tecumseh18 wrote:It will always be a mystery to me how a team with OG, Pascal, Fred, Scottie and Poeltl and coached by Nick Nurse couldn't be, y'know, really good. Although seemingly more talented than the 2019-2020 Raps that had the 2nd best record overall, they finished at .500 last year. But even then they were lucky with opposing team's injuries - e.g. the doubleheader against the Greenboro Hornets where Fred racked up his 20-20 (can't believe they mentioned that in the tribute video).
Ultimately, I blame MLSE (and/or Ed Rogers) for not believing in those players enough to be willing to go into the tax to give them a bench. Look at how much the Sixers and Celtics are spending. I understand the usual formula is to have the core show their worth before spending exorbitant amounts. But we're in Canada, and we need to spend more to stay even with the rest of the league.
Yeah, for all the b*tching about Masai there was every reason to believe that our core could and would contend in its prime. Until of course it couldn't, and then there wasn't. I doubt that even Masai could explain exactly what went wrong, much less all the confident haters on this board who profess to have known everything years ago. The reality is we had some really good players, some young talent, a great coach, a winning culture, and it didn't amount to much of anything in the end. To me the one (or two actually) great tragedies that kept us from our dynastic destiny is that Masai's two greatest gambits - keeping Kawhi and signing Giannis – both failed, despite him putting us in a great position to succeed with each, and doing everything possible to make it happen. One or both of those were the true keys to his grand plan, and although nabbing kawhi briefly landed us one title, the failure of either to join us was our ultimate downfall, leaving us with less than the sum of our parts. Oh well. It was a helluva ride.
Now we're lining up for a whole new adventure. Likely to be a rough one, like most in pro sports.
but also, yeah, screw ed rogers.
