All-Star festivities concluded.
“Second Half” of the NBA season back.
Raps win.
Let’s go.
1. DAME TIME
Say what you will about the All-Star game. (Actually, maybe don’t…).
But the Three-Point and Dunk Contests were L-I-T!
Thanks, especially to…DAME TIME, BABY!
There’s clutch dudes. Then, there’s clutch dudes who go after it. The real masochist types. Like the ones who run through deserts and live on gels and don’t stop for days at a time and hire crews to bathe them with hoses while driving alongside them. Rare birds. Ones who relish the pressure. Who’s heart barely makes an iota of a thump, until it’s on. Like really on.
MJ for sure. Kobe too. I’m sure there’s more. There’s plenty of clutch guys, but these guys almost snarled at you, like it was your fault the game is close, and you were going to pay.
And as a fan, you know, YOU KNEW, when facing them it wasn’t going to end well. Like Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady with more than a minute left on the 4th quarter clock. TROUBLE.
Read more: Five Things I Dig and Don’t Dig About the All-Star Game and the Upcoming Second Half of the Toronto Raptors’ SeasonAnd while the Three-Point Contest is super low stakes. You saw Damian Lillard, once again, proving to be of the same ilk.
The final three contenders were Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield, and Dame. Hield held a score of 25 to lead the way with only Dame left.
Dame gets off to a pretty medicore start. Enough to keep him in it, but uninspiring for Dame standards. In fact, were it not for the Starry bonus balls – what the fuck is Starry? – which are perfectly crafted for someone who shoots in the “Dame Range”, Dame woulda been in trouble.
Dame gets to the 2nd last rack – his moneyball rack – with 17 points, 8 away from Hield. Dame needs to hit at least 4 moneyballs and one reg ball to win. And it goes:
CLANK
CLANK
SWISH
SWISH
CLANK
Ho-Hum. Pressure wasn’t enough. Dame’s pulse like Ötzi. It’s gotta be more interesting than that. 4 points needed in the final rack.
CLANK
Clearly, still not enough pressure.
SWISH
SWISH
SWISH
The final ball a game winning moneyball. Miss and he loses. BANG and it’s over.
BANG!
No problem. Just needed that zero margin of error to really get it going.
DAME TIME, BABY!
2. Failing to Connect with the Next Gen
The Dunk Contest saved the All-Star weekend. No question.
Mac McClung was captivating. So calm, so confident, so humble. Legendary. I can envision a new generation of 8 year old munchkins cramming – and, probably, breaking – all over their Fisher-Price hoops. Romanticizing their one day in the Dunk Contest just like G-Leaguer, Mac.
It was a really raw moment in an otherwise, mostly, fabricated affair.
Trey Murphy killed it too. A good contestant running into a historic one. The dunk where Trey pumps the ball back to between his shoulder blades and then windmill reverses it was INCREDIBLE. And very underappreciated in the moment.
Which brings me to my point.
There are a great number of problems with the All-Star Weekend. The greatest, in my opinion, being their lack of strategic direction as an enterprise.
What is the point of it all?
To celebrate the players?
Then why are we on their asses for not wanting to participate in the contests or for playing so leisurely? If it’s their weekend, then let them enjoy the damn thing.
To invigorate fans?
Well, if that’s the case, then they’re failing. I’m entertained, but could take it or leave it. I go into it knowing that 80% of it I won’t enjoy. I know many who straight up didn’t watch. Apparently, they weren’t alone:
TV ratings dipping doesn’t tell the whole story. Apparently, views on social media were very up. But eye-test verifies the larger narrative: a very boring affair.
Is it to attract future fans?
It should be. If it is, though, they’re failing that too. Nothing, but the players, is current. The events are the same. The format the same. The sub-standard expectations the same. Any “innovations” are compromised by reservation and corporate asphyxia. The celebrity game had Albert Pujols and Fat Joe in it for Christ’s sakes. Apparently, it’s been 2005 for 18 years in the NBA All-Star world.
A good point was made on Twitter about the TNT crew. How we celebrated Mac vs. Trey, for example, was entirely skewed by the commentators. That’s not all that salient a point as that stands for all sporting events. But, again, if we’re looking to draw a younger audience, having a bunch of curmudgeons and Reggie Miller on air to dictate the energy of these events is a very missed opportunity.
I’ll admit, they can be funny, but not in the way the NBA should want it.
