D-League Diary No. 1: Scott Suggs on the Raptors 905 training camp and preseason
Growing up, I was infatuated with SLAM magazine. The features, the interviews, the posters. It was all captivating. But most of all, I lived for the short half page Rookie Diary that runs each month. It gave real insight into the life of an NBA player and though they don’t always say exactly what’s on their mind, you get a glimpse into their unique journey.
With that in mind, we are really excited to bring you this new feature that will run all season on U&M with Scott Suggs from the Raptors 905, who has graciously agreed to give us two diary entries a month during his journey with the D-League, and hopefully to the NBA.
The 905 open their season tonight against the Fort Wayne Mad Ants and here’s what’s been happening so far in camp and preseason with Suggs and the team.
Take it away, Scott!
Hey guys, this is Scott Suggs and I’ll be doing a diary this season for the D-League. Chris Reichert reached out to me about doing this and I think it’s a super cool idea. So shoutout to Chris and thanks again for this opportunity! Hopefully I’ll have some interesting things to write about as our season gets underway.
So far we’ve had about 10 or 11 days of training camp and I’ve been thoroughly impressed with how the Raptors are running this organization since day one! I believe they have got to be one of the best run organizations in the D-League, if not THE best. From top to bottom, we do everything the Raptors do — stretching to warmups to pre-practice and post-practice workouts/shooting.
As far as the team goes, I think we have a good group of guys. We started training camp with 16 players and we’ve trimmed that down to 11 or 12 (not counting the two players that just got sent down from the Raptors). It’s tough seeing guys you’ve grown with and practice with everyday for the past week have to go, but it comes with the territory, I guess. We’ve got a pretty young team, though, so this early part of the season will still be a learning process for us. But all of our players are willing to be about the team and do whatever it takes to win.
With all that being said, we’ve gotten some pretty good tests to see where our team is at with a couple preseason games. Our first game we played against a Canadian League team called Windsor. We were beating them by about 25-30 points the whole game until the 4th quarter when they came all the way back on us. It was a good test for us to see how we handle late close-game situations with our team being so young. Their point guard was pretty good and caught fire from 3 to make it close all the way until the end. Fortunately we were able to pull out the win which made for a much more enjoyable bus ride back home lol.
Our 2nd preseason game we played the Erie Bayhawks (my former D-League team) and we got SMACKED! They came out playing much harder than us and we got down by as much as 49. Tyler Harvey is a player who is gonna be a real good player for them. In the 2nd half we came out playing much better and ended up losing by 18, but that loss was exactly what we needed to show just how much farther we need to come along defensively.
For my first diary entry, I think that’s about all I’ll cover. We play the Fort Wayne Mad Ants tonight at their place so it’s going to be exciting to see how we do! Can’t let y’all go without thanking God for the opportunity as well, though. He’s my Rock and my Salvation. God Bless and I’ll see you guys in the next entry!