The Raptors organization, not players, embarrassed itself against the Magic
Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko intended to fix a boxing match. He had an agreement in place with one boxer and gave the money to his assistant to give to the fighter. But the assistant — fool — gave the money to the wrong fighter. The fighter who had agreed to the fix thought, ‘oh well, I must be getting paid after the fight.’ The other guy who received the money thought, ‘well this is a surprise, but the money’s good, so I’ll throw it.’
And so ensued boxing, and Steve Martin, history.
If you don’t want to watch the movie Sgt. Bilko to relive the joke (you should, it’s an awesome movie) you don’t need to. You can just watch the Toronto Raptors’ win over the Orlando Magic.
It was a normal game for 40 minutes. The score stayed within five points for all but a few moments of the first half. Lots of turnovers, sure. It wasn’t an instant classic. But it was a normal NBA basketball game. The Raptors stormed ahead in the third behind ferocious defence and led by double digits in the fourth. Against the offensively inept Magic, that should have been all she wrote. But it was not.
The Raptors needed divine intervention from Immanuel Quickley a few nights previous against the Chicago Bulls to pull defeat from the jaws of victory, as he fouled a 3-point shot attempt from Coby White in the waning seconds while the Raptors led by four. Then the Raptors tried their hardest to lose to the Magic in their last contest, only to fail to lose as Franz Wagner missed an uncontested layup with seconds remaining that would have tied the game. So Darko Rajakovic seemed to get serious about losing in this March 4 contest and yanked Quickley and Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl early in the fourth, not to return. Barrett was left alongside two rookies, AJ Lawson, and Orlando Robinson as Toronto’s closing unit.
The thing is, the Raptors actually on the floor tried to win the game. So fucking hard. RJ Barrett was blocking shots from the much larger Wagner around the rim, then throwing dimes to Ja’Kobe Walter in transition. The Raptors weren’t losing at all.
So Rajakovic took Barrett out of the game, too.
Easy fix? Apparently not. Lawson continued his stellar performance, hitting triples. The youngsters kept defending like lions. The Magic were not able to take what the Raptors were trying to hand to them. Orlando clawed back, slowly. Slowly. But time drained away, too.
There is supposed to be a sheen of legitimacy to these things. Something that offers the ability to suspend disbelief. A well-placed ankle injury or some such thing that keeps a star out of the lineup entirely so the coach doesn’t have to bench him. But the Raptors dispensed with those niceties.
As the game got close, the Raptors had the ball with a few seconds remaining, down two points.
Then Walter threw all Toronto’s best-laid plans in the garbage. Try to lose? Fuck no. Fuck that. Fuck you. So he won the game. Tossed the ball in. Moved his defender back, stepped back behind the 3-point line, and tried something of a step-through jumper before realizing he didn’t have the space. So he just hurled it two-handed. Half soccer throw-in, half basketball jumper. Cash.
And that’s the problem with these farcical tank jobs. Maybe playing Barnes and Poeltl and Barrett and Quickley for three-quarters of a game is still going to be enough to win. Just getting them some run before losing isn’t always an option. So Toronto’s attempt to have its cake and eat it too ended up with no cake and no eating, and egg on its face for good measure.
Because players don’t tank. Walter sure as fuck wasn’t going to tank. Lawson sure as shit wasn’t going to lie down against the Magic. They had a lead with only a few minutes remaining. Sure, they didn’t win their minutes, but they had enough pride and enough sheer fluky shooting luck to pull it out.
Maybe Walter uses his game winner as a springboard to launch a superpowered last few weeks of the season. Even if he doesn’t, I am truly happy for him that he was able to have such a moment. HIs teammates were joyous, as Barned threw Walter over his shoulder to celebrate. But it is a bitter pill to swallow, given some thought, that his success spited the seeming intentions of his coach and his coach’s bosses.
If Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster want to lose games, they’ll have to make some real choices. Thirty minutes for Barnes isn’t going to cut it. Maybe try zero and go from there.
And the thing is — I’m not agitating for the Raptors to tank games. I still need to watch these damn things. Watching the best players play is significantly more fun than whatever happened in March of 2024, for example. I’m not in the front office. It’s no skin off my back if the Raptors get the eighth pick in the upcoming draft. But if the Raptors want to tank, then they need to figure out how to actually do the thing, first and foremost.
Both fighters ended up taking a dive in the Steve Martin flick. I’ll let Martin tell the story:
“For three rounds, nobody hit anybody. It was a dance recital. Finally, I think out of boredom, one of the guys connected with a right.”
And both fell down.
That’s more or less what happened between the Raptors and the Magic. Both teams tried their best, assuredly. At least, the players on both teams. But the Raptors were wearing cement shoes placed there by their own coaches, while the Magic just aren’t very good. It was, like Martin’s boxing match, a farce.
Coaches are supposed to have plausible deniability. Coaches aren’t supposed to lose games on purpose. Leave that to the front office. But what is Rajakovic supposed to say about resting Barnes and Quickley in crunch time? (Poeltl was on a minutes limit, so there is plausible deniability, a sheen of legitimacy, there.) And what is Rajakovic supposed to say about yanking Barrett with a few minutes left because he was simply dragging his lineup past the finish line? Had they successfully lost, what was he supposed to have told his players in the locker room? Hey, sorry about handicapping you guys, but good fight out there. I wanted to get a look at the rookies and G-League guys. There’s no plausible deniability anywhere to be found. It looked, to any bystander, trained or casual, like the coach was trying to lose the game.
We all know teams lose on purpose. But the Raptors tempted fate, and they were punished — by winning, of all things. The Raptors need to decide they are actually a solid team and can make the play-in tournament, or they need to decide to actually rest their best players.
But excepting Walter’s heroics, whatever happened last night against the Magic cannot become the norm.
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