Anunoby, Birch on mend as Raptors near return to full strength

TORONTO – At long last, the Toronto Raptors have some encouraging news on the injury front.

For the second straight day, it was confirmed that OG Anunoby and Khem Birch practised with the team and appear to be nearing a return.

“They looked good,” said Raptors coach Nick Nurse on Friday. “I think we’ve still got them in the questionable pool here. Probably have to see how they get through today’s practice and tomorrow morning we’ll have a shootaround and see how they feel.”

Anunoby (left hip pointer) hasn’t played since Nov. 15 against Portland Trail Blazers while Birch’s (right knee swelling) last contest was on Nov. 21 against the Golden State Warriors.

Toronto plays those same Warriors on Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena, but there’s no guarantee that either Anunoby or Birch will be ready to return.

“We’ll see,” was how Anunoby put it when asked if he would be good to play Saturday, while Birch was a little more forthcoming about his status for Toronto’s next game.

“I’m not sure. Ironically, I’m probably going to play the game after that, maybe, but I doubt I’m going to play tomorrow,” said Birch, referring to Monday’s contest against his former team, the Orlando Magic.

Officially, Anunoby and Birch (as well as Precious Achiuwa who is dealing with right shoulder tendinitis) are listed as “questionable” for Saturday’s game, but they certainly don’t sound too far off now.

“I think, of the three, OG, Khem and Precious, I thought OG and Khem were pretty good and in rhythm somewhat and not too affected,” said Nurse. “Precious was full of energy, flying all over the place, so we shall see.”

Sitting on a 13-15 record and just one game back of the four-way tie for seventh place in the Eastern Conference, the Raptors are right there in the thick of the play-in and post-season conversation, but have been hampered by a lack of consistency that you can attribute, mostly, to injuries.

The core trio of Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and Anunoby have played just 70 minutes together this season, while the quartet of VanVleet, Siakam, Anunoby and Scottie Barnes has played only 52 minutes together.

In particular, given the kind of chemistry that’s been percolating of late between Siakam and Barnes, it would be interesting to see what the Raptors might look like with Anunoby added to that mix more consistently, and how much higher the club’s ceiling would raise with more bodies coming back healthy in general.

“I’m very much looking forward to it,” said Nurse of possibly having a fully healthy roster. “We need to see what that looks like. We need to get that ironed in. We need to get that group ironed in, and get things ironed out. I look at that group, when they’re all healthy, as a good team. Let’s get ‘em back.”

Added Anunoby: “I’m excited. I think we’re all excited to play together and the whole team get healthy, get Khem back, Yuta [Watanabe’s] back healthy, Precious coming back. We’re all excited to play again.”

In particular for Anunoby, the prospect of getting back on the court must be very relieving as his injury has appeared to be particularly annoying with it, at first, appearing to be not serious, but then it just persisted.

“It’s frustrating because you want to play, but I don’t know,” said Anunoby. “Like, I want to play, wish I could but I know it could be worse and just thankful I know it’s going to heal and get better. I’m just waiting for them, support my teammates the best way I can while I’ve been out and just try to get better.”

For Birch, he’s experienced his own frustrations with his injury as this was an issue he dealt with earlier in the season and then it came back, and even with him appearing to be on the mend now, it sounds like there’s no guarantee it won’t just return at a later date.

“I’m not 100 percent yet but I just feel like this is the type of injury you’ve gotta deal with,” said Birch. “You’ve gotta learn how to play with the aches and bruises of it. I just had two practices so you gotta get used to it.”

“It’s a [bone] bruise,” he later added. “It’s just the outside of my knee you just feel the pain of it. I don’t think there’s anything you can do about that except for, obviously, rest. There’s no timetable so just gotta learn how to play through it.”

It’s taken a while, but the Raptors are looking like they’ll be back healthy sooner than later, and with it perhaps they can get back onto the winning track again.

COVID Concerns

Of course, as ironic as it might appear, right as it looks like the Raptors are getting players back, around the league teams are losing players as they enter the league’s health and safety protocols with the Omicron variant running roughshod through North America.

