The Toronto Raptors lost to Oklahoma City and then they lost to the Spurs. It is a sequence of events that happened, much like how the sun comes up or how my neighbor keeps asking to borrow my ladder. One team has a lot of draft picks and the other has a very tall Frenchman, while we primarily have a collection of memories and some confusing box scores.
Losing to San Antonio feels especially specific, like finding out your favorite deli replaced their mustard with something artisanal. You do not necessarily hate it, but you are confused about why things are different now. We are currently looking ahead to a game against the Wizards on February 28th, which is a game that will certainly be played by professional basketball players in a building.
The Art of the Ending
The final shot of the most recent game was what some people are calling anticlimactic. Most things in life are, if you really think about it. You wait in line for a bagel and then you eat the bagel and the bagel is gone.
The ball left the hand, it did not go into the hoop, and then the lights stayed on for a little while before everyone went home. It reminded me of a movie I saw once where the ending was just a guy walking into a grocery store. There was no closure, only the quiet realization that the game was over and we had fewer points than the other people.
Moving Parts and Memories
Someone posted a visual of Darko Rajakovic's rotations recently. It looks like a complex map of a city I have never visited, or perhaps a diagram of how to assemble a very difficult shelf from Sweden. Players go in and players come out. There is a logic to it, surely, but sometimes it feels like we are just moving furniture around a room to see if it makes the room look bigger. It usually does not.
There is also a poll floating around asking which position we should upgrade. The person who made it excluded the power forward position, which is fair. Scottie Barnes is there, and Scottie is doing his best to hold the ceiling up while the rest of the house settles. If I had to upgrade a position, I might pick the person who decides when the subway is delayed, but that is not a basketball position.
A Moment of Reflection
I saw an image on social media today that made me feel things. It was one of those pictures that reminds you of how the team used to look before everyone moved to other cities to seek their fortunes. It made some people cry, or at least that is what the caption said.
I do not cry about basketball anymore, mostly because my tear ducts retired around the same time as Rasho Nesterovic. I just stared at the screen and thought about how jerseys look different when they are on different people. Life is mostly just a series of roster changes until you eventually become a free agent yourself. We play the Wizards next, and I hope we score more than they do, but if we do not, the sun will still be there on March 1st. Probably. It has been pretty cloudy lately.