2018-19 Coach Review: Nick Nurse

Good coaching in the NBA is nothing like pornography; we almost never know it when we see it. Coaching is one of the most opaque duties in the NBA, as the vast majority of a coach’s job is invisible to the average viewer. You don’t see the entire role of a coach on the television…

2018-19 Player Review: Patrick McCaw

Patrick McCaw is an enigma. Writing this review is complicated, because everything regarding his NBA career is nothing short of hilarious. Even how he became a Toronto Raptor is hysterical. The dude won two back-to-back championships with the Golden State Warriors, and when free agency began and the Warriors presented him with a qualifying offer,…

2018-19 Player Review: OG Anunoby

Last summer we all held our heads high after we learned that OG Anunoby wasn’t included in the Kawhi Leonard-DeMar DeRozan trade. After all, after Anunoby’s rookie season, some people had proclaimed him a “Kawhi-lite”. Giddy at the thought of how high Anunoby’s star could rise, we all wondered if he would learn from Leonard,…

How Far Will the Raptors Newfound Identity Take Them?

Last summer, after the Toronto Raptors traded two of the team’s weaker defenders in DeMar DeRozan and Jakob Poeltl for two All-Defensive Team players in Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green, it was clear that the Raptors had a newfound identity: Defense. For a franchise that has been around since 1995, the Raptors on-court identity was…

The Raptors Might Get Weird Next Season

When Nick Nurse was hired to replace Dwane Casey as head coach of the Toronto Raptors in the summer of 2018, he was regarded as an innovative, unorthodox, creative, and ultimately experiential coach who wasn’t afraid to try new things. He said as much during his introductory press conference: “We’ve got to be innovative. We’ve…

Summer School: Grading each Raptor performance in Las Vegas

The NBA Summer League is a strange viewing experience. Sure, teams are competing against one another and are hoping to ultimately win the championship, but in the end wins and losses don’t really matter. In the grand scheme of things, the value of a team’s holistic performance is superseded by the play of each individual…