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Toronto Raptors: What's next following the NBA trade deadline? – NBA CA

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Toronto Raptors

The 2020-21 NBA Trade Deadline has passed, and the Toronto Raptors now have their roster for the remainder of the season.

While a trade for six-time All-Star guard Kyle Lowry never came to fruition, the Raptors have reportedly dealt scoring wing Norman Powell, as well as reserve guards Terence Davis and Matt Thomas. With a revamped roster that’s set to make a playoff push, Toronto will look to build off of its losing streak-snapping win over the Denver Nuggets and make something out of this helter-skelter season.

With the madness behind us, what were the returns of those deals, what does the depth chart look like and what’s next for Toronto?

Reported trades

Projected depth chart

Starter 2nd 3rd 4th
G Kyle Lowry Malachi Flynn Jalen Harris
G Fred VanVleet DeAndre’ Bembry Patrick McCaw
F Gary Trent Jr. Rodney Hood Paul Watson
F Pascal Siakam Stanley Johnson Yuta Watanabe
C OG Anunoby Chris Boucher Aron Baynes Henry Ellenson

The post-trade deadline state of the Raptors

Prior to the trade deadline madness, Toronto snapped a nine-game losing streak in an impressive fashion against a strong Nuggets squad. While it was believed it could have been Lowry’s last game in a Raptors uniform, the franchise reportedly couldn’t find a worthwhile deal for him. The team’s floor general and leader will remain as they prepare for an eighth-consecutive playoff push.

MORE: Instant analysis on every reported deal of the trade deadline

Lowry will still be an unrestricted free agent this offseason, but the six-time All-Star will continue to make his regular impact on this year’s team. Through 37 games, he’s averaging 17.4 points, 7.5 assists, 5.6 rebounds and 1.1 steals despite all of the rumours and rumblings.

Even though they’re 1-9 in their last 10 games, the Raptors are still only 1.5 games back from a spot in this season’s play-in tournament to get into the playoffs and only 4.0 games back of the highly coveted No. 6 seed to avoid said play-in tournament. With the roster back to full strength after being decimated by COVID-19 and the league’s health and safety protocols, plus two new pieces in place in Trent and Hood, can Toronto turn this bizarre season into yet another gritty playoff run?

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Losing a red-hot Powell hurts, but returning Trent and Hood gives the Raptors two versatile wings who can both shoot, bolstering Toronto’s depth a bit even with the reported departures of Thomas and Davis.

Trent is only 22 years old and has just begun to figure things out at the NBA level. NBA.com’s Scott Rafferty went into more detail on what the Raptors are receiving in Trent, but the sharpshooting wing is amidst the best season of his career following an impressive run in last season’s NBA bubble. He is averaging 15.0 points, 2.2 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game while shooting 39.7 percent from 3-point land.

As Rafferty noted, where he’ll make the biggest impact is on catch-and-shoot 3s, where he has converted a blistering 42.1 percent of his attempts this season.

Trent will likely slot right into Powell’s spot in the starting lineup. He’ll be an upgrade at that position as a perimeter defender.

Trent is set to be a restricted free agent this offseason, meaning Toronto will have the option of matching any offer he receives, but the price will be much lower than what Powell is expected to command as an unrestricted free agent, making him a much more cap-friendly option moving forward.

As for Hood, the 28-year-old wing has struggled to find a rhythm this season after suffering a season-ending torn Achllies in December of 2019. Prior to that injury, Hood was the perfect glue guy for the Blazers, averaging 11.0 points per game while shooting 49.3 percent from 3. The rust he’s shown from that devastating injury impacted his playing time in Portland this season, and only shooting 29.8 percent from 3 made it tough for him to carve out a role.

Hood’s size at 6-foot-8 makes him a versatile defender that should fit in nicely with head coach Nick Nurse’s scheme. For a team that could use some added bench depth, Hood will have quite the opportunity to prove he belongs somewhere on an NBA roster this upcoming offseason. (Hood’s contract for the 2021-22 season is non-guaranteed, so the Raptors will have free reign to decide what his future is with the franchise).

