It used to be that if you were any good around here, eventually LeBron James was all that really mattered. He had pushed the Toronto Raptors down the rebuilding path once upon a time, back when Chris Bosh left, and once the Raptors got good enough to aspire to something, three straight years, they found the king. He came to delight in destroying them. It was like he thought there were points for artistic merit.
And Thursday night LeBron returned to Toronto as a Laker, and … he doesn’t matter much at all, not right now. The Raptors are worried about the pending bloodbath in the East playoffs, about making sure the practice facility is Drake-branded, about getting healthy and in sync.