The Raptors are 30 and 21. This is a strange reality to inhabit, considering we spent most of last year wondering if Jakob Poeltl was actually a mirage. Darko Rajakovic has been named the head coach for the World team at the All Star Game. He started coaching in Serbia when he was sixteen years old, which is an age when I was mostly focused on trying to get my bike out of a ditch.
It is a nice honor for Darko. He will join J.B. Bickerstaff and Mitch Johnson in this new mini tournament format. The NBA is trying a United States versus the World concept, probably because they realized the old format had the intensity of a light jog through a grocery store. Scottie Barnes will be there too, along with the rookies Collin Murray Boyles and Alijah Martin. It is a lot of Raptors representating a city that mostly wants to know why the 501 streetcar is never where it says it is.
The Metrics of Keeping Your Bags Packed
There are rumors that Immanuel Quickley is on the trading block. This is confusing to people who look at spreadsheets. Quickley is currently first on the team in LEBRON, which is a statistic and not a reference to the man in Los Angeles who refuses to age. He is second on the team in Win Shares and VORP, trailing only Scottie Barnes.
If you trade the guy who ranks that high in every acronym invented by a math major, you are usually trying to do something bold or something very regrettable. Statistics tell us he is a positive on off player. My eyes tell me he is fast. Sometimes he is so fast I lose track of where he is going, much like my train of thought during a long grocery store lineup.
The Looming Shadow of Sabonis
There is smoke regarding Domantas Sabonis and the Raptors. Sabonis is a very good basketball player who rebounds with the ferocity of someone whose keys just fell down a sewer grate. Bringing him in would likely mean sending someone like Quickley out. It is the classic NBA trade dilemma: do you want the guard who can shoot or the big man who can pass and looks like he could move a piano by himself.
I remember once seeing Jorge Garbajosa at a restaurant. He wasn't moving a piano, but he looked like he could if the situation turned dire. Trade rumors are just ghosts until they aren't. We spend all this time analyzing fit and chemistry, but usually, it just comes down to billionaires swapping tall employees.
Notes for the First Timer
Someone on the internet asked how early the arena opens for their first game. They bought courtside access for warmups. That is a brave choice for a first game. You will see players who are seven feet tall and realize that, in comparison, you are basically a garden gnome.
The arena usually opens early enough for you to buy a fifteen dollar beer and wonder where your life went. Enjoy the warmups. Watch the players go through their routines. It is the only time of the night where nobody is disappointed by a missed shot, including my uncle, who still thinks the team should have kept Jorge Garbajosa forever.
Darko is going to Utah or wherever they are holding the mid season break. He deserves it for navigating a locker room that is constantly being rearranged like a mid priced furniture store. We are on pace for fifty wins, and yet we are talking about trading our second best player. Basketball is a beautiful, nonsensical sport. We all spin, in a way. Pascal just did it better.