It is late January, and the air in Toronto feels like a refrigerator that someone left open on purpose. We beat the Portland Trail Blazers recently, which is a nice thing to happen on a Tuesday. Someone on the internet is already drawing sketches for every game, which shows a level of commitment I usually reserve for finding the remote.
Basketball is a game of tall people standing in specific places, and right now, we are wondering who should be the tallest person in our specific place. A poll is going around about which center we should target in a trade. It feels like we have been looking for a center since the mid 2000s, possibly since Lorenzen Wright was here.
Defensive Rankings and Existential Dread
People are asking where Scottie Barnes ranks among all time Raptors defenders. It is a heavy question for a Saturday morning. He has the long arms and the vision, occasionally looking like he can see the future before it happens. Whether he is better than peak Kawhi or a focused Serge Ibaka is something we could talk about for hours, or we could just acknowledge that he is very tall and tries hard.
Tyrese Haliburton was seen looking somewhat distraught recently, and the consensus is that he is all of us. I am not sure what he was actually upset about, but I understand the feeling. It is the same feeling you get when you realize you have to go outside and scrape the ice off your windshield just to go buy more milk.
Making Like Nineteen Ninety Six
Today is a game day, and someone is suggesting we act like it is 1996. That was a year when we beat the 72 win Chicago Bulls, which was statistically improbable and very confusing for everyone involved. We wore purple jerseys with a dinosaur on them, which was a bold choice for a professional sports franchise.
If we are going to hand a dynasty an unexpected loss today, we should probably do it while thinking about the simple things. My uncle says that defense is just about who wants the ball more, but I think it is also about who did not stay up too late watching reruns of Forensic Files.
- The Blazers win was good for morale.
- We still need a center, or maybe we just need to accept our fate.
- Scottie is good at basketball.
- It is cold outside.