The "Long Overdue" (Or Simply Long) Post
Work-wise, my last week was pretty hectic, especially from Thursday right through the weekend. And a lot took place in the Toronto sports scene as well, with a couple of games each for both the Leafs and the Raptors, and a huge trade by the Raps to acquire All-Star center Marc Gasol. Gonna try to weave through those issues today. I'll just talk about Gasol and cover other issues in a different post.
But some personal notes first. On Thursday, I traveled a couple of hours east from Seoul to the city called Gangneung to cover a four-nation men's hockey tournament. This event was organized to celebrate the first anniversary of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Korea. It was my first time back at Gangneung Hockey Centre, the main venue for Olympic hockey tournaments last February. The trip brought back so many good memories from a year ago. Even though the NHL players weren't there as I'd hoped, I still felt very fortunate to be able to watch and write about Olympic hockey on our home ice. I enjoyed every second of it. I woudln't trade that experience with anything else.
I ended up watching three hockey games that day. At the arena, I covered Latvia-Japan and then Korea-Kazakhstan. On the train to Gangneung, I watched the Leafs beat the Senators 5-4.
It was an entertaining game, to be sure, though the result was far closer than it should have been and the game was way too loose and wide open. Not a particularly well-played game, but I've already stated my hatred for the Sens a few times in this blog and I am happy anytime we beat those guys.
It was a roller-coaster of a game. We were down 2-1, then scored three goals in succession in the 2nd to take a 4-2 lead. I thought we got this one all wrapped up, but the other guys scored two early in the 3rd.
Mo got the winner midway through the 3rd on a great rush off a turnover. We are still the only team not to have lost a game after leading through two periods this season.
Then on Friday on my end, the Raptors made that Gasol trade, sending JV, CJ and Delon and a pick to Memphis. Gasol made his Toronto debut today in our 104-99 win over the Knicks at MSG.
The Leafs were playing over at Scotiabank. Though I was pretty sure we would beat the Knicks, I wanted to catch a live glimpse of Marc in his first game. So I watched the Raptors and just had the Leafs game up on another screen without really watching it. Did catch this beauty of a goal, though.
On to my thoughts on the Gasol deal.
Masai at It Again
I've been so busy since I returned home that I am only finishing up this post on Monday night. Gasol has already played his first game, and the Leafs have played another game since the win over the Habs (the loss to the Rangers was so deflating I'll probably not write about it too much).
Anyway, I'll do my best to organize my thoughts on the Gasol trade first.
Masai Ujiri does a lot of charity work off the court and all that, but when it comes to making deals, he is a cold-blooded man. There was that deal to send DeMar for Kawhi. JV is another long-tenured Raptor who got shipped out.
He'd been out for months with his finger injury. He was just about to return to action. He was telling the media he was ready to hit the ground running.
And then, boom! See you later! That's cold.
Think of it in these terms. You took a sick leave from work. You've undergone some operation. And you finally feel healthy, and you call up your boss to tell him/her that you're ready to get back. And then you're told, "Yeah, I am glad to hear that you're well, but we don't want you around here anymore."
That's gotta be tough to swallow.
CJ, well, as much as I like him, he was in the midst of his worst shooting season. Delon is older than people realize (26) and he was our third best PG whose progress has somewhat plateaued this season. For the rest of his career, he won't be that much better than he was last season.
So we gave up those two plus a mid-20s center with limited offensive upside and some defensive holes for an All-Star center who, despite his age, still has the smarts and savvy to play at a high level.
If you try to step back and don't get too attached to these likable guys we sent the other way, you'll see that this was a great basketball trade.
But (there's always a But), I just wonder how these trades are going down inside the locker room. On-court production is obviously important, and friendships on the charter plane don't win you championships. I get that. But shouldn't chemistry and camaraderie still be valued to some degree? How do you explain to the locker room that you just shipped out five players and got one back, all in the name of trying to win a championship?
By dealing DeMar, Masai burned two bridges: one to DeRozan and one to Kyle. Now, that was an awesome basketball trade, too. Kawhi has been great when he has played. Danny G has probably exceeded some people's expectations, and he's apparently a glue guy in there, too.
And now this. Masai got rid of almost half the team. Even if you don't count Malachi because he was barely playing, we lost four rotation pieces in one day. It must have felt pretty hollow for the guys who stayed put. I heard on the Raptors-Hawks broadcast that Norm Powell was playing FIFA video game with Delon when the trade happened. Just like that, two Cali dudes (Norm from San Diego and Delon from LA) were no longer teammates.
Yeah, yeah, these guys get paid a ton of money to play hoops. But that doesn't make them robots. They're humans with feelings, too.
