The Raptors are playing the Orlando Magic on January 30th and the people at ESPN decided we should all watch it together. It was originally at 7:00, but they moved it to 7:30, probably because those extra thirty minutes are when the best basketball juice is squeezed. Being flexed into a national TV spot feels like when your parents actually use the good plates because the neighbors are coming over.
I am not sure if we are the good plates or the neighbors in this scenario. Darko Rajakovic has this team running back on defense like they left the oven on at home. We are allowing about 1.11 points per possession in transition, which puts us in the 62nd percentile of the league. It is not exactly lockdown status, but it is better than standing there and watching the other team dunk while you think about what to have for dinner.
The Art of Getting Back
The real magic is not just the points allowed, but how often we actually stop the transition from happening in the first place. Some teams like Oklahoma City are better at defending when they are outnumbered, but Darko seems to prefer just not being outnumbered at all. It is a very logical way to live your life. If you never go into the woods, you probably will not get bitten by a bear, though I suppose bears can wander into the suburbs if they are motivated enough.
While we are discussing being noticed, Scottie Barnes is currently tied for first in some NBA writer polls for Eastern Conference All Star reserves. It is nice to see people acknowledging he exists. Sometimes I feel like the national media thinks Toronto is a fictional city from a storybook, like Narnia, but with more construction and fewer talking lions. Scottie getting votes is a reminder that the world is indeed round and we are on it.
Odds and Ends
The betting markets are doing things that I do not fully understand, particularly with the division winner odds. They look a bit strange, though I have never quite understood how people predict the future with numbers. My uncle tried to do that with horse racing in 2007 and now he just collects vintage typewriters and smells like cedar wood. The math just does not always add up when you are dealing with a ball that is orange and bouncy.
Then there is Dillon Brooks talking about DeMar DeRozan in the playoffs. It is a lot of noise. DeMar is still out there doing his thing, and Dillon is out there being Dillon. It makes me think about how everyone has a role to play. Some people are the primary scorers, some people are the irritants, and some of us are just here to wonder why the game starts at 7:30 now instead of 7:00. Those thirty minutes could have been used for a very nice nap.
A National Stage
Having a game on ESPN means the announcers will spend at least five minutes talking about the CN Tower. They will probably mention that it is cold in Canada, even if it is a mild day. We will watch the transition defense and we will watch Scottie Barnes do things that make us feel slightly better about the state of the universe. It is all we can really ask for at this point in the season.
If we beat the Magic, people might start taking those division odds more seriously. If we lose, we still have those thirty extra minutes of pre-game waiting time that we can never get back. I might spend that time looking at old photos of Jorge Garbajosa. He was a very solid player before the injury. Everything is temporary, but transition defense is a choice we make every single day.