Toronto Raptors: Five takeaways from an interesting preseason

Nick Nurse is going to try funky stuff

During his opening press conference, Nick Nurse mentioned several times the importance of “trying different things” during the regular season. So far during the preseason, he appears to be doing just that.

Nick Nurse is unafraid to try funky lineups, to try different defensive coverages, and to even run zone!

Will Nurse continue this during the regular season? Perhaps not to the same extent, but at some level yes.

Last season, Coach Casey played two units the majority of the season. In the regular season, it paid huge dividends. The Raptors were able to develop a chemistry, despite having such a deep rotation and the team earned the number one seed because of it.

However, during the playoffs, Toronto lacked flexibility. Teams need to make adjustments when facing each other up to seven times over a two-week span, and when players like Ibaka and Siakam barely played with each other over the regular season, developing chemistry on the fly can be difficult.

That is why Nurse will attempt to experiment and try different lineups throughout the year. Many won’t work, and as a result, there’s a good chance it will negatively impact the Raptors during the regular season. That’s okay the team has bigger goals than that.

It’s only preseason; perhaps these takeaways won’t stick. Still, this Raptor team appears to be different than the previous iterations, and it will be fun watching them find themselves throughout the season.