Reporters got a sneak preview Monday of what’s in store at the Coquitlam location and Target Canada president Tony Fisher was the tour guide.
With clean, airy surroundings, the store’s sight lines are unobstructed and the aisles wide enough to drive a truck through. Staff friendliness is a key ingredient, as is a curious offering of cheap chic items next to designer items.
A native of Minnesota, Fisher admitted he is still learning about Canadian consumer tastes after opening 24 Target stores in Ontario in March. Minneapolis-based Target has 1,784 American stores.
Fisher — who moved to the Toronto area in 2011 to lay the groundwork for this year’s rollout — gets the impression that Canadians like to travel from store to store to get what they want. “We want to offer a one-stop shopping experience,” said the upbeat executive.
The U.S. retailer has shovelled out $10 million to $12 million to upgrade every former Zellers location with new lighting and new flooring. Some of the retail clerks are former Zellers employees.
The Coquitlam Centre Target store, which at 120,000 square feet is larger than the average Canadian Target store, has a large beauty section, a substantial grocery section, Canucks hockey and B.C. Lions football apparel, a wide smattering of indoor Tracking, household goods and a big pet aisle catering to that growing market.
Nestled in a big-box neighbourhood of Coquitlam, there is no doubt who this new kid on the Canadian retailing block is targeting — think the smart, savvy mothers who do most of the shopping in the family and know how to find a bargain. The store is also happy, of course, to welcome the dads who shop once in a while and the “young independents” looking for “room essentials.”
To promote customer loyalty, Canadian shoppers will be able to save five per cent when using a REDcard debit card or a Target RBC MasterCard — allowing the store to track consumer preferences and pitch to them directly with in-store promotions.
In the baby section, Fisher stopped to show that everything from soothers to baby food and disposable diapers are in one handy location, so a mother with a fussing infant doesn’t have to comb through the store to find everything she needs.
The Bulls are also an example of a team that built a functional NBA offense despite lacking a single big man with any reliable range outside of 18 feet.4 Playing two big men close to the basket crowds the lane and brings spacing issues, and those spacing issues, plus the emergence of ace 3-point shooting power forwards (Ryan Anderson, for instance), has created the impression that it's just too difficult for teams to score with two traditional interior players — especially if neither brings a Zach Randolph–style post game.
Boozer has a bit of a post game, but his go-to post move is a face-up fading jump shot. The Bulls, when Derrick Rose was around, built a top-10 offense around Rose's brilliance and the ability of both Boozer and Noah to work in very sophisticated ways, and in tandem, south of the foul line — as screeners, passers, and occasional shooters/drivers. And that offense, sans Rose, was still good enough to squeeze out a league-average number of points against the Nets' very average defense in the first round. They did so again last night, keenly using Noah's passing and the threat of Boozer's jump shot to beat Miami's trapping defense on just enough occasions to wring out their average scoring output. (There are times, against elite defenses like Miami's, when it almost feels as if Noah's passing skills are as important an asset as his all-world defense. What a brilliant player.) There are a bunch of lottery teams ready to follow this same pattern of building an above-average offense around two interior bangers, including Detroit (Greg Monroe, Andre Drummond) and Toronto (Amir Johnson, Jonas Valanciunas). If the skill sets are right and varied, it's possible.
Miami, of course, is the league's premier small-ball team, the pied piper everyone is allegedly following. Nonsense. The Heat can play this way because they have James, an unprecedented NBA physical specimen, plus a wing player in Battier willing to do whatever it takes to win titles — even if it means guarding Boozer, David West, and Randolph in succession.
The most intriguing potential big-versus-small matchup on the board, mostly because of Oklahoma City's adaptability and the added intrigue of Russell Westbrook's season-ending injury.5 The Grizz have built around the Zach Randolph–Marc Gasol pairing, reasoning they could build at least an average offense around two post-up brutes — a duo that includes the best passing big man in the game in Gasol. Teams can contend with an average offense and a top-three defense, and the Grizz have had the latter half of that equation covered all season.
Only Utah and Indiana finished a larger share of offensive possessions via post-up plays, and Memphis is leaning on post-ups even more so far in the playoffs, per Synergy Sports.6 Like the Bulls, Memphis stands as proof that teams can create their own version of floor spacing in an inside-out fashion, with interior bangers drawing attention toward the rim and moving the ball in smart ways from there.
But the Thunder have the trump card in this series: small-ball lineups with Kevin Durant at power forward. Those lineups over multiple seasons have been frighteningly explosive offensively, even if they can be hit-and-miss on defense — as is typical for smaller lineups. Scott Brooks has been a bit reluctant to break these bad boys out against the brutish Grizz, and when he has, Memphis has generally responded by downsizing and shifting either Tayshaun Prince or Quincy Pondexter to power forward. Oklahoma City played small for only about 26 minutes over three regular-season games against Memphis, and followed the same pattern in Game 1; Brooks didn't go to Durant at power forward until late in the third quarter, eventually staying with that setup for about 8:30 of continuous play in which the Thunder were plus-10.7 Memphis shifted into small-ball mode for almost the entirety of that duration, save for a brief stretch in which Darrell Arthur, the team's third big man, tried and failed to defend Durant.
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