DeMar DeRozan was displeased with his placement<\/a> in Sports Illustrated\u2019s top-100 player rankings. This is the time for the haters and doubters to be used as motivation. The Toronto Raptors spoke frequently about various-sized chips on myriad shoulders during Monday\u2019s media day, and it wasn\u2019t particularly surprising. Broadly speaking, most observers think the Raptors have overpaid their best players in recent years.<\/p>\nBrandon Ingram is one of those guys, having agreed to a three-year, $120 million deal shortly after his trade from New Orleans in the offseason. Ingram has been frequently injured over the past few years, and that money likely wouldn\u2019t have been there from any other team in the offseason, given how the second apron and the NBA\u2019s harsher penalties for spending brought along relative thriftiness from teams.<\/p>\n
And wouldn\u2019t you know it, Ingram fell from 40th to 77th in this year\u2019s ESPN rankings. As much sense as that makes \u2014 he played just 18 games last year, mostly because of a badly sprained ankle \u2014 you wouldn\u2019t expect a former All-Star still in what should be the prime of his career to take kindly to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when you go try to prove yourself to other people,\u201d Ingram said on Monday, \u201cit never works out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consider that a record scratch moment. Maybe more than anyone else, Ingram should have external motivation at his disposal. However, a glimpse at the right side of his neck removes the surprise. Ingram has a bible verse tattooed there, a line said by Jesus to Peter: \u201cFocus on me, not the storm.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, we\u2019re surrounded by a lot of chaos,\u201d Ingram expanded on Thursday. \u201cAnd I think for me, I would say that (I try to) just stand (apart) from everybody else. If you look too far and try to impress people, you\u2019ll take failures more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Raptors, almost to a man, are looking inward \u2014 funny, as many of them wouldn\u2019t have trouble finding motivation if they looked outside. Even in a weakened Eastern Conference, Bet MGM has them with the eighth-highest win total over\/under at 39.5. That\u2019s a jump from last year\u2019s 11th-place finish, but not one the players believe represents the likely outcome.<\/p>\n
After a year full of injuries and a couple of seasons in the Eastern Conference dregs, the Raptors are well off the radar, and their best players draw skepticism. Even the Raptors\u2019 top-ranked player on ESPN, Scottie Barnes, is at once ascending, jumping from 35th to 30th, and looking way up at his Class of \u201821 peers such as Evan Mobley (13th) and Cade Cunningham (12th). He beat those two out for Rookie of the Year four seasons back. Now they are franchise players, while Barnes\u2019 own maximum-level deal is considered by some to be a franchise albatross.<\/p>\n
ESPN’s top-100 ranks of Raptors starters<\/p>\n
\u201cScottie was the No. 4 pick, but everyone was like, \u2018Why are they picking you No. 4?\u2019 RJ (Barrett) and (Immanuel Quickley): Toronto wanted you, but New York obviously traded you,\u201d Garrett Temple told The Athletic. \u201cBI, New Orleans traded you. Ochai (Agbaji) got traded after (in his second season). You can look guys down the line: \u2018Gradey (Dick), are you really good enough to play in the NBA, or is it just show?\u2019 You can look at a lot of our players, and there\u2019s a reason to have a chip on the shoulder. I think that\u2019s what brings a lot of people together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Together, sure, but not burning with \u201cwe\u2019ll show them\u201d rage. Temple remembered earlier in his career using the fact that he was undrafted as motivation \u2014 he wanted to prove he belonged in the league. However, Temple noted everyone is different and that social media has only intensified since his start in the league.<\/p>\n
Now, if you go searching for doubt online, you\u2019re not going to find just one piece of criticism; you\u2019re going to find an ocean of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou hear it,\u201d Barrett said, adding that players have to construct their support system wisely to limit how much noise filters into their worlds. Agbaji agreed, saying if you pick the wrong people to surround you, not only will they hear the criticism, they also might get harmful encouragement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, man, you should do this. You should be this. You should be doing this. You should be doing that,\u2019\u201d Agbaji said. \u201cTake it (in) one ear, out the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is the coaching staff\u2019s job to make sure the players are correctly focused. Darko Rajakovi\u0107 said it is essential to allow players to be themselves. Some thrive on perceived doubt, while others can get distracted by it.<\/p>\n
Regardless of how it is used, what comes from outside is fleeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the better version of motivation is always the motivation that\u2019s coming from within and not necessarily \u2018me against the world,\u2019\u201d Rajakovi\u0107 said. \u201cWhen you are competing against yourself and you are trying to be the best version of yourself, and that\u2019s what you can control, it really does not matter what the outside world thinks about you.\u201d<\/p>\n
That seems to be the message that the Raptors are trying to embody. Quickley and Barrett both spoke about how putting in their individual work arms them against external criticism. If they\u2019ve done all they can to improve, they believe \u2014 or at least hope \u2014 it will show up on the court. At that point, the outside world will be proven right or wrong.<\/p>\n
Yet, NBA players are humans, often disproportionately competitive ones. Most need uncommon self-belief to get to this level. It is easy to understand why they might get hung up on what\u2019s said about them in public.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work is always going to show up. \u2026 It\u2019s the reason I\u2019m in the NBA. It\u2019s the reason we\u2019re gonna have a great year this year,\u201d Quickley said. \u201cYou can\u2019t really get into that type of stuff. It\u2019s more about proving yourself right.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough, you know, it is cool to prove some people wrong. That\u2019s not the main goal. It\u2019s secondary.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Photo: Gregory Fisher \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CALGARY \u2014 It is prove \u2018em season. Unofficially, it started about a decade ago when then-Raptors star DeMar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82,10676],"class_list":["post-187093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-toronto-raptors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}