Not saying Masai shouldn't have made the deals he made. But I feel that he is pushing "win-at-all-costs" thing a bit too far. And you know what it comes down to? He's making these deals to basically accommodate/appease one guy, and that's Kawhi.
Masai wants to win now, while Kawhi is still in town. And he must think that he has to surround Kawhi with good enough of pieces, so that even if we don't get the ultimate prize this season, Kawhi will be motivated or even compelled to stay with us for the foreseeable future. For Masai, the bottom line is to try to keep Kawhi happy and make him sign with the Raptors.
But what if Kawhi still decides to leave? Then everything will just fall apart. We can have everyone on the current team back next season but without Kawhi, we aren't going anywhere.
In that case, we should probably press the reset button before it's too late. Trade Kyle, trade Serge, trade anyone over 30 for future, and build around Pascal, OG, FVV, Norm and Chris Boucher.
So Masai is moving all the chips and as a fan, I support that. He understands the window will close faster than people think, and he wants to pounce on that opportunity. It'd be negligent for us to stand pat when the Sixers are getting Tobias and the Bucks are getting Mirotic.
But at what costs? I think Masai is way too caught up in the business side of things that he may have lost the sight of what makes a basketball team tick inside the lockers. It's almost like Masai is making fantasy basketball trades.
So to borrow from "Moneyball," my favorite film of all time, this better work!
Gasol had earlier been rumored to be on his way to T.O. along with his PG partner Mike Conley in exchange for Kyle and JV.
I like the actual trade much more than the rumored deal. I just think it's easier to bring in a new big in midseason and get him acclimated to the system than to change the starting PG and make him learn the whole system. In other words, it's easier to ease a new center into your system than to make/force a new PG to throw his older playbook out the window and start from scratch on a new team.
We also shipped out Greg Monroe and Malachi Richardson in separate deals. Then we went on to beat the Hawks 119-101 in one of the gutsiest wins of the season. So much chaos in the locker room, playing on the road, barely enough bodies on the bench, kinda sleep-walking through the 1Q. We were down 33-22 after one. We gave up 68 points to one of the NBA's worst teams in the first half, and trailed 68-60.
Then we held them to 33 points the rest of the game, while putting up 59 points ourselves. FVV and Siakam combined for 63 points.
Then Gasol made his Raptor debut against the Knicks. Came off the bench for the first time in forever. Nothing fancy, but grabbed a whole bunch of rebounds, got a couple of steals and scored 7 points.
He'll probably see more minutes vs. the Nets tomorrow. Sooner or later, Gasol will make us old Raptors fans forget JV.
Me, I'll just miss his pump fakes.
But some personal notes first. On Thursday, I traveled a couple of hours east from Seoul to the city called Gangneung to cover a four-nation men's hockey tournament. This event was organized to celebrate the first anniversary of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Korea. It was my first time back at Gangneung Hockey Centre, the main venue for Olympic hockey tournaments last February. The trip brought back so many good memories from a year ago. Even though the NHL players weren't there as I'd hoped, I still felt very fortunate to be able to watch and write about Olympic hockey on our home ice. I enjoyed every second of it. I woudln't trade that experience with anything else.
I ended up watching three hockey games that day. At the arena, I covered Latvia-Japan and then Korea-Kazakhstan. On the train to Gangneung, I watched the Leafs beat the Senators 5-4.
It was an entertaining game, to be sure, though the result was far closer than it should have been and the game was way too loose and wide open. Not a particularly well-played game, but I've already stated my hatred for the Sens a few times in this blog and I am happy anytime we beat those guys.
It was a roller-coaster of a game. We were down 2-1, then scored three goals in succession in the 2nd to take a 4-2 lead. I thought we got this one all wrapped up, but the other guys scored two early in the 3rd.
Mo got the winner midway through the 3rd on a great rush off a turnover. We are still the only team not to have lost a game after leading through two periods this season.
Then on Friday on my end, the Raptors made that Gasol trade, sending JV, CJ and Delon and a pick to Memphis. Gasol made his Toronto debut today in our 104-99 win over the Knicks at MSG.
The Leafs were playing over at Scotiabank. Though I was pretty sure we would beat the Knicks, I wanted to catch a live glimpse of Marc in his first game. So I watched the Raptors and just had the Leafs game up on another screen without really watching it. Did catch this beauty of a goal, though.
On to my thoughts on the Gasol deal.
Masai at It Again
I've been so busy since I returned home that I am only finishing up this post on Monday night. Gasol has already played his first game, and the Leafs have played another game since the win over the Habs (the loss to the Rangers was so deflating I'll probably not write about it too much).
Anyway, I'll do my best to organize my thoughts on the Gasol trade first.