First, there was Shaq and Charles with hot mics talking about the All-Star draft. At one point they say, “if I were Giannis I’d draft LeBron first and if I were LeBron I’d draft Giannis first” as though they unlocked some kind of cheat code. Uh huh.
They also blatantly mocked each other, which is hilarious to know that they do this off air too, but the humour is more like watching a remake of Grumpy Old Men then it is connecting to the audience in a familiar way.
Then, the hardest I’ve laughed in a while, and another major “Ok Boomer” moment.
Charles, Kenny, and Shaq are live, speaking to Ernie, who is down on the floor hosting the Draft event. Ernie asks Chuck a question, and, as Chuck responds, you can see he is immediately distracted.
He heard himself in the stadium speakers a few seconds after speaking. Otherwise known as Sound Delay. To compensate for the latency, Charles starts talking slowly and dragged out, thinking that it will catch his voice up to the speakers. It doesn’t.
Shaq finally asks what the Hell Chuck’s doing.
ABSOLUTELY FRIGGIN’ HILARIOUS.
But a testament to how out of touch they are.
Kenny Smith and Reggie Miller commentating the dunk contest furthered that point. I enjoy them both, typically, but they’re laggards. And for an event that demands every iota of energy and excitement, they’re not it. Especially, again, if you’re trying to command the focus of an audience with a limited attention span.
Draymond was refreshing. He provided some cool player-insight and, thankfully, reprimanded the old fogies for not appreciating some dunks. Kenny was anti-Mac’s dunk to start the contest and Dray gave him shit for it. The windmill dunk by Trey was also downplayed and then excused for him being tall, to which Dray defends by saying “that has nothing to do with being 6’9′.”
Hey NBA, you want energy and fun?
Mark Jones and analysts Richard Jefferson and Monica McNutt for the celebrity game were very fun. They were playful, casual, sarcastic, and having a great time. I felt included and not like I needed to yell at the TV screen to explain to my drunk, conservative, out-of-touch uncle why something is “cool” and not “woke” or whatever.
ENOUGH OF THE OLD MEN.
3. NBA Community
I had an epiphany this All-Star event.
I was watching with my brother just the two of us – as we often do with most NBA games.
We watched everything. Enjoyed most. Laughing at Fat Joe’s dramatics, goin’ crazy over The Miz’ buzzer beater, scouting Scoot, cheering Dame on, “wowing” at Mac, mocking the idiocy of the TNT Stooges, etc.
We also love observing the side lines. It’s always interesting to me which players makes the effort to be there and participate as a fan. Some take centre stage; Giannis and Thanasis were everywhere. Others don’t. At one point, Steven Adams who had yet to make a single camera appearance waltzed by in the background, on the court, nonchalantly, like “where you been man?”. His demeanour unmatchable.
Often it’s young guys, but you have DeMar there and Donovan Mitchell, and Giannis with his baby in hand goofin’ around, and Pascal with his camcorder in hand, a smile ear-to-ear the entirety of the time.
It’s cool to see the mix of vets and rookies all just having a grand time. You saw them most animated for the dunk contest. McClung’s crams sending them all into elation. And as my brother and I got pumped up, I realized we were just as incredulous and excited as the players were. As though we were all celebrating together.
And that was it. It clicked.
I realized, for me at least, the All-Star game is not about the spectacle or the honours or the parties (though, were I there it would be), or the viewership numbers, but about celebrating community.
The players, the alumni, the media, the fans, the blog peoples, the stat heads, the trainers, the friends and family, all of us, are there to celebrate a sport we love and the people who do it best.
For three days, I get to take a moment, as a fan and as a writer, to really indulge what the NBA and basketball community means to me.
When you do an icebreaker or something at a meeting and someone asks if I have a hobby, I, generally, say no. My Toronto Raptor fandom is mostly experienced from afar and in quiet. As a result, I also lack the local community that typically accompanies hobbies.
And while that comes with its deficits, I also realized it’s not all entirely true. Basketball is my hobby. Basketball is my community. My companions are really tall, really rich, really athletic and don’t know I exist. Still, we share in that celebration, spoken or not.
And all you – the readers, my colleagues, Raptors fans, NBA fans, Hoops fans – we also know of each other. Spoken or not. You are my community. And the All-Star game is a catalyst to enjoy what we all love concentrating our fandoms into one amalgamated exaltation of basketball for a weekend.
