Players are now allowed to bring guests within the sparkling clean, virus-free confines of The Bubb. For Fred VanVleet, that means bringing his female companion (most likely a girlfriend or wife) and the mini-sized version of himself who is appropriately named Fred VanVleet Jr.
Unfortunately, this miniature version of FVV is not of much use on the basketball court, given that he is just one year old and is probably smaller than an official Spalding game ball if you curl him up into the fetal position. He’s, somehow, even more of a defensive liability than his father is. Basically the only thing he has going for him is that his dribbles are extremely low to the ground, assuming that he would be able to physically dribble, or that he would understand that dribbling is necessary to advance the ball without being called for a travel.
But wait! FVVJ brings to the table something called “intangibles”. In this case the “intangible” he has is that his mere presence inspires his father to play better. Everybody knows that the Raptors won a ring solely because of FVVJ’s birth; it only follows that FVVJ contains within him some mystical, primal force (likely blue in color) which is transferred to his dad by some unseen spiritual mechanism. You can see that force at play here as VanVleet Sr. easily has his best game of the series, featuring a clutch late-game layup which was negated by a clutcher Daniel Theis dunk immediately afterwards which was then un-negated by a clutchest OG Anunoby three at the buzzer. Simply put, the Raptors don’t win this game if that baby isn’t sitting in his mother’s arms on the sideline.