Robert Gray is a Toronto-area comedy 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.
The NBA regular season is long and arduous and at some point or another, almost every team runs into a rough stretch where the wheels look as though they’re beginning to fall off.
The past few weeks have been that way for the Toronto Raptors. We may be the North, but lately things have gone south.
In what seems to be a peaceful protest of the Trump administration’s xenophobic defence strategies, the Toronto Raptors are welcoming anyone and everyone to their basket. Maybe it’s because I grew up idolizing Eastern Conference teams of the early 90s, where hard-nosed defence was paramount, but when my squad stops playing D, I stop watching. Winning teams will tell you – defensive stops come in handy – particularly on nights like Monday’s game vs. the Clippers where DeMarre Carroll, Terrence Ross and Patrick Patterson combined for a whopping 12 points.
Having been a Raptors fan since the franchises inception, I’ve developed a knack for distracting myself in tumultuous times like these.
Without further ado, I invite you to lie down on my chaise lounge as I defer to the half credit I earned at York University in Beginner’s Psychology.
This is PSYCH 101 with TJ Freud:
Today, let us devote a little time to Jonas Valanciunas, our lithe Lithuanian.
JV suffers from the same affliction as Jon Favreau in Swingers: He’s so money, and he doesn’t even know it. He’s a big bear looking at his burly bear claws and fangs and he doesn’t know how to kill the little bunny.
On most nights, there is a noticeable hesitation in Jonas’ game, a hair of doubt in every move. It’s as if some part of him is still afraid of making mistakes— and I believe it to be a result of never having truly been permitted to make them.
It’s my opinion that Jonas has deep seeded trust issues dating back to his NBA adolescence when Dwane Casey, a paternal figure, would bench him late in games for being a defensive liability or sitting him early in games after shaky starts, a practice the coach still employs today.
This sort of timidity in JV makes itself apparent all too often. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen Jonas get off to a blistering start in a game only to watch him vanish completely. He’ll be on pace for 35 points at half time and score his next basket with three minutes left in the fourth quarter. He’ll make a fool of his defender on one play and want nothing to do with the ball on the next.
T&S: Jonas Valanciunas competes in an Itty Bitty Balling challenge!
Could it be that Jonas is afraid of his own success? The pressures of being a top notch-centre are certainly more daunting than those of a second tier-big man. When David Robinson had a bad game, people talked. When Zan Tabak played like crap, nobody noticed.
While it’s impossible to say exactly why Jonas’ assertiveness comes and goes, one thing is for sure: The NBA is a league in which the best players are supremely confident. Hell, often they are flat-out arrogant.
I’m not certain if he meant ‘in the game’ or ‘at the bar’, but I remember hearing Charles Barkley say that no amount of mistakes could stop him from taking the next shot. That’s the kind of deluded confidence it takes to be a big-time player in this league and right now, Jonas Valanciunis does not have it.
You know who doesn’t have that problem? Pascal Siakam, the rambunctious Raptor rookie. Offensively, Pascal Siakam is the anti-Jonas. After the first few times watching Pascal attack the basket, I remember jotting in my notes “Has hands like feet”— and yet there isn’t a hesitant bone in his body. He releases his jumpers with the confidence of a young Allen Iverson and throws up sky-hooks like he’s Kareem Abdul- Jabbar. It’s a good problem. Better to have too much ego in this league than not enough.
Put it this way: if Jonas had the confidence of Pascal Siakam, he might drop 30 a night. If Siakam had JV’s confidence, he might be teaching a gym class somewhere.
The NBA is too competitive a league to succeed in with self-doubt; no amount of hair on one’s face could hide a lack of self-confidence. Two years ago, when Jonas came back from the off-season brandishing a new bearded look, I suspected that there may have been an ulterior motive.
“Mr Ipkis, we all wear masks, metaphorically speaking.”—Ben Stein, The Mask
History suggests that the beard on a man’s face is never without some underlying intention. As I know my own intentions and assume that every other man on the planet is exactly like myself, I can say that a bristly chin is meant to project masculinity, imply confidence and annoy one’s spouse.
[relatedlinks]
When I was Jonas’ age, as an antidote to what I felt was a lack of machismo, I too, grew a beard. It was akin to Jonas’ beard: it wasn’t exactly patchy, it just wasn’t fierce enough to hide the nice guy underneath. Eventually, I shaved it off. It was too itchy and besides that, my buddy Markus’ facial hair was so thick that it made mine scream “Vote for Pedro”. There’s a parallel here. If you’re Valanciunas and you’re growing a beard to implicate a lofty level of manliness, what happens when James Harden’s beard spills into town and makes your’s look prepubescent?
JV‘s beard is decent, but James Harden looks like he spent the last 25 years trapped inside a game of Jumanji.
I’m left scratching my own stubbly chin at the glimpses of vast potential that resides deep inside our boy Jonas. Before his injury in last year’s playoffs, he was beginning to resemble a young Ghengis Khan. Then, a short while later in the Olympics, he looked more like, well, an itty-bitty-baller.
It is extremely difficult to determine for certain whatever birthed these inner demons within our boy Jonas, but it’s easy to see that they are holding him back and it is the duty of the Raptors staff to exorcise them.
If the Raptors truly believe in Jonas, they must help him believe in himself.
Since I‘m not legally allowed to prescribe medicine, here is what I propose: take the rest of the season—or at least a good chunk of it—and let JV be your primary offence. See what happens to his confidence when, hit or miss, he knows the ball is coming right back to him on the next play. We know DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry can get theirs at any time and their post-basket-stink-faces indicate that they know it too.
Who knows for certain the size of the beast within Valanciunas. Maybe there’s a monster somewhere inside him more formidable than anyone could imagine. What’s certain is that we will never know until we poke it enough to lure it out of its lair completely.
The Raptors will lose some games as a result of this in-season experiment, but who cares? Until we acquire DeMarcus Cousins, the Raptors are like Bill Murray stuck in Punxatawny, fated to repeat the same season over and over and over. Great regular season, fun playoff run, crushed by Cavs— 6:00AM—Sonny and Cher.
I’m afraid our time is up. I feel like we made some real progress today.
