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Monday 17 August 2020 16:18, UK
Norman Powell was a key contributor to the Raptors' 2019 title win. Twelve months later, his story of redemption has a new chapter as Toronto continue to thrive.
How easily we forget. But we shouldn't. The Toronto Raptors are still the defending NBA champions, at least until their own season is over. And that might not happen any time soon.
Despite losing Kawhi Leonard in free agency to the LA Clippers, and therefore seeing the greatest player in the history of their franchise depart for no returning basketball assets, these Raptors are not far short of last year's title-winning incarnation.
Conventional wisdom would hold that to lose one of the best players in the world today - and one of the best two-way players in the history of the game - would make a significant regression inevitable. Normally, that would be indisputable. But the 2019-20 Toronto Raptors have more than kept the ship afloat without him.
With a regular season record of 53-19, including nine wins in their last 10 games and four on the spin to close it out, the Raptors enter these playoffs as the second seed in the Eastern Conference behind only the powerhouse Milwaukee Bucks.
That's only two-and-a-half games back of one of the best regular season teams of a generation. And the significant elevation in the level of play of fifth-year guard Norman Powell has been a large part of why.
Powell played a good amount as in his rookie season (2015-16), playing solidly if not spectacularly, yet it was the way he closed out his second season that first got him noticed outside of his own city. His versatile backcourt game (although he is not one in the NBA, Powell played point guard back in college with UCLA) served as a useful weapon on both ends.
In his second season, he took on more minutes and a slightly bigger offensive role, while maintaining his good efficiency numbers. Powell's efficiency was best embodied by his play in the postseason - in the Raptors' 2016-17 first-round series that year against the self-same Bucks, Powell's play in games four and five (hitting nine consecutive three-pointers at one point) tipped back the balance in a series Toronto had started badly in. They went on to win that series, because of Powell.
You had heard of Powell before that series, maybe, but you did not think that much of him. Thereafter, however, you kept tabs on him, particularly given that he was on a minimum salary contract at the time.
Concurrent with this, a rules change in the 2017 Collective Bargaining Agreement made it possible for teams to extend second-year players under select circumstances, and Powell was one of the first beneficiaries of this. The Raptors essentially gave him the mid-level exception early, signing him to a four year, $41,065,956 extension in the summer after that series that took his contract through 2022 and locked up a productive young piece for a market-value deal, one that would continue to ascend in value as his play did on the court.
At the time, it was a sensible and good value piece of business to lock up a good youngish player for a good youngish team. Immediately, though, Powell went in the tank. His numbers plummeted all over - his first season after the extension saw his basic scoring stats go down sharply, from 8.4 points per game on the season and 10.6 after the All-Star break to a mere 5.5 in 2017-18.
More importantly, the bottom fell out of his efficiency numbers. The true shooting percentage fell from .552 to .492, the turnover rate shot up to 14.4 per cent from a mere 10.8 per cent, the three-point shooting plummeted to a mere 28.5 per cent as the volume of them sharply increased and the defense did not make up for it.
By the time the playoffs came around, the previous year's postseason breakout star found himself out of the rotation altogether and no longer trusted.
Powell had lost his way. As a ball-handler, opposing defenses kept setting him traps, and he kept walking into them. As a shooter, the confidence did not seem to waver, but the discipline did. And as a playmaker, he stopped looking to pass. The goodwill had gone, and seemingly, so had the team's confidence in him.
Before the extension had kicked in, the Raptors, having concluded they no longer wanted him at that price, shopped Powell heavily for what one rival general manager described to me as being "for literally anything".
Of course, for this article to work, there must be a redemption angle to it all. So here it comes. Powell was not traded despite the bargain basement asking price, and the reclamation project began. In the two years hence, that redemption has come, and it has particularly done so this season.
Last year, aided by the presence and offensive gravity of Leonard and the quality of the team around him, Powell got his shot back, hitting exactly 40.0 per cent from three-point range in the regular season and being a key playoff contributor once again, this time in a title-winning campaign.
This year, without the presence and offensive gravity of Leonard, Powell has kicked his scoring on much further. The excellence of Pascal Siakam up front and the ball-handling duo of Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet in the backcourt has allowed Powell to push his limits as a scorer.
And in terms of both volume and efficiency, he has found another level. Averaging 16.0 points per game on the season, as-near-as-is double his previous best single-season mark, it all seems much simpler and cleaner for Powell now, a confident scoring option on and off the ball with a .624 true shooting percentage to back it up.
It has always been said that, in spite of what his lack of charisma and vocal leadership would lead us to believe, Leonard led by example through work ethic, effort, not backing down on the court and consistently developing his game. Nick Nurse has certainly always stressed that position. While Kawhi is gone, perhaps that leadership by example is his legacy, one that has carried over into this season, manifest through the career rebirth of Powell.
Powell is flawed, like we all are. He still barrels in blindly sometimes. He still sometimes drives into trouble rather than out of it. He still has his quiet patches. He still tends to hog the ball and flop too much. He still sometimes misses easy-looking lay-ups and throws passes on the move into the car park. He still lacks for ideal size and athleticism considering the high-level wing defenders he will face in the playoffs.
He will still never be Victor Oladipo. But perhaps, he can be Ben Gordon.
In fact, perhaps he already is. A quality shooter, a pick-and-roll playmaker if only for himself, an efficient third option, and an unusually clutch one for a non-star player.
Powell, once given up on aged only 25 and deemed available for literally anything, is now a vital contributor on a defending champion with a legitimate outside chance of a repeat.
And given his history as a 'Bucks killer', Toronto's main rivals for another trip to the Finals are on notice.
