The Toronto Raptors will have their newest addition on the bench Friday as Sundiata Gaines was signed Thursday to a 10-day contract.
If you’re a basketball fan, you can’t help but flashback to last season when Gaines was plucked out of the NBA D-League by the Utah Jazz. He had just one practice and was playing in only his fifth NBA game and it happened to be against the East’s best team, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
It’s the stuff dreams are made of as Gaines, with the hometown Jazz down by two points, with less than six seconds left in the game, knocked down a game-winning three pointer. And yes Raptor fans, it was exactly one year ago Friday. Check out this video that is circulating amongst the Twitter community.
If it doesn’t warm your heart, especially as a basketball fan, then something is wrong with you:
Raptor fans can only hope that Gaines has some of that magic left over somewhere for their squad.
Quickly: How many of you who share the same vintage as me remember the name Billy Ray Bates? He of the Maine Lumberjacks of the CBA was called up to the Portland Trailblazers and had a nice little run back in the day.
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That was good news for Portland in the day, but the Trailblazers received some bad news on Thursday as Brandon Roy will have surgery on not one, but both his knees.
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There are a few more new twists in the ongoing saga of Carmelo Anthony and where he might be traded to. It seems like the New York Knicks, where Anthony would really like to play, are now becoming more of a player in the talks as the Knicks are trying to recruit the Memphis Grizzlies to help in the completion of a deal to acquire ‘Melo.
But it sounds like Anthony is willing to go to New Jersey and if the Nets can do a good sales job, they just might change the look of their team drastically.
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Were you surprised that Anthony’s Denver Nuggets put a beatdown on the Miami Heat Thursday night? I wasn’t. Why? Because Miami was living the nightmare of playing one of the worst back-to-backs in the NBA. Yes, Miami-Orlando and any back-to-back with the Texas squads are tough but that is generally because the teams are quality opponents. The Los Angeles (be it Lakers or Clippers)-Denver back-to-back is a killer. Not just because the competition is stiff in Denver but the travel is murderous.
First off, you lose an hour when you leave California to head for Colorado. The airport in Denver might as well be in Cheyenne, Wyoming because it seems like the drive from the airport to the hotel is longer than the flight to get there.
But there’s more.
Denver is the Mile High City and if you have ever trained or ran at a mile above sea level, it feels like someone has taken a welding torch to your lungs. And then, as former Raptor Tony Massenburg told me the first year Toronto played in Denver, after your lungs start burning, your mind goes on you and you start doing stupid stuff because you’re physically and mentally exhausted.
Need statistical proof? Denver is 46-9 against teams playing in the back-to-back at the Pepsi Centre. Now not all of that is in the infamous LA-Denver back-to-back but I’m sure it’s a major chunk of it.
And to hammer home my point: When Kobe Bryant had his historic 81-point night against the Raptors in Los Angeles, guess where the next game was being played? You got it, Denver. By the time the Raptors arrived in the Mile High City, drove in from the airport and got settled in the hotel, it was perfect timing for my broadcast partner Eric Smith to pick up the phone. He called the radio station to go on the air live back in Toronto with the morning show to report the history he had just witnessed, as people were up and getting ready for work at approximately 5:45 am ET.