Raptors Explain the Importance of Playoff Experience for Toronto's Young Core

The Toronto Raptors are focused on making the playoffs by any means necessary in order to get their young core important postseason experience

Aaron Rose | Mar 24, 2022

Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

The NBA regular season is an 82-game slog. It’s an exhausting marathon of a race that has certainly taken its toll on the Toronto Raptors this year. But as any veteran with playoff experience will tell you, the postseason is an entirely different beast.

It’s a lesson the Raptors are hoping their young core can learn this year. Sure, the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference and a guaranteed spot in the playoffs would be nice, but the truth is Raptors coach Nick Nurse doesn’t really care how his team makes the postseason, as long as it’s invited to the dance.

“I really really think we need to experience (playoff basketball),” Nurse said Wednesday afternoon ahead of Thursday night’s game against the sixth seeded Cleveland Cavaliers. “Like a series, the prep and the toughness and all that stuff that I think it’d be really big building block for this team to be able to go through.”

There’s nothing in the regular season that can recreate playoff basketball. It’s something you can’t know until you’ve been through it, until you’ve been handed a brand-new playbook on your upcoming playoff opponent and told to get studying. It’s a different level of intensity, of concentration, and of game-planning when you know it’s best four of seven between two teams playing for their lives.

“Everything is lot more succinct. Everything is lot more detailed. The intensity is higher. Defense gets ratcheted up. Teams play a lot more harder. The referees let guys play through a lot of contact and stuff like that,” said Precious Achiuwa who made his playoff debut last season with the Miami Heat.

“Every team is zoomed in on whoever their opponent is and everything is, like, you’re under a microscope,” said Pascal Siakam whose first playoff experience came briefly as a rookie in the 2017 playoffs. “That’s an experience that you gain for the rest of your career, and I think that if you can have that early on in your career, the better for you.”

That’s why the playoffs are so important for the Raptors this season. They know NBA legends rarely reach the mountaintop of their first expedition. It took Michael Jordan four playoff heartbreaks before he eventually reached the Finals. LeBron James had to leave Cleveland and endure six playoffs without a ring before finally breaking through. Toronto wants Scottie Barnes and the young core to experience that heartbreak now.

This season has shown the Raptors can compete in the regular season. They’ve held their own against the league’s best night after night and, as Nurse said, they’re ready for whatever is thrown at them.

Now it’s about taking the next step, building that scar tissue that comes with playoff losses, and coming back better for it. It took Toronto five playoff heartbreaks to reach the pinnacle last time. The Raptors are ready to begin that chase again. All they have to do is get there.

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