With Lowry still in the fold, VanVleet, Anunoby, Siakam and Boucher maintaining their level of play and the addition of these two new players, Toronto will have 28 more games to right the ship.

While it is unknown when Trent and Hood will be available to suit up, the Raptors will next take the floor on Friday, March 26 when they host the surging Phoenix Suns.

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Soccer legend Christine Sinclair says goodbye in Vancouver |

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Christine Sinclair scored one final goal at B.C. Place, helping the Portland Thorns to a 6-0 victory over the Whitecaps Girls Elite team. The soccer legend has announced she’ll retire from professional soccer at the end of the National Women’s Soccer League season. (Oct. 16, 2024)

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A German in charge of England? Nationality matters less than it used to in international soccer

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The question was inevitable.

At his first news conference as England’s newly appointed head coach, Thomas Tuchel – a German – was asked on Wednesday what message he had for fans who would have preferred an Englishman in charge of their beloved national team.

“I’m sorry, I just have a German passport,” he said, laughing, and went on to profess his love for English football and the country itself. “I will do everything to show respect to this role and to this country.”

The soccer rivalry between England and Germany runs deep and it’s likely Tuchel’s passport will be used against him if he doesn’t deliver results for a nation that hasn’t lifted a men’s trophy since 1966. But his appointment as England’s third foreign coach shows that, increasingly, even the top countries in the sport are abandoning the long-held belief that the national team must be led by one of their own.

Four of the top nine teams in the FIFA world rankings now have foreign coaches. Even in Germany, a four-time World Cup winner which has never had a foreign coach, candidates such as Dutchman Louis van Gaal and Austrian Oliver Glasner were considered serious contenders for the top job before the country’s soccer federation last year settled on Julian Nagelsmann, who is German.

“The coaching methods are universal and there for everyone to apply,” said German soccer researcher and author Christoph Wagner, whose recent book “Crossing the Line?” historically addresses Anglo-German rivalry. “It’s more the personality that counts and not the nationality. You could be a great coach, and work with a group of players who aren’t perceptive enough to get your methods.”

Not everyone agrees.

English soccer author and journalist Jonathan Wilson said it was “an admission of failure” for a major soccer nation to have a coach from a different country.

“Personally, I think it should be the best of one country versus the best of another country, and that would probably extend to coaches as well as players,” said Wilson, whose books include “Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics.”

“To say we can’t find anyone in our country who is good enough to coach our players,” he said, “I think there is something slightly embarrassing, slightly distasteful about that.”

That sentiment was echoed by British tabloid The Daily Mail, which reported on Tuchel’s appointment with the provocative headline “A Dark Day for England.”

While foreign coaches are often found in smaller countries and those further down the world rankings, they are still a rarity among the traditional powers of the game. Italy, another four-time world champion, has only had Italians in charge. All of Spain’s coaches in its modern-day history have been Spanish nationals. Five-time World Cup winner Brazil has had only Brazilians in charge since 1965, and two-time world champion France only Frenchmen since 1975.

And it remains the case that every World Cup-winning team, since the first tournament in 1930, has been coached by a native of that country. The situation is similar for the women’s World Cup, which has never been won by a team with a foreign coach, though Jill Ellis, who led the U.S. to two trophies, is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in England.

Some coaches have made a career out of jumping from one national team to the next. Lars Lagerbäck, 76, coached his native Sweden between 2000-09 and went on to lead the national teams of Nigeria, Iceland and Norway.

“I couldn’t say I felt any big difference,” Lagerbäck told The Associated Press. “I felt they were my teams and the people’s teams.”

For Lagerbäck, the obvious disadvantages of coaching a foreign country were any language difficulties and having to adapt to a new culture, which he particularly felt during his brief time with Nigeria in 2010 when he led the African country at the World Cup.

Otherwise, he said, “it depends on the results” — and Lagerbäck is remembered with fondness in Iceland, especially, after leading the country to Euro 2016 for its first ever international tournament, where it knocked out England in the round of 16.

Lagerbäck pointed to the strong education and sheer number of coaches available in soccer powers like Spain and Italy to explain why they haven’t needed to turn to an overseas coach. At this year’s European Championship, five of the coaches were from Italy and the winning coach was Luis de la Fuente, who was promoted to Spain’s senior team after being in charge of the youth teams.

