Insulting Brooklyn isn’t cheap.
The NBA announced late Monday it had fined Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri $25,000 for saying “F— Brooklyn” at the end of his speech to several thousand fans at a pep rally outside Air Canada Centre before the Nets won Game 1 94-87 Saturday afternoon.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who was at Saturday’s game, issued the fine after reconsidering his initial decision not to fine Ujiri, but instead give him a warning.
For his part, Ujiri apologized for the incident once again in a radio interview Monday morning.
“My mom taught me better than that,” Ujiri said on SiriusXM NBA Radio, adding he had also apologized to the NBA, the Nets organization and to Nets general manager Billy King.
He went on to say that the moment, while one in which he used a “wrong choice of words,” was meant to be part of trying to establish a new mentality in Toronto, the lone city outside the United States to have an NBA team, rather than attacking the Nets.
“For me, I swear to you it wasn’t about them,” Ujiri said. “To me, it was about us, and trying to build a culture here where we believe in ourselves. We are who we are. We’re not apologizing anymore for being the only team outside the U.S. or the one team in Canada. We want to be good, we want to win, we want to build and we want to continue to grow with our team.
“I think it was more about that crowd out there was unbelievable with the support, and we want to keep giving it our best out there for the fans and the organization because, to be honest, this is one of the best organizations and it’s time we kind of stand up and be a good team out there.”
The Nets entered this series with a much-discussed edge in playoff experience over the Raptors. While the Nets’ starting five has plenty of knowledge of what it takes to win in the postseason, that same edge doesn’t translate to Brooklyn’s bench.
Of the five players the Nets brought off the bench in Game 1, only Andray Blatche had any kind of significant playoff experience. Three players — rookie Mason Plumlee, Alan Anderson and Marcus Thornton — made their playoff debuts while Mirza Teletovic played just one minute in last year’s seven-game loss to the Bulls in round one.
“For myself, I ain’t going to lie,” Thornton said after Monday’s practice, “last game, I was nervous. I didn’t get to sleep at all.
“As the games go on, I’ll get more comfortable and comfortable, and get to playing my basketball and being myself.”
The Nets hope to get a better performance from their bench in Game 2 Tuesday, after it combined to shoot 7-for-23 from the field — including a disastrous 0-for-12 from 3-point range.
“It was like a game I have never been to,” Thornton said. “Scratch all the regular-season games, preseason games, it was a different environment.”
To a man, though, the Nets’ bench expected the shots that didn’t fall Saturday — particularly the 3-pointers, many of which were wide-open looks — will go down in Game 2.
“We missed a lot of shots we normally make,” Anderson said. “Defensively, we made a lot of little mistakes that can’t happen in the playoffs if we want to keep going along.
“So we just got to keep the mental mistakes [down], the little careless turnovers, and limit those.”
Raptors coach Dwane Casey and several of his players hinted there may be some defensive changes coming — such as employing former Knick Landry Fields, the only Toronto player who did not play in Game 1 — against the Nets’ Paul Pierce and Joe Johnson for Game 2.
“We thought about it. It is going to be one of the matchups that we have to look at,” Casey said.
But guard Greivis Vasquez, who acknowledged possible tweaks, said the Raptors approach and strategy simply can’t change now.
“If they’re going to beat us, they’re going to beat us our way. We can’t change anything at this point,” Vasquez said. “We’re playing against veterans. They’ve been in this league. They earned that respect. And we can’t have excuses. If they’re physical, we’re going to have to be extra physical.”
The Raptors don’t seem totally bummed by Game 1 loss, which they were in to the end. “We didn’t play our best basketball last game and we understand that,” DeMar DeRozan said. In a bizarre piece of logic, Vasquez said, “sometimes losing is good, even though we hate it. … Losing that game really helped us a lot to really just calm down.”
The shot-clock situation should be resolved. A Raptors spokesman explained an “outside” agency basically plugged in where it shouldn’t have. Which agency? He would not say but did say, “They’re not the world-wide leader in electronics.” … The Raptors have not complained openly about the officiating (they were outshot at the line, 8-0, in the fourth quarter) but Casey said, “I looked at the calls in the fourth quarter, we didn’t get any and that’s unusual.” … Raptors forward and ex-Knick Steve Novak on the firing of Mike Woodson: “Coach Woodson did a good job there … then this year, had a down year but when you trade me away, what do you expect? No, no I’m just joking.”