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The Raptors Have Lost Their Swagger. Can They Get It Back? – The Ringer

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Toronto is off to the NBA’s most disappointing start and it seems the rest of the league has figured out its All-Star forward. What can Nick Nurse do to right the ship?

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It’s getting late early for the Raptors, who dropped to 1-5 with a blowout loss to the Celtics on Monday. Toronto has been the most disappointing team in the NBA so far. Its biggest problem has been the regression of Pascal Siakam, who’s coming off the first All-Star season of his career. His play began to dip in the bubble and has gotten worse since then. It has gone beyond just a slump at this point. The league has adjusted to Siakam, 2019’s Most Improved Player, and now he has to figure out how to adjust back. The Raptors’ season depends on it.

Siakam scored a season-high 22 points on 7-of-15 shooting on Monday, but the double-digit defeat still revealed many of the issues that have plagued him. He hasn’t been the same player since his disappointing performance in the Raptors’ second-round loss to the Celtics last postseason. Boston has the personnel to defend him, with multiple long and athletic wings who can suffocate him on the perimeter and still contest his shot once he gets inside. After seeing Jaylen Brown shut Siakam down in the playoffs, the rest of the NBA has started putting smaller defenders on Toronto’s 6-foot-9 forward. The result has been a significant drop in points (from 22.9 to 17.6 per game) and field goal percentage (45.3 to 40.7) from last season.

The difference is striking when you compare the lists of his most frequent defenders from this season to last. The latter features a lot of 6-foot-10 and taller players (Jonathan Isaac, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Al Horford, and Tristan Thompson) while the former is mostly players players 6-foot-7 and shorter (Rudy Gay, Keldon Johnson, Josh Hart, and Brown). Defenses have figured out that they don’t need to match up with Siakam’s size. The key is matching up with his speed.

The Celtics game was a perfect example of what happens when that plays out. The Raptors raced out to a 22-10 start largely because Boston started two traditional big men in Daniel Theis and Thompson. Siakam was cross-switched on defense multiple times with Thompson, who lost him on the perimeter and allowed him to get free for two open 3s. But things fell apart once the Celtics downsized and started playing Brown, Jayson Tatum, or Semi Ojeleye at the 4. There’s no obvious way for Siakam to attack those types of defenders. Beating them off the dribble requires a level of precision and touch that he doesn’t have, and he’s not a great post scorer:

Siakam is at his best when he can attack in space and use his combination of size and speed to get to the rim. He has always been great in transition. But he hasn’t gotten as many of those opportunities this season. Not only is he dealing with different types of defenders, he’s playing in different types of lineups. He was paired with a platoon of stretch 5s last season in Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka. That was the best of both worlds: The Raptors had one of the biggest frontcourts in the NBA while still possessing elite floor spacing. Their entire rotation was 3-and-D players, allowing them to punch above their weight despite losing Kawhi Leonard.

That is no longer the case, with Gasol and Ibaka replaced by Aron Baynes and Chris Boucher. Baynes has the worst net rating of any player in their rotation (minus-13.2 in 122 minutes) besides Siakam. He’s shooting 20 percent from 3 on 2.5 attempts per game this season, and doesn’t have the size or athleticism to be a threat at the rim. He needs to regain the shooting stroke he found in Phoenix last season. There have been too many sequences like this, in which the Celtics collapsed on Siakam and Baynes couldn’t punish them for it:

Boucher has given the Raptors some offensive pop, averaging 12.7 points per game on 51.9 percent shooting and 33.3 percent from 3 on 3.0 attempts. The problem is that he’s so slight (6-foot-9 and 200 pounds) that he gives them the defensive and rebounding issues of a smaller team without the offensive benefits of having another ball handler and playmaker on the floor. Toronto coach Nick Nurse dusted off journeyman center Alex Len for nine minutes on Monday, but that didn’t work, either.

Process of elimination leads to one remaining option: smaller lineups with Siakam and OG Anunoby at the 4 and 5. Nurse, for all his flexibility as a coach, has never liked playing that small. He waited until the Raptors were facing elimination in Game 6 against the Celtics before he tried it. But that adjustment was the key to forcing Game 7. Siakam (6-foot-9 and 230 pounds) and Anunoby (6-foot-7 and 232 pounds) could match up with Boston’s undersized centers on defense, and shifting them up a position would make them more dangerous on offense.

