The Toronto Raptors current state reminds me of a giant lizard fighting a giant moth (or perhaps a very large robot). We are entering the part of the season where people start quoting Godzilla movies to handle the stress.
The addition of Brandon Ingram has changed the math on the floor. He takes some of the workload off Scottie Barnes (it is nice to have someone else who can score from the midrange without it looking like a complex physics experiment).
The Scottie Paradox
Scottie recently iced a game like a cold blooded closer (which is a funny phrase because lizards are actually cold blooded). He is finding ways to finish these games even when things look bleak.
However (for this team to reach what experts call its potential) he probably needs to stay aggressive. We cannot have him being the third options on offense given how the salaries currently sit.
My uncle says the cap situation is like a leaky basement (you do not notice it until you are standing in two inches of water). Scottie has to be the one to keep the floor dry.
Watching the Tape
Samson Folk has been doing some deep film work on our clutch time offense. Around the twenty one minute mark of his latest breakdown (you can see the way Ingram shifts the defense).
It is impressive to watch people analyze basketball for twenty minutes at a time. I once watched a pigeon for ten minutes in Scarborough and felt like I learned everything there is to know about life.
Basketball is slightly more complicated than a pigeon (but only slightly). Both involve a lot of jumping and occasionally losing track of what happened to the ball.
The Detroit Statement
We have a game coming up against Detroit. It is being called a statement game (though I am not sure what the statement is exactly).
Maybe the statement is that we can beat a top team after a string of disappointing losses. If we win (we might actually turn the season around).
Getting over the hump is important. I once tried to walk over a very large snowbank near the Eglinton Town Centre and ended up just standing on top of it for a while (unsure of my next move).
Hopefully the Raptors have a better plan than I did. We need this win (mostly so we can stop feeling bad about the recent string of losses). Otherwise we are just watching lizards fight in the dark.