It also made me appreciate the love I have for my brother and my Pops, who I watch so many games with. Our bonds so strongly built through and fortified by the NBA. The laughs watching Ernie Johnson look perplexingly at Chuck, the joy experiencing the interminable jubilance of Thanasis Antetokounmpo, and the thrill in seeing the best players come together, represent, among so many other examples, the wealth of value I get from this sport.
Katie Heindl, last week, wrote in her BASKETBALL FEELINGS newsletter about all the small interactions and feelings she had while attending the All-Star game in Salt Lake City.
Her experiences reinforced this realization of community. That when it’s all said and done, we are here for those discrete, often simple, human exchanges. The acknowledgement of feat. The sharing of excitement. The deliberation over theory and opinion. And each and every little experience satisfies the great voracity I have for people and hoops. All neatly played by the NBA.
And, that, for me, is why the All-Star Weekend is something I’ll continue to partake in – for better or for worse.
4. TANK COMMANDERS, BEWARE!
Unless something goes horribly awry, I don’t want to hear any more of it.
No Crumbly for Wemby! No Poop-it for Scoot. No Lamin’ for Amen.
No tanking platitudes. None. I’m OVER IT.
We’re running this to the bitter end. So gear up.
(Update: I wrote this tirade pre-victory last night. So there!)
Blake Murphy of Sportsnet beat me to the punch on outlining many of the reasons why we fans can feel optimistic over the Raptors’ final 23 games.
In sum, let’s face it, barring some major trade this offseason – Hell, even with a major trade this offseason – this is the Toronto Raptors we’re likely to see for a few years to come.
Jakob, Pascal, Scottie, Precious are all here to stay. Likely, at least one of Freddy, Gary, or O.G. too.
They’re ready to compete. And, frankly, they’re all capable of competing. This team has demonstrated, in its best moments, that it can be as good as most of the East. Facing a Boston, Milwaukee, or Philly in the first round doesn’t bode well. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
For now, the experience of competing for a Playoff spot and, hopefully, in the Playoffs should be the goal the organization and the fans are united in.
The development process is long and lengthy. We’ve seen in the past how precocious teams like Boston, the feel-good Suns, and Memphis earned their lumps in the playoffs, honing their competitive edge until they became perennial contenders. The 2019 Raptors had a similar rising action.
Toronto’s a bit older, fair. They have a lot of youth too, and for Freddy and Pascal, they’re still newbies in performing as Skipper and Gilligan for a playoff team. More reps for everyone, in a meaningful way, hopefully pays dividends now and in the future.
Buckle up!
5. Prediction Time
I can’t truly be all bossy without putting my money where my mouth is.
And, I’ll admit, I was extremely bullish of this team in the preseason. A hefty wager on their over of 46.5 games. Not looking good.
But bullish I remain.
Snapshot of the Situation:
Toronto sits in 9th in the Eastern Conference at 29-31.
They’re 2.5 games up on the 11th place Chicago Bulls.
They’re 4 games behind the 6th place New York Knicks.
Avoiding the Play-In is unlikely.
But I can just see the fairytale story unfolding:
Toronto goes on a big winning streak and sneaks into 8th. They beat a reeling Knicks team to get the 7th seed where they play an overconfident Boston team. Marcus Smart pulls a hammy. Pöltl feasts on an aging Al Horford. Suddenly, the series is tied 2-2 heading to Boston…Bill Simmons is hyper-ventilating on his podcast. The Raptors fans rejoice.
I wish.
I do think that’s where they’ll finish. 8th.
Toronto has the “5th” hardest remaining schedule. But it’s not all that much worse than teams like Miami, New York, and Brooklyn – teams just above – and is better than Atlanta’s. Toronto also has 12 of their 22 at home.
Raps got thumped many times this year. Blowing leads. Never being in games. Fake comebacks. All sorts of loss types.
They were, however, close. So often, letting games slip through their fingers or just not having it figured out until too late.
They needed, in those moments, something to push them over the edge. Depth was one missing piece. A defensive backbone the other.
Pöltl has fixed both. And the permutation of effects on energy, tactical versatility, defence, rebounding, P+Rs post-play, and so, on, makes this team much, much more dangerous than it was for the previous 2/3s of the season.
I’m guessing they go 15-7 for the last 22.
Call me crazy.
No, call me excited and optimistic.
Let’s get it.
