I’m a Pistons fan and a Raptors fan (old school… live near Detroit… watched before Toronto had a team and stay loyal to my country but also the team I grew up watching).
As a fan of both, I’ve been lucky because, when the Raptors suck, the Pistons are generally good and since the Pistons have sucked since Iverson came to town, the Raptors have been pretty good.
I mention this because the shit (and I do mean SHIT) that Raptors fans are dumping on Masai is the SAME SHIT that Pistons fans dumped on Joe Dumars.
Joe Dumars took free agent Grant Hill (perhaps the best player in the league at the time) leaving in free agency, turned it into a sign-and-trade and build a champion on a undersized center.
Along the way, he made some bad picks and afterwards made (under pressure form ownership) some bad signings.
There are gambles in basketball. Not all of them pay off.
But in 2004, Dumars managed to do something that only two active other active GMs at the time had managed to do: BUILD A CHAMPION.
Fans lost patience with Dumars SO fast and just SHIT all over him.
There are a LOT of new Raptors fans, and they seem to think it’s easy to build a contender.
Here’s the thing: For ANYBODY who has watched the Raptors from day 1, it is clear that building a PLAYOFF team is HARD AS FUCK, especially for the ONLY CANADIAN TEAM that 95% of the league DOESN’T WANT TO PLAY FOR.
Masai took that challenge, a challenge that EVERYBODY before him had failed to do (on playoff series win in over two decades) and he build a perennial playoff team whose only failing was the inability to stop LeBron James.
Then they WON A TITLE.
Read that again: THE RAPTORS WON A TITLE.
Under the framework that Masai used.
Has he made mistakes? Sure. Safe bet the nobody in their right mind is going to pay FVV 40 million? Well… turns out that there is a mad man in Houston and he’s ruining running the Rockets.
He’s made mistakes, but count your blessings Raptors fans, because trust me, there is worse out there. MUCH WORSE.
I’m a Pistons fan and a Raptors fan (old school… live near Detroit… watched before Toronto had a team and stay loyal to my country but also the team I grew up watching).
As a fan of both, I’ve been lucky because, when the Raptors suck, the Pistons are generally good and since the Pistons have sucked since Iverson came to town, the Raptors have been pretty good.
I mention this because the shit (and I do mean SHIT) that Raptors fans are dumping on Masai is the SAME SHIT that Pistons fans dumped on Joe Dumars.
Joe Dumars took free agent Grant Hill (perhaps the best player in the league at the time) leaving in free agency, turned it into a sign-and-trade and build a champion on a undersized center.
Along the way, he made some bad picks and afterwards made (under pressure form ownership) some bad signings.
There are gambles in basketball. Not all of them pay off.
But in 2004, Dumars managed to do something that only two active other active GMs at the time had managed to do: BUILD A CHAMPION.
Fans lost patience with Dumars SO fast and just SHIT all over him.
There are a LOT of new Raptors fans, and they seem to think it’s easy to build a contender.
Here’s the thing: For ANYBODY who has watched the Raptors from day 1, it is clear that building a PLAYOFF team is HARD AS FUCK, especially for the ONLY CANADIAN TEAM that 95% of the league DOESN’T WANT TO PLAY FOR.
Masai took that challenge, a challenge that EVERYBODY before him had failed to do (on playoff series win in over two decades) and he build a perennial playoff team whose only failing was the inability to stop LeBron James.
Then they WON A TITLE.
Read that again: THE RAPTORS WON A TITLE.
Under the framework that Masai used.
Has he made mistakes? Sure. Safe bet the nobody in their right mind is going to pay FVV 40 million? Well… turns out that there is a mad man in Houston and he’s
ruiningrunning the Rockets.He’s made mistakes, but count your blessings Raptors fans, because trust me, there is worse out there. MUCH WORSE.
We’ve had it before and we’ll get it again.