A pipedream, or perhaps not
I’m looking ahead to the Paris Olympics in late July, at which both our Canadian men’s and women’s national teams will be battling for medals. Surely that’s better than considering the present state of the Toronto Raptors, who dropped their 14th straight game (another blowout at home) to the Los Angeles Lakers.
At least RJ Barrett returned to the team after a period of mourning. He is one of three Canadians on the roster, the others being Kelly Olynyk and Chris Boucher. I’m all but certain Barrett and Olynyk will be in Paris; I don’t know of Boucher’s status. Another member of our national squad is man-mountain Zach Edey. This fellow has been leaping (well, not really, leaping isn’t part of his considerable skill set) up draft boards as his Purdue Boilermakers prepare to compete for the NCAA championship. The consensus on Edey is that he’s worthy of being chosen around the late teens, a considerable improvement over his second-round-at-best dismissal (“too slow & heavy for the pros”) of a few months ago. The Raptors will be selecting at around that position, based on current course & speed of the Indiana Pacers, whose pick we acquired in the Pascal Siakam trade. Perhaps Edey will be dining at home next season.
Raptors will have many players in Paris wearing maple leaf
It’s not an absurd reach to suggest that our national team may boast four Raptors. Why should we care? Because there won’t be many better opportunities like the striving for Olympic glory to bind players together. At this stage of the season, Toronto’s roster is a shambles. There’s no one to blame; bad luck due to injuries, folly (Jontay Porter, what have you done?) and family tragedy has produced a perfect storm. The Raptors are rolling out training-camp teams, of which the pitiful collection clobbered 133-85 by the Minnesota Timberwolves – 15 losses and counting – is the most egregious example.
Is Masai Ujiri deliberately assembling as many members of the national team as possible, in the hope that they will grow tight chemistry in the quest for gold this summer? It’s not a totally crazy hypothesis. After all, he just traded for Barrett and Olynyk, and they are inked to multi-year contracts (Boucher has one more year). Furthermore, those two are playing better as Raptors than they did for their previous teams, for which Coach Darko Rajakovic gets a hat tip also.
Of course there are limits to this notion of the Raptors being a palimpsest [look that one up in your Funk & Wagnall’s] of the Canadian national team. OKC isn’t sending us Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in a trade. There were rumours of Masai’s interest in receiving one of Benedict Mathurin or Andrew Nembhard from Indiana in the Pascal Siakam trade. No such luck. But we all know Masai won’t brook troublemakers on his team. If Canadians in the NBA got there because they are solid citizens, as well as terrific medal-winning players who feed off each other, why not assemble as many as one can?
- Tags: Masai Ujiri, Toronto Raptors
