I was looking at a picture of Mr. Mime the other day and realized he fits the player profile for the 2021 Raptors roster. He is roughly the correct height, he has good lateral movement, and he does not seem to care about scoring the ball. It is the kind of roster construction that makes you stare at a wall for twenty minutes.
We are playing the Timberwolves tonight in Minnesota. They are very good, which is a problem for us because we are often not very good. We somehow split the season series with them, which feels like a clerical error by the league office.
The Rotation and Its Mysteries
People are asking Doug Smith what is wrong with Gradey Dick and why Jakob Poeltl was not starting for a stretch. These are fair questions, but the answers are usually just "basketball is hard" and "sometimes coaches change their minds." Gradey is young, and being young in the NBA is mostly just running around until your legs hurt.
Jakob being on the bench felt like a collective fever dream we all shared. He is back now, probably, because he is the only person on the team who is seven feet tall. It is generally a good idea to have a seven foot tall person on the court when you are playing against professional athletes.
Shadows on the Wall
There is a guard on this team whose future is apparently written on a wall somewhere. I do not know which wall it is, probably one in the basement of the Scotiabank Arena near where they keep the spare mascot suits. If the writing is already there, it saves us the trouble of guessing during the off season.
We are heading into the Minnesota game with the kind of confidence you have when you realize you forgot to buy milk. You just sort of hope there is enough in the carton for one more bowl of cereal. We split the series with these "demons," as the internet calls them, and honestly, that might be our championship for the year.
Observations from the Baseline
- The weather in Minnesota is cold, but the humidity in the GTA makes you feel it in your bones (my uncle says this every March).
- Jamario Moon would have really liked this current defensive scheme.
- We are all just waiting for things to make sense again.