Masai Ujiri does a lot of charity work off the court and all that, but when it comes to making deals, he is a cold-blooded man. There was that deal to send DeMar for Kawhi. JV is another long-tenured Raptor who got shipped out.
He'd been out for months with his finger injury. He was just about to return to action. He was telling the media he was ready to hit the ground running.
And then, boom! See you later! That's cold.
Think of it in these terms. You took a sick leave from work. You've undergone some operation. And you finally feel healthy, and you call up your boss to tell him/her that you're ready to get back. And then you're told, "Yeah, I am glad to hear that you're well, but we don't want you around here anymore."
That's gotta be tough to swallow.
CJ, well, as much as I like him, he was in the midst of his worst shooting season. Delon is older than people realize (26) and he was our third best PG whose progress has somewhat plateaued this season. For the rest of his career, he won't be that much better than he was last season.
So we gave up those two plus a mid-20s center with limited offensive upside and some defensive holes for an All-Star center who, despite his age, still has the smarts and savvy to play at a high level.
If you try to step back and don't get too attached to these likable guys we sent the other way, you'll see that this was a great basketball trade.
But (there's always a But), I just wonder how these trades are going down inside the locker room. On-court production is obviously important, and friendships on the charter plane don't win you championships. I get that. But shouldn't chemistry and camaraderie still be valued to some degree? How do you explain to the locker room that you just shipped out five players and got one back, all in the name of trying to win a championship?
By dealing DeMar, Masai burned two bridges: one to DeRozan and one to Kyle. Now, that was an awesome basketball trade, too. Kawhi has been great when he has played. Danny G has probably exceeded some people's expectations, and he's apparently a glue guy in there, too.
And now this. Masai got rid of almost half the team. Even if you don't count Malachi because he was barely playing, we lost four rotation pieces in one day. It must have felt pretty hollow for the guys who stayed put. I heard on the Raptors-Hawks broadcast that Norm Powell was playing FIFA video game with Delon when the trade happened. Just like that, two Cali dudes (Norm from San Diego and Delon from LA) were no longer teammates.
Yeah, yeah, these guys get paid a ton of money to play hoops. But that doesn't make them robots. They're humans with feelings, too.
Not saying Masai shouldn't have made the deals he made. But I feel that he is pushing "win-at-all-costs" thing a bit too far. And you know what it comes down to? He's making these deals to basically accommodate/appease one guy, and that's Kawhi.
Masai wants to win now, while Kawhi is still in town. And he must think that he has to surround Kawhi with good enough of pieces, so that even if we don't get the ultimate prize this season, Kawhi will be motivated or even compelled to stay with us for the foreseeable future. For Masai, the bottom line is to try to keep Kawhi happy and make him sign with the Raptors.
But what if Kawhi still decides to leave? Then everything will just fall apart. We can have everyone on the current team back next season but without Kawhi, we aren't going anywhere.
In that case, we should probably press the reset button before it's too late. Trade Kyle, trade Serge, trade anyone over 30 for future, and build around Pascal, OG, FVV, Norm and Chris Boucher.
So Masai is moving all the chips and as a fan, I support that. He understands the window will close faster than people think, and he wants to pounce on that opportunity. It'd be negligent for us to stand pat when the Sixers are getting Tobias and the Bucks are getting Mirotic.
But at what costs? I think Masai is way too caught up in the business side of things that he may have lost the sight of what makes a basketball team tick inside the lockers. It's almost like Masai is making fantasy basketball trades.
So to borrow from "Moneyball," my favorite film of all time, this better work!
Gasol had earlier been rumored to be on his way to T.O. along with his PG partner Mike Conley in exchange for Kyle and JV.
I like the actual trade much more than the rumored deal. I just think it's easier to bring in a new big in midseason and get him acclimated to the system than to change the starting PG and make him learn the whole system. In other words, it's easier to ease a new center into your system than to make/force a new PG to throw his older playbook out the window and start from scratch on a new team.
We also shipped out Greg Monroe and Malachi Richardson in separate deals. Then we went on to beat the Hawks 119-101 in one of the gutsiest wins of the season. So much chaos in the locker room, playing on the road, barely enough bodies on the bench, kinda sleep-walking through the 1Q. We were down 33-22 after one. We gave up 68 points to one of the NBA's worst teams in the first half, and trailed 68-60.
Then we held them to 33 points the rest of the game, while putting up 59 points ourselves. FVV and Siakam combined for 63 points.
Then Gasol made his Raptor debut against the Knicks. Came off the bench for the first time in forever. Nothing fancy, but grabbed a whole bunch of rebounds, got a couple of steals and scored 7 points.
He'll probably see more minutes vs. the Nets tomorrow. Sooner or later, Gasol will make us old Raptors fans forget JV.
Me, I'll just miss his pump fakes.
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