No one from last year’s championship-parade-having Raptors has come out and said “The East still runs through Toronto”, but there can be no doubt that their chances are significantly reduced compared to last season. It’s not going to be the embarrassing fall from grace that the Cavaliers experienced and that Tristan Thompson didn’t want to acknowledge, because they’ve still got a big chunk of their core, so such a comment wouldn’t be totally out of line. There have been similar sentiments echoed by various players and team staff and front-office people, but they seem to lack conviction. No doubt everyone is going to try as hard as they can (no tanking here, at least not until the trade deadline when they unload everyone they can for the rights to mysterious African prospects and picks), but there is no replacing the player that they lost.
You know who I’m talking about. We’re talking about the guy who came in from a proven championship system, the guy who came in with his track record of winning and brought those winning habits to the franchise that developed a well-earned reputation for playoff chokejobs. The guy whose potent mix of offense and defense could fit on any team, the guy whose plus-minus numbers were off the charts, the guy that was, in my opinion, the heart and soul of Toronto basketball until Fred VanVleet stole everyone’s hearts with a heroic role-player performance. Yeah, you know who I’m talking about.
Kawhi Leonard.
HAHAHAHAHA! You all bought it! You all bought it, hook, line, and SINKER! Even my family, even my IMMEDIATE FAMILY bought it! You all bought it! Every damn one of you were made FOOLS OF!
For real though the guy I’m talking about is obviously Danny Green. I wouldn’t be typing whole fawning paragraphs about Kawhi Leonard in the description box for a Green three-ilation, that just wouldn’t make any sense. If you want my honest opinion of Leonard, here’s the abridged version: he’s really good, like really really, but I’ll take the dude without a crazy uncle (that we know of) who doesn’t needs his loads heavily managed lest his degenerative quadriceps dissolve into fibrous pink sludge. So there.
I’m pretty sure that Raptors fans have mostly forgiven Leonard for leaving, if they ever held any ill-will at all. He never promised he would stay, the trade was a rental from the beginning, and after all, he brought their tormented and ever-victimized souls a chip. What more could you ask for, besides sticking around and trying to build a dynasty?
But I’m not sure what Raptors fans are thinking about Green. If I were one of them, I’d be pretty peeved. Leonard, at least, merely wanted to play basketball in his home town with one of his buddies. Green seems to want nothing but championships. He wants to be a, as the kids say, “ring-chaser”. He delayed his free agency decision until he found that Leonard was leaving and then was like “never mind LMAO see you losers later I’m gonna play with LeBron and AD in Los Angeles and be the perfect role-player for them instead haha”. Not the worst thing in the world, wanting to win, but with Green in the fold, the Raptors have some chance of making some noise in the playoffs this year, right?
As usual, I might be seriously overrating him due to the fact that I just spent a fair bit of time watching him hit TONS of threes in extremely quick succession on a ridiculous percentage (not like you can tell the percentage from the video). It’s easy to see the highlights and not cognize all the stuff wrong with his game (like a lack of playmaking or layup-making). But watch this video and try to tell me that this guy isn’t one of the best role-players of all time. Ignore the total lack of dribbles. He hit 198 threes (13th in the league) on 45.5 percent (2nd in the league). Plugging him into the corners of the Lakers is not fair. Sometimes I miss David Stern and his “basketball reasons”. We need some of those “basketball reasons” right now. There is no reason for me to be arguing on behalf of the Raptors (I still haven’t rewatched even a second of the ECF), but here I am. That is what Green has driven me to do.
It is with that said that I hereby forbid all Lakers fans from watching this vid, on punishment of having their ENTIRE internet deleted PERMANENTLY. This vid is for Raptors fans to relive the fun times they had with Green, and for fans of the 28 other teams to use as a scouting report. Only, and EXCLUSIVELY. Any comments along the lines of “loving him on the lakers”, “welcome to la daddy 🍆💦💦💦”, or “cant wait to see him play with lebron” will be reported to the proper authorities. Don’t come crying to me when you try to browse your internet and find that it has been entirely deleted forever. I warned you.