You know the old joke, right? Of course you do. Two guys are in the woods getting chased by a bear and one of them says to the other, “What, you think you can outrun a bear?” And the other guy says, “I don’t need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you.”
It’s a dark joke, if you think much about it. How do you live with that, you know?
Life is, in part, about assessing risk and upside. The Toronto Raptors arrived at this trade deadline second in the Eastern Conference by a fair and comfortable margin, winners of 14 of 16 games and trailing a Cleveland team with a new coach, some finicky chemistry and a fading star.