Clippers’ Powell reminds Raptors what they missed out on

LOS ANGELES – People make plans, the basketball gods laugh. 

Welcome to the Intuit Dome, the most expensive arena ever built at a reported $2 billion and where, it turns out, Los Angeles Clippers fans aren’t all that excited about watching a team scuffle along for a chance at the play-in tournament, with its high-profile stars either injured, aged or departed. 

But the best-laid plans applies also to how teams — the Toronto Raptors in this case — identify players to keep or not, like former Raptor, now Clipper, Norman Powell. The 31-year-old guard who left Toronto as a role player with an iffy fit (in the Raptors eyes) and has emerged as one of the best offensive players in basketball. 

Maybe only Powell saw that coming. 

“I’ve always had the confidence in myself and the belief that when an opportunity came to be one of the go-to guys every single night and I can play at a high level and compete against the top guys,” Powell told me when we chatted Saturday. “That’s the reason I’ve worked so hard. It’s something that’s been on my mind for a long time, so I’m just excited and grateful for the opportunity.” 

More on Powell below — the former Raptors favourite had 24 points in the Clippers’ 105-103 win over a determined Toronto team — but we’ll get this out of the way: The folks in charge of bringing Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s vision of a basketball-only palace his team could call their own did brilliant work. 

From the full-size outdoor basketball court in the fan experience area outside the arena to the ‘halo board’ – the double-sided video screen that hangs from the top of the arena surrounding the floor, giving every fan a flawless view – to the cavernous dressing room, no detail was overlooked.

I’m happy to report that at halftime I only had 22 seconds to wait for a urinal, the number of washrooms included in the facility the reason its nickname is the “Toilet Bowl.” The steep, standing-room-only section behind the Clipper basket reserved for the most dedicated fans was load and energetic, as planned. 

Missing, unfortunately, is what Balmer has been trying to deliver all along: A championship-level team, and crowds to match.  

It’s not for a lack of trying, but Kawhi Leonard’s knee can’t be fixed by money, and no amount of investment can make James Harden turn the clock back seven years to his MVP-level self. Plus, Paul George — the third leg of their rickety win now stool — is helping the Philadelphia 76ers not win. 

Incredibly the Clippers rank just 27th in NBA attendance, averaging 16,643 fans per night in an arena built to hold 18,000, though they did manage a sell-out on Saturday night. 

The Clippers — who improved to 6-4 with the win, while the Raptors fell to 2-8 — are an entertaining product too. They may not have the championship ceiling their trio of superstars was supposed to provide, but they’re a relatively deep team that competes hard. If Leonard can get healthy — he’s out indefinitely with inflammation in his surgically-repaired knee — they would be a tough out in the post-season. 

Even playing on the second night of a back-to-back, the Clippers had enough to overcome a Raptors team that had two days to prepare in Los Angeles. The Raptors’ fresh legs served them well as they came back from down nine with just under six minutes left and were in good position to steal their first road win of the season. Three Clippers missed free throws — one by Harden and two by Powell — in the final seconds kept the door open for the Raptors after Immanuel Quickley (21 points and four assists in 25 minutes) nearly pushed it down himself in his first game back from a bruised pelvis he suffered on opening night. Quickley had a game-tying drive and game-tying three in the final 1:39, but he and RJ Barrett each missed lay-up attempts in the final seconds that could have extended the game. 

“It felt good just to be out there competing,” said Quickley. “That’s the best part of the sport, competing. It would’ve felt even better if we had got the dub though.”

The Raptors aren’t immune to this, the idea of best-laid plans going a bit sideways. 

Sure there are plenty of nice little wins that have begun to bubble to the surface in the early phase of the Raptors rebuild, from Gradey Dick’s sophomore surge (15 points last night) to the emergence of Ochai Agbaji (21 points, seven rebounds) as a future rotation piece to the flashes shown by the class of role-playing rookies on the scene this season

But let’s not forget that the first player from their championship roster the Raptors decided to move on from was Powell, the athletic, sharpshooting wing Toronto traded at the deadline during the ‘Tampa Tank’ season in 2021 for Gary Trent Jr. 

The thinking was that Trent was younger and possessed a similar skill set to Powell, and there was an undercurrent too that the Raptors had grown a little weary of Powell’s determination to keep pushing for a bigger role offensively. 

Well, how has that worked out? 

The Raptors ended up paying Trent Jr. roughly the same as what Powell ended up earning when he signed a five-year, $90 million contract with Portland. With one more year left on the deal after this season, it’s proven to be one of the best bargains in the NBA.  

Meanwhile, Trent Jr. never came close to matching Powell’s on-court performance. He had some moments but was relatively underwhelming over his three-plus years with the Raptors, as he averaged a fairly pedestrian 16.4 points with an effective field goal percentage of .520. The defence was spotty, and the playmaking was not part of his repertoire. He left Toronto as a free agent this summer and signed a minimum deal with Milwaukee, where he has struggled this season. 

In contrast, Powell was and remains to be one of the most efficient shooters in the NBA. 

Powell was averaging 19.6 points a game while connecting on 43.9 per cent of his threes the year the Raptors traded him in 2020-21. In the next three seasons he averaged 16.2 points a game while connecting on 41.9 per cent of his threes both as a starter and a reserve, the second-most accurate rate among players with at least 50 starts and attempting at least five threes per game. He’s finished fourth in the voting for Sixth Man of the Year the past two seasons. 

And that’s before this season, where Powell has been one of the best stories in the NBA if you gravitate toward objectively good people having a breakout year in their 10th season. 

With George in Philadelphia and Leonard injured, Powell became the Clippers’ first option offensively. 

He’s responded like a coiled spring. Prior to Saturday night, Powell was averaging 25.7 points a game while connecting on 51.6 per cent of his field goal attempts and 48.4 per cent from three on 8.6 attempts per game, making him one of the most prolific and efficient shooters in the sport, a nice combination. 

“I mean, everything that we’ve done for the last 10 years with AJ Diggs, my trainer, has been preparing me for this moment,” Powell said to me. “You know, every summer going into the season, it was all about preparing to be a starter. You don’t always get that opportunity, and whatever role you got you just want to win, at the end of the day. 

“But always had it in the back of my mind that I can be this. When I was in Toronto, that I could be Kyle (Lowry) or DeMar (DeRozan); when I was in Portland I could be CJ McCollum or be Dame (Lillard), when I was here, I could be Kawhi, PG (George) or James. 

“I always had that in my mind every single summer, that’s what I was fighting and clawing for, but now it’s here, and I’m just trusting the work… We’ve talked about it, we’ve drilled it, so now it’s just letting it unfold.”

Powell has planned for this and in his case it’s worked out nearly perfectly. 

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