Dec 15, 2020
Bembry could emerge as Raptors’ X-factor this season
With roughly a week to go until opening night, DeAndre' Bembry appears to be on the outside of coach Nick Nurse’s regular Toronto Raptors rotation, but the forward’s defensive energy and knack for pressuring the ball should one way or another give him an opportunity to carve out a role, Josh Lewenberg writes.
TORONTO – DeAndre’ Bembry was open in the corner and shuffled a foot to his left to catch a bounce pass from Yuta Watanabe as the Raptors made their comeback bid late in the third quarter of Monday’s pre-season contest against Charlotte.
A 27 per cent career three-point shooter, Bembry is known primarily for his defence, and the Hornets had clearly read his scouting report.
Miles Bridges closed out but stayed on his feet and didn’t bite on Bembry’s quick pump fake. Meanwhile, the opposing players sitting behind Bembry on the home team’s bench shouted and dared him to shoot. He took one dribble, stepped back and drained the three, holding his follow through long enough to watch the ball go through the net.
Calm, cool and collected – as is the 26-year-old’s nature – he turned around before making his way back down the court.
“I just told them calm down, calm down, relax, it’s going up, and it defiantly happened how I wanted it to happen,” Bembry said following Toronto’s 112-109 victory on Monday night. “I just told them relax, take this L, it’ll be all right.”
The Raptors fell behind early, like they did in Saturday’s pre-season opener – a 111-100 comeback victory, also against Charlotte. Bembry was limited to second-half spot minutes in that first game, but with Toronto trailing by 11 points midway through Monday’s second quarter and looking for a spark, Nick Nurse called his number (he’s the first player in franchise history to wear 95 on his jersey – representing the birth year of his late brother).
Bembry delivered. The forward made an immediate impact with his defensive energy and knack for pressuring the ball. And, even as a reluctant shooter, he jumpstarted the team’s struggling offence with his ability to move off the ball. Cutting from the elbow to the rim, Bembry scored his first bucket off a well-timed Fred VanVleet pass. Later in the frame, VanVleet found him on a backdoor cut, which led to a couple free throws.
“DeAndre’ was a plus and the thing I like about him is he’s a heady player,” Nurse said of Bembry, who scored nine points and was a team-best plus-17 in 16 minutes. “He makes a lot of good plays and he might be a fit. He looked like he was a good fit out there. [We’re] still learning him and he’s learning us, but I like what I’ve seen so far.”
It hasn’t taken long for Bembry to make himself comfortable with his new team. The forward signed a two-year deal with Toronto last month after spending his first four NBA seasons in Atlanta. He’s somebody the Raptors have had their eyes on for while – they’ve been tracking him since before he was drafted out of Saint Joseph’s in 2016, the same class that produced VanVleet and Pascal Siakam. Watching him play in his second exhibition game with the club, or even listening to him speak afterwards, it’s not hard to see why.
Bembry checks off a lot of boxes that the organization tends to value. He plays hard, brings energy and thinks defence first. He’s a high IQ player. He’s also a character fit – somebody that comes to the Raptors with something to prove. Sound familiar?
“People enjoy my defence so much they might overlook that I can play with the ball,” Bembry said. “I’m a real good cutter, but I mean, I don’t mind being under the radar, I’ve been under the radar a long time in my life. So, I think I’ve just always tried to find a way and it just always seems to work out for me.”
As it stands now, 10 days into training camp and roughly a week until opening night, Bembry appears to be on the outside of Nurse’s regular rotation. In each of the exhibition contests against Charlotte, four reserves – Matt Thomas, Chris Boucher, Malachi Flynn and Terence Davis – have gotten in ahead of him and they’ve each had standout moments.
When Kyle Lowry returns to the lineup – he was given permission to hang back in Tampa, where the Raptors host Miami in their pre-season finale on Friday – Norman Powell will also join that second unit. That leaves Bembry as the 11th man in a rotation that will be capped at nine or 10 players on most nights.
That doesn’t mean he won’t make an impact this season, though. Nurse envisions him opening the campaign in a utility role, similar to the way he was used in Monday’s contest and likely comparable to the role Rondae Hollis-Jefferson filled last year – a versatile defender that can come off the bench at a moment’s notice and change games with his energy. Hollis-Jefferson didn’t play much early in the season, but thanks to his hard play and a seemingly endless string of injuries to others in the rotation, he found a way to carve out a more defined role as the campaign went on.
With a shortened off-season and abbreviated training camp, Nurse wants to go deeper into his rotation early in the year. There’s also the likelihood that teams will have to rely on more of their roster over the course of this very unusual season, once injuries hit and players inevitably test positive for COVID-19 and need to miss time. One way or another, Bembry should get his opportunity, and given his skill set and his approach, he could be an X-factor for the Raptors in 2020-21.
“I’ve always brought an edge to the game and just a hunger,” he said. “I think that’s the start of it. And then I can guard one through three, I can play one through three, I can get in the paint, make some plays in the paint. Obviously, [I] still [have to] get better shooting, but I can shoot some threes sometimes as well. So I’m just all over the place and I think these guys just enjoy me flying around like that and I think it just helps us.”