Toronto would be giving up a lot of size in that scenario, but that adjustment might jump-start an offense that is no. 28 in the NBA right now. Both Siakam and Anunoby are relatively limited scorers who need the game simplified as much as possible. They need to play in more space, with more shooting and playmaking around them. It’s the one move Nurse has left up his sleeve. He has played those lineups only 12 minutes this season, with six of those coming in the fourth quarter against Boston.

To be fair, there are clear downsides. Toronto doesn’t have much perimeter size to make up for going smaller up front. They start two point guards 6-foot-1 or shorter in Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet, and would be choosing between two undersized shooting guards in Norman Powell and Terence Davis at the 3, or the offensively limited Stanley Johnson (6-foot-6). Davis, who has not played much after an offseason arrest for assault, would have to seize a bigger role. He had his best game of the season against the Celtics—13 points on 4-of-8 shooting and three assists—with much of that production coming when the Raptors went small in the fourth.

But Toronto still only played Boston even in those minutes. The Raptors’ biggest problem was rebounding, with Robert Williams III repeatedly punishing their lack of size on the offensive glass:

After the game, Lowry was blunt about the Raptors’ issues. “We just need to get a little bit grittier, get a little bit tougher and a little bit nastier, and have a little bit of a swagger to us. Right now we have no swagger to us. We have nothing. There’s nothing to us. Teams are looking at us like, ‘All right, let’s go eat.’”

Nurse has to try something different. Going small won’t fix all their problems, but it looks like the best idea in a bad set of options. The Raptors’ schedule won’t get much easier over the next month. They will need more offense from Siakam, even if it comes at the expense of their defense. Defenses have changed how they guard him from last season. He no longer has the same matchup advantages, or the offensive structure that allowed him to thrive. Toronto needs to force the issue by downsizing and making defenses adjust to them.

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Decathlon world champ LePage dealing with low of missing Olympics while rehabbing

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It’s still difficult to put into words for reigning world decathlon champion Pierce LePage.

The 28-year-old from Whitby, Ont., had to withdraw from the Paris Olympics due to a herniated disc in his back. LePage suffered the injury in the spring but pushed to still compete. However, on July 17, he announced on social media that he would not be in Paris and needed surgery.

“I feel like there’s regret obviously — like, yes, I want to be there and things like that,” LePage said. “But I feel like there’s a lot of people and a lot of fans, friends, support, family, all the people that feeling I kind of let down, let myself down, let my coach down so I felt pretty guilty about that for a long time and still, you know going through the motions.

“Obviously it’s tough. I’m world champion. I had a lot of hopes and a lot of goals going into the Games,” he added. “It’s hard to put into words what I felt, but yeah, it sucked. But I was happy to push through as far as I could with the injury.”

LePage tweaked his back in the “end of March, early April,” doing an exercise in the gym. About two weeks later, while training for the long jump, he landed awkwardly, causing the herniated disc in his back.

LePage competed in several individual events in 2024, mostly indoors, but not a decathlon. He was also granted a medical exemption to not compete at Canadian national trials in June.

He said he knew it was “over” after a warm-up for his final competition in July before leaving for Paris. His pole broke prepping for the pole vault and hit the mat, but for the next couple of days had “a lot of nerve symptoms and a lot of pain” that stopped him from even jogging.

“Athletes go through injuries. It’s not anything new and I’ve always been someone who’s always been able to compete through injury, regardless of how severe it is,” LePage said. “So I thought that when it happened that that must be another case of small setback. I’ll be able to do it if I have some pain, like that’s fine, I’ll do whatever.

“But just the nature of the injury is that if it’s pushing on your nerves, you can’t get the results you want out of it.”

LePage, who will be one of 11 RBC Olympians who will be part of this year’s RBC Training Ground National Final on Saturday in Halifax, had surgery in August and says his progression in rehab has been good, although he doesn’t have a recovery timeline. However, he plans to be back well before the 2025 world championships in Tokyo next September.

