I’ve always been afflicted with a touch of Contrarian Brain. It’s born out of the Raptors fan base, wonderful and passionate as it is, being a tad on the hysterical side. Going all the way back to the Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan era, where calls to blow it up after each successive playoff loss were an annual annoyance, to the vitriol Pascal Siakam received for “not being a number one guy,” I’ve always felt the need to push back against the reactionaries as a means of balancing out The Discourse.
It’s why Toxic Positivity Friday exists. This season brought the promise of a lot of losing, which always brings out the meltdown-prone hoards, even if the losing is by design and kind of what most people wanted out of this year. This column was meant to offset the inevitable cries for heads to roll. Even within a bad season, there’s always good to celebrate when you’re watching hoop.
Well, the stupid Raptors have gone and ruined the bit by being genuinely good for three weeks on the trot, zapping all toxicity out of the optimism I’d normally spew in here to wrap up the week. Raptors basketball is just a run-of-the-mill positive experience at the moment. And so I’ve nothing left to do but get back to my counterbalancing ways.
It’s a disaster that these losers are winning so much right now.
It’s a complete dereliction of the front office’s duty to have constructed a team capable of winning five games in a row when precious lotto balls in the hopper are on the line. Darko Rajaković has these should-be humps too connected, too inspired. Sure, his whole job description upon getting hired was to return the franchise to its developmental roots — but did he have to do it so quickly and so successfully? Doesn’t he have any tact? Does he hate speculative 18-year-olds and the prospect of adding them to his team? Children are our future; the only developmental projects worth investing in.
What’s Scottie Barnes’ problem? Doesn’t he realize the damage he’s doing by driving positive minutes with his titanic two-way impact every time he touches the floor? Yeah cool, he’s been the best player in just about every game since the team started this ill-fated heater, but the long-term ramifications if this keeps up could be disastrous. He just might screw around and make an All-Defense team as a 23-year-old, increasing the value of his max contract from 25% of the cap to a whole 30% next season. Has he not heard of the second apron? If this leap gets in the way of the real reason for team building — having tidy books — it’s a telltale sign of a guy being good For The Wrong Reasons. This is the NBA, buddy, not The Bachelorette.
And can you believe how little the guys who are currently employed by the Raptors seem to care about maximizing the odds of them drafting a player who will certainly take one of their jobs? One simply has to wonder if the Raptors are winning games because they earnestly think winning is good, or simply as some warped means of self preservation. I want team-first, not me-first guys guiding my rebuild, personally.
The one solace I can find right now is that a bunch of these tank-shy cowards will be gone by Thursday’s trade deadline. Chris Boucher’s reign of terror will soon be over, making his routine 20-point outbursts and team-best offensive on/off impact numbers the problem of a fringe contender — whose priority, by the way, should be losing if they can’t realistically win the championship this season. Davion Mitchell can go raise the defensive floor of some other team who’s not tanking, and therefore not trying. “Yeeehawwww, cowboy,” I’ll say, when Bruce Brown’s exceptionally helpful set of quirky skills and elite vibes are ruining some other teams bid to have a very low chance at drafting someone with a very low chance of reaching his projected ceiling. Kelly Olynyk, you basketball criminal, you. Your run of preventing would-be tankers from peeing their own pants ends by 3pm Thursday. They don’t make calculators powerful enough to measure the damage this quartet has done by playing so well over the last month.
Hell, if the front office really cared about reaching the ultimate goal, they’d be trying to find any takers for Barnes while they’re in sell-off mode. Then — and only then — can we really say this team has correctly picked its direction.
Until they do, there’s nothing for onlookers to do but retch a little more with each passing win until all the bile has run out. A perfect season, turned a nightmare in three short weeks, while a bunch of rubes who think winning isn’t the greatest sin in sports rejoice like the brainwashed sheep they are. Pathetic.
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Today on the podcast, I chatted with Katie Heindl about a couple losers who ruined another shoulda-been Raptors tank job: Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, who were featured this week on a episode of Open Gym.
Enjoy the show!
