If you’re the Toronto Raptors, what can you do? You fight, scrap, claw, grind, exhaust all the scrappy metaphors a collective blogosphere can generate, and yet, you still lose to the greatest player in the game. And he made it look all too easy.
We knew a lineup change was coming for the Raptors, but I’m not sure starting Fred VanVleet was the right call. Of course it’s easy to second-guess it now, after that poor start, but it seemed to me that starting Pascal Siakam and Serge Ibaka (and having Jonas Valanciunas match up with Tristan Thompson) was the more logical choice.