The Raptors haven’t been impacted that much yet by the health and safety protocols (outside of Achiuwa, who returned from self-isolation earlier this week), but given the fact Saturday’s game at Scotiabank Arena will be the first one in the foreseeable future that will only allow half capacity in it and, starting on Sunday, the arena will stop selling food and drink, all in an effort to help slow down the spread of the virus, it’s hard for COVID-19 not to be on the Raptors’ minds.

“We’re doing a lot more, protocol-wise,” said Nurse. “We’re really trying to be as proactive as possible. We’ve just gone back to almost as stringent as we can be. I guess that’s all I can say. The rest of it is we keep preparing as the games go on and ahead, and just, with a little bit of a ‘Be ready to play the game no matter who’s in, who’s out, who’s in the crowd, who’s not,’ and all of that kind of stuff.

“Just kind of getting your mindset really lasered in on understanding there’s still a great chance to play the game and it may be a little different form than we thought, but there’s still a good chance to play the game.”

Nurse made reference to the fact it was looking like Toronto’s Tuesday game against the Brooklyn Nets went ahead when it looked close to being postponed with Nets players suddenly entering COVID protocols just an hour before tip-off.

The game ended up being played, and it looks like the Raptors came away unscathed. But with the Warriors visiting Saturday and them announcing on Friday morning that Jordan Poole was entering health and safety protocols, followed by the Magic having R.J. Hampton, Moe Wagner and former Raptor Terrence Ross entering protocols, it’d be odd for the Raptors not to be a little anxious with what appears to be a thread-the-needle act their pulling by not contracting the virus.

“I wouldn’t say there’s no nervousness. Not a lot of talk about it, in general, when we’re around together. Once we kind of circle up to start practice, it’s all about what’s on the floor,” said Nurse. “But to say there’s no nervousness about playing? No, there was a nervousness about going to Brooklyn the other night when we knew there was an outbreak there. Of course. I think like anybody who is around situations where there have been positive cases, there are thoughts going through your head.

“You do everything a bit sharper in the protocol.”

With that said, despite the understandable worry about COVID the team is feeling, that hasn’t impacted the overall mood of the Raptors negatively, Nurse said.

“It’s pretty good. I kind of get in the same mood as they do a lot. When they call me up [in] Brooklyn, call me up at 8 a.m. and say, ‘You’ve got to come take two tests right now.’ And then I go, ‘Ugh.’ And then I go down there and do it and I’m OK.

“Players do the same. (They complain about) ‘two tests before you get in the building, a test when you get in the building,’ for five seconds and then they realize it’s just gotta be done.”

Quick dribbles

• With so many players entering health and safety protocols all at once at the moment, there has been online discussion over whether the NBA might want to consider a shut down or a pause on the season to help things get back under control a little bit.

Nurse doesn’t think that’s on the table, however.

“Just my gut here, as long as they can they are charging forward with these games, man,” the Raptors coach said. “When you got eight guys you are playing. That’s the way I feel they are going right now. So I haven’t delved that deep into it.”

• With the returns of Anunoby, Birch and Achiuwa appearing to be quite soon, Nurse and the Raptors coaching staff will suddenly going from not having enough people to plug in to, maybe, too many.

It’s a good problem to have that Nurse sounds excited to dig into.

“It starts right away. It started yesterday and today. When you break down and you’re like, ‘OK, we’re gonna start running through offensive sets,’ and then you realize you can only put five out there. There are more than five that wanna be out there. You’ve got to start with five and go from there.”

• One good thing about this period the Raptors have gone through forced to play with many of their secondary players is it’s given Nurse a good look at what he has in his reserve players.

Ultimately, it sounds like he wants more out of them, but even just knowing that is useful information.

“I would say that what I have learned is there are some guys that can certainly have some moments,” said Nurse. “Those moments need to be more consistent. To me, we need to know you are at least going to come play with some physicality, energy, toughness, guarding – things like that. … They are all capable. It’s just who can do it most consistently that will hang on to those roles.”

Anunoby, Birch on mend as Raptors near return to full strength
Source: Pinas Ko Mahal