Every Friday night during the Toronto Raptors’ 20th anniversary season, the club has used the opportunity to look back and reintroduce important figures from the club’s past.
One week it’s Tracy McGrady, another it’s Charles Oakley. The team proudly wears their throwback purple uniforms — once a subject of scorn, now retro cool.
On this Friday night — the last Friday night home game of the year — they went all the way back to the beginning as they introduced John Bitove, who led the partnership that won the expansion franchise, and Isiah Thomas, the club’s first general manager, as well the four other members of the six original partners.
We mention this because perspective is important.
I’ll go first: Yes, that was me (among others) suggesting that it was time to panic given the Raptors are without Kyle Lowry (back) for an indefinite period, were 5-13 since the all-star break before their matchup with the Los Angeles Lakers and with the playoffs looming seem to be getting worse, not better, defensively.
But in the big picture, are things really all that bad?
The answer is yes; they are pretty bad, although the Raptors 94-83 win over the hapless Lakers (it feels strange to write that) certainly helps.
But the Raptors need all the help they can get at the moment. As evidence we provide the first quarter, which ended in perfectly frustrating fashion if you’ve been following along.
Instead of Lou Williams dribbling the ball aimlessly just over half while watching the clock wind down in advance of a low percentage shot at the buzzer, it was DeMar DeRozan. Regardless, it was iso-ball at its worst. The screen came, so did the Lakers double team, and the rushed shot that rimmed out was predictable.
One would think that having the lottery-bound Lakers — now 19-52 on the season — in the building, the Raptors would have gargled all of the available tonic. They did, but it took a while as Toronto gave up seven offensive rebounds to the rebuilding Lakers and were trailing 24-17 to one of only a handful of teams in the NBA with a worse defensive profile than the Raptors have.
The difference is the Raptors are trying to win this year; the Lakers are gathering Ping-Pong balls.
But in the really big picture, are things are so, so bad?
That’s what Raptors head coach Dwane Casey was trying to argue before the game as he looked to make the best of his team’s slide.
"We’ve dug ourselves a hole," he said, before stopping himself. "[Well] I wouldn’t say we’ve dug a whole — we’ve qualified for the playoffs, which was one of our goals at the beginning of the season. We have an opportunity to win our division [the win did indeed clinch the Atlantic Division crown for the second consecutive year].
"It’s not all gloom and doom, other than the way we’ve done it. We’ve done it more with offence than we’ve done with defence, which wouldn’t be my preference, but we kind of got it done."
"We’ve faltered here of late but not totally gloom and doom … not all is dead and sad and gloom and doom in Mudville."
And taking the lens back a little wider, that this team is in a position to be quibbling about how it’s playing heading into its second consecutive playoff appearance is a thing in itself.
"After the [Rudy Gay] trade last year everyone was saying lottery," said Casey. "Now we’re making the playoffs, winning the division its doom and gloom. It’s a process and we’re going through it. There are going to be ups and downs."
Okay, I’m taking my breath.
For some real perspective, we can turn to the founders who remember a team that finished 16-66 in its third full season playing in a baseball stadium and when there was a real possibility that the team would not be all that long for Canada.
"I was definitely concerned about where it was heading, the whole basketball community was concerned about where it was going," said Thomas, who left midway through the third season to take a TV analyst job with NBC.
At the time, the Raptors and Leafs were under separate ownership and it wasn’t clear how or when they would come together. The belief was the Raptors alone in their own arena would have been financially unsustainable.
"A two-team facility like we have today with the Maple Leafs and the Raptors coming together [was the vision]," said Thomas, who credited current MLSE chairman Larry Tanenbaum for eventually facilitating the deal that brought the two teams under one roof. "They finally came together and the rest is history [but] for those who were with us at the beginning, it was a hard walk, it was a hard struggle to get to this day. There were two franchises that started in Canada and one failed and one succeeded. "
Like a monument to their history, after their rugged start the Raptors found their feet. It wasn’t always pretty — they were trailing the Lakers 48-46 at half. There were boos. But eventually the team that is plowing towards the lottery began playing like it — the Lakers shot 34.5 percent for the game as the Raptors opened up a 71-66 lead after three quarters and never looked back.
After the Chicago loss on Wednesday, DeRozan speculated that all his troubled team needed was one win to set things right.
Could this be it?
"One game will help. A few games will help more, but you just can’t flip a switch in this league and go from a bad defensive team to a great one," noted Casey. "The playoffs, hopefully, with the preparation, will get us more in tune with what we’re doing. But we’re not going to go from flipping as switch."
So there is more work to be done. But it’s worth remembering that the Raptors are in a better place than they were a season ago and an infinitely better one than they were when this whole thing got off the ground, just barely.
I will try to keep this in mind going forward.