Robert Gray is a Toronto-area writer and a devoted Raptors fan since day one. He’s been a fan since Walt Williams revolutionized the knee-high sock industry. He once asked Lamond Murray for an autograph in a convenience store and Murray thought he was being sarcastic.
If you want to know how the Raptors are doing lately, you need look no further than the demeanour of LeBron James. When the King is happy, the Raptors are crappy.
Watching LeBron so far in this series has reminded me of a circa 1990 Hulk Hogan (hairline included). He’s the undisputed champ, putting on a show – interacting with the fans, sharing in their amusement all the while dazzling them with his signature moves en route to a mostly predetermined outcome.
He’s the best there is. Maybe ever. And he knows it.
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If it is true that all great empires are destroyed from within, then I fear that the Raps have little say in this one.
Maybe the Cavs will get complacent…but probably not.
Maybe LeBron will have gone out partying the night before the big game and be too hung over to dominate…but probably not.
True story:
I used to work as a busboy in a nightclub in downtown Toronto that was frequented by NBA players. One evening, members of the Raptors and the Miami Heat showed up, scheduled to play the following day. I watched the Raptors’ “best player” at the time, who was traded shortly thereafter, as he drank straight from a bottle of liqueur. I cleared some glassware near the booth of the Heat in attempt to get a closer look at the King and ended up locking eyes with him. He gestured for me to approach.
“What can I get you?” I asked, trying to pretend that I had never watched him play.
“Some hot water, please.” said the King.
“Hot water?” I said, slightly taken aback by what was certainly an unusual order at this particular den of debauchery.
“Yeah. Hot water. For my cup-a-soup.” He held out a pack of Campbell’s soup.
That was when I knew we were really screwed.
Here were my hopeful heroes, having fun, ordering bottles, getting tipsy while enjoying the spoils of celebrity. And there was LeBron James, the man with more reason to party than any of them, drinking soup.
LeBron is not normal. That’s obvious. He’s out of this world. So how do you defeat an unrelenting otherworldly adversary?
The answer is simple. The answer is: I don’t know. Maybe sign Kevin Durant?
Remember the Borg from Star Trek? The Borg was a terrifying collective of cybernetic zombies working as one toward a common goal of inter-galactic domination. If someone posed a threat to their mission, that person was assimilated into the collective. Individuals didn’t exist within the Borg with the exception of the Queen … err … King.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the rest of Starfleet kept running into the Borg season after season. They could never really defeat the Borg. They could only fight them off just enough to escape with their lives and the knowledge that they’d run into them again some time next season.
Sound familiar?
We need to be tougher than Cleveland. I don’t think we are. We need to want it more than the Cleveland. I don’t think we do.
Maybe we aren‘t supposed to win. It would be one of the all time upsets to see the Raptors defeat the champs. But does this Raptors team really deserve it with the way they‘re playing? Even if the stars aligned and everything went wrong for Cleveland where would that leave us? How would we fare against the three point shooting barrage of the Warriors? How stifled would we be against the defence of the Spurs?
Even if we somehow won, everybody knows that Buster Douglas was never really in the same league as Mike Tyson.
So make yourself a cup-a-soup on this rainy playoff night and enjoy the fact that the Raptors have made it this far. There’s no shame in losing to the best. There may be no I in team. But there’s one in King.
All Hail.
