaquille O'Neal, were without Delonte West and only used Kevin Garnett for 15 minutes, did pretty much whatever they wanted and led by as many as 29. It underscored the one thing that's most important about this Toronto team: If it doesn't work, it can't win.

"I didn't think that we had the grit, the desire and the fight that we're going to need if we're going to win basketball games or compete against teams like the Boston Celtics," said Triano.

Triano did unveil what some think will be his opening night starting lineup, using Jose Calderon with DeMar DeRozan, Linas Kleiza, Andrea Bargnani and Evans. Calderon went 2-for-7, Bargnani 5-for-16, DeRozan 3-for-8, Evans 1-for-5 and Kleiza 6-for-10 from the floor.

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