Last winter, I tuned-in to a Toronto Raptors game. I don't do that often, but they were playing the Portland Trail Blazers and I wanted to see rookie-of-year-to-be Damian Lillard in action. While Lillard played a decent game, to my surprise, the Raptors won in both convincing and entertaining fashion, something highly unusual since Vince Carter left town, a lifetime ago. Young players owned the floor that night. DeMar DeRozan's jump shot looked to have improved, rookie Terence Ross was scorching hot from downtown and Ed Davis was turning the brittle boned Andrea Bargnani into an afterthought.
That night, I told myself: "Wow, I could really get behind those Raptors."
But then, Rudy Gay happened. Don't get me wrong, he's a tremendous player, but his acquisition was the epitome of everything that's wrong with every goddamn sport franchises in Toronto. Lack of long term vision, impatience, prioritizing fame and spectacle over basketball, unwillingness to implement a strategy. It's not the acquisition of Gay himself that revealed all that, but the litany of peripheral changes it brought. Gay will give you twenty points a night and a dozen poster dunks a year. Hard to argue against. But let's examine all the shifts it brought to the Raptors' organization.