LePage was coming off a massive 2023 season, claiming the first international title of his career in Gotzis, Austria, then winning his first world title in Budapest, Hungary, some months later. His mark of 8,909 points in Budapest was a personal best, world lead and sixth-best all-time score.

He also became the first Canadian to win a world title in the event. LePage earned his first worlds medal in 2022, with silver, behind world-record holder Kevin Mayer of France.

He finished 2023 as the top-ranked decathlete in the world, still holding that position until the Paris Olympics.

The 2023 season showed how tough LePage would be to beat, especially when healthy. He finished fifth at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 dealing with a torn patella in his right knee. At the 2022 worlds, he competed through a torn patella in his left knee.

Many expected Canada to decathlon win gold and silver in Paris. Damian Warner of London, Ont., was the reigning Olympic champion heading into Paris and earned silver behind LePage at the 2023 worlds.

However, Warner withdrew with just a couple of events left in the decathlon in Paris after failing to clear the opening height of 4.60 metres in the pole vault on all three of his attempts. Warner fell from second to 18th, with no chance of climbing back into the mix.

LePage pointed to reasons for both men to be driven for redemption in Tokyo next year.

“I’m the world champion. I want to defend my title next year,” he said. “I’m sure Damian feels similar thoughts on not wanting to stop right there.

“No one likes to not finish decathlon. That is definitely drive to doing it again and kind of redeem ourselves, I suppose.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.

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Pro Women’s Hockey League announces plans to expand by 2 teams for 2025-26 season

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The six-team Professional Women’s Hockey League is launching its expansion process with plans to add two franchises for the start of the 2025-26 season, a league executive announced Tuesday.

Speaking at the ESPNW Summit in New York, senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer said the league will begin sending requests for proposals to several markets starting as early as next week, while also accepting applications.

”(We’re) looking for the right market size, right fan base, right facilities, right economic opportunity — so a lot of research to be done over the next couple months,” Scheer said, without specifying which markets the league might be targeting. “But yeah, looking to continue to build the league and grow the number of teams.”

Among the U.S. expansion candidates are Detroit and Pittsburgh, where the PWHL hosted neutral site games during its inaugural season last year. Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia would also be regarded as candidates after both were considered before the league established teams in Boston, New York and Minnesota. Denver and Seattle are also considered potential candidates.

In Canada, where the league has teams in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, Quebec City has already announced its intention of being a candidate for an expansion franchise. Calgary would be a potential option with the city previously being home to the Inferno from 2011 to 2019, before the Canadian Women’s Hocky League folded.

Scheer also announced the league plans to hold neutral site games in nine markets across North America, and is considering holding an outdoor game. Scheer added the league is also working on holding games in Europe, without specifying when that might happen.

The PWHL’s second season opens on Nov. 30, and features an expanded schedule with each team playing 30 games — up from 24 last year. The league has yet to announce where it’s neutral site games will be played.

Quebec City councilor Jackie Smith announced earlier on Tuesday that the PWHL has agreed to play a neutral site game at the city’s Videotron Centre on Jan. 19. The PWHL’s schedule has Ottawa playing Montreal on that day, with the site yet to be determined.

Smith called the development the first step in Quebec City landing an expansion team.

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AP Women’s Hockey:

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Canada’s Eltorgman falls to Israel’s Poleshchuk at Cambridge Classic squash tourney

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TORONTO – Canadian squash player Salah Eltorgman dropped a 7-11, 11-4, 11-9, 11-7 decision to Israel‘s Daniel Poleshchuk in quarterfinal play Tuesday at the Cambridge Group of Clubs Classic.

Eltorgman, from Toronto, was the lone Canadian left in the men’s draw of the Pro Squash Association tournament, which is a companion event to the Canadian Women’s Open.

The lone Canadian remaining in the women’s draw, Hollie Naughton of Mississauga, Ont., was scheduled to play Melissa Alves of France in the quarterfinals on Tuesday evening.

Naughton, the world No. 26, is ranked three positions higher than Alves, who dispatched top-seeded Nele Coll of Belgium on Monday.

Semifinals will be played Wednesday in the Allen Lambert Galleria at Brookfield Place.

The finals are set for Thursday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.

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