https://youtu.be/SYg-_S6HiOA
When it was rumored that Khem “The Alkhemist” Birch was going to get released by the Magic and picked up by the Raptors, there was a lot of buzz about this potential move. And I just didn’t understand the buzz at all. I still don’t really understand the buzz, but this video description will detail my attempts to drag the unwilling clump of misfiring synapses known as my brain to a place of understanding. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make it there, but I can try.
Let’s get something out of the way first. Khem Birch was never spectacular in Orlando. He wasn’t even “good”, unless your definition of “good” is different from mine. He was okay. He was serviceable. “Solid” would be the most praiseful adjective I could assign to him. No team was targeting him in trade talks. No fanbase was clamoring for him. He didn’t even consistently get minutes. He was a third-string center who could be promoted to a second-string center in a pinch if you had injures.
So why were Raptors fans going nuts over this dude, saying he was a great acquisition and holding him up as an example of Masai’s genius? First off, they probably watched my highlight videos of him and got the wrong impression. That was my fault, I should never have uploaded those. Second off, he’s from Canadia, and Raptors fans have a weird complex about Canadia and Canadian players. Third off, every NBA fan thinks every acquisition is going to turn out perfectly for the team, even if the player in question has never shown anything to warrant that level of expectation. Fourth off, and maybe most importantly, the center situation in Toronto has been very bad this year and it’s left Raptors fans in a state of desperation. Honestly, if I had to watch Aron Baynes try to play basketball, I too would think that Khem Birch was manna from heaven. Especially now that he’s shown he can sort of shoot threes, something that Baynes utterly forgot how to do.
Birch is putting up career-best numbers on career-high minutes, and just got his first career twenty-burger, so maybe Raptors fans were seeing something I wasn’t. But I’m pretty sure that’s not true. They got caught up in a whirlwind of hype and through some sort of cosmic error of probability, they were actually correct in their hype. God damn it.