Portugal for the first time looked outside its own borders or Brazil, with which it has historical ties, when it appointed Spaniard Roberto Martinez as national team coach last year. Also last year, Brazil tried — and ultimately failed — to court Real Madrid’s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti, with Brazilian soccer federation president Ednaldo Rodrigues saying: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a foreigner or a Brazilian, there’s no prejudice about the nationality.”

The United States has had a long list of foreign coaches before Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine former Chelsea manager who took over as the men’s head coach this year.

The English Football Association certainly had no qualms making Tuchel the national team’s third foreign-born coach, after Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson (2001-06) and Italian Fabio Capello (2008-12), simply believing he was the best available coach on the market.

Unlike Eriksson and Capello, Tuchel at least had previous experience of working in English soccer — he won the Champions League in an 18-month spell with Chelsea — and he also speaks better English.

That won’t satisfy all the nay-sayers, though.

“Hopefully I can convince them and show them and prove to them that I’m proud to be the English manager,” Tuchel said.

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AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire in Paris contributed to this story.

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Maple Leafs winger Bobby McMann finding game after opening-night scratch

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TORONTO – Bobby McMann watched from the press box on opening night.

Just over a week later, the Maple Leafs winger took a twirl as the first star.

McMann went from healthy scratch to unlikely offensive focal point in just eight days, putting up two goals in Toronto’s 6-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday.

The odd man out at the Bell Centre against the Montreal Canadiens, he’s slowly earning the trust of first-year head coach Craig Berube.

“There’s a lot of good players on this team,” McMann said of his reaction to sitting out Game 1. “Maybe some guys fit better in certain scenarios than others … just knowing that my opportunity would come.”

The Wainwright, Alta., product skated on the second line with William Nylander and Max Domi against Los Angeles, finishing with those two goals, three hits and a plus-3 rating in just over 14 minutes of work.

“He’s been unbelievable,” said Nylander, who’s tied with McMann for the team lead with three goals. “It’s great when a player like that comes in.”

The 28-year-old burst onto the scene last February when he went from projected scratch to hat-trick hero in a single day after then-captain John Tavares fell ill.

McMann would finish 2023-24 with 15 goals and 24 points in 56 games before a knee injury ruled him out of Toronto’s first-round playoff loss to the Boston Bruins.

“Any time you have success, it helps the confidence,” he said. “But I always trust the abilities and trust that they’re there whether things are going in or (I’m not) getting points. Just trying to play my game and trust that doing the little things right will pay off.”

McMann was among the Leafs’ best players against the Kings — and not just because of what he did on the scoresheet. The forward got into a scuffle with Phillip Danault in the second period before crushing Mikey Anderson with a clean hit in the third.

“He’s a power forward,” Berube said. “That’s how he should think the game, night in and night out, as being a power forward with his skating and his size. He doesn’t have to complicate the game.”

Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz knew nothing about McMann before joining Toronto in free agency over the summer.

“Great two-way player,” said the netminder. “Extremely physical and moves really well, has a good shot. He’s a key player for us in our depth. I was really happy for him to get those two goals.

“Works his butt off.”

ON TARGET

Leafs captain Auston Matthews, who scored 69 times last season, ripped his first goal of 2024-25 after going without a point through the first three games.

“It’s not going to go in every night,” said Matthews, who added two assists against the Kings. “It’s good to see one fall … a little bit of the weight lifted off your shoulders.”

WAKE-UP CALL

Berube was animated on the bench during a third-period timeout after the Kings cut a 5-0 deficit to 5-2.

“Taking care of the puck, being harder in our zone,” Matthews said of the message. “There were times in the game, early in the second, in the third period, where the momentum shifted and we needed to grab it back.”

PATCHES SITS

Toronto winger Max Pacioretty was a healthy scratch after dressing the first three games.

“There’s no message,” Berube said of the 35-year-old’s omission. “We have extra players and not everybody can play every night. That’s the bottom line. He’s been fine when he’s played, but I’ve got to make decisions as a coach, and I’m going to make those decisions — what I think is best for the team.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

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