Norman Powell Reflects On Raptors Leadership & What's Next for Toronto's Young Core

Norman Powell was sitting by the side of the Scotiabank Arena court reviewing tape as his Los Angeles Clippers teammate began to file into the lower bowl.

Shootaround had been called for 10:45 Friday morning and that meant most players began to show up just before 10:40 am. But not for Powell. The 30-year-old eight-year NBA veteran had been there for an hour, working with Los Angeles’ coaching staff to get up shots before shootaround began.

Powell gets it.

From the moment he arrived in the NBA as an overlooked second-round pick the Toronto Raptors nabbed at No. 46, there’s been a maturity about him. He spent four years at UCLA and was a mature 22-year-old when he broke in with Toronto.

“It was a grind. I think DeMar, Kyle paved the way for us and then having guys who were I think NBA-ready in terms of just maturity and hunger,” Powell said as he reflected on his first years with the Raptors back in the mid-2010s. “We were ready to take on that challenge and help support what they already had.”

Powell looks around Toronto and almost everything has changed since he left the organization in 2021 while the Raptors had relocated to Tampa. Chris Boucher is the only Raptor still around from Toronto’s 2019 championship run and Jakob Poeltl, who left Toronto before returning last season, is the only other familiar face on the team.

But while the players have changed, the Raptors are hoping that the hard-working winning culture that Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan built and passed down to Powell, Fred VanVleet, and Pascal Siakam hasn’t disappeared.

Losing has certainly taken its toll on the organization.

The veteran leaders from that previous era are essentially all gone, and it was clear last year there was a disconnect between the new generation and the previous one. Their style of leadership with VanVleet at the helm didn’t mesh well with Toronto’s newer core.

“Generations change. The way these guys are now is different,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said of Toronto’s new young core. “Everybody compares, ‘oh, this generation, this generation.’ We have to make that adjustment too, as much as they have to make that adjustment. We find that balance of what it is, what this culture is of this organization.”

But culture takes time to develop and requires maturity from a group of young men who haven’t quite found their voices yet.

“You gotta have guys that have it and you’ve got to be willing to put in the work,” Powell said of maturity. “Nothing's ever given. So you’ve got to have the right group of players and coaches that understand that it's gonna take early days and long nights to get back to where we were in that championship run.”

Garrett Temple and Thad Young have helped with that process to the extent that two veteran end-of-the-bench players can. They’ve been helpful role models for Scottie Barnes who is still trying to find his leadership voice, Raptors coach Darko Rajaković said.

But veteran players can only do so much, Powell said. Every team needs multiple leaders throughout the roster to be successful.

“You gotta have your stars and the guys you’re playing through every single night and building the team around be vocal leaders but also, when we were coming up, me and Fred got along really well because he was the vocal leader for the young group and I was a leader by example,” Powell said.

That’s what Toronto is trying to cultivate within its new young core.

Barnes has the talent, that much has been clear, but he’s still trying to find his leadership style. It’s a task that understandably is going to take some time for a 22-year-old still just in his third NBA season.

“I think he has a full package. It's all about putting it together consistently and driving everybody else to raise their level of focus and competitiveness, competitive drive,” Powell said of Barnes. “But now with him being the focal point of the team, he has to learn how to control the game, read the game, and not only make plays for himself, but make everybody else better as well which you’ve seen when you're getting triple-doubles and things like that. That's the level that he can be at.”

When he gets there, this Raptors roster is going to look radically different. All the change Toronto has seen in the past two years is just the start of this rebuild the organization is about to embark on for the next few.

If it’s going to work, it’s going to come down not only to Barnes’ talent but his leadership and that of the players who join him on the ride. It’ll take long hours, hard work, and mutual respect for one another and the game.

“I think the new generation, this new team, new coaching staff, also knows and they're going to do whatever it takes to continue that tradition and get back to that championship contender team,” Powell said.