For those not in the know, I grew up as a huge Toronto Raptors fan. I immigrated to Scarborough, from Hong Kong when I was 3-years-old and they were the franchise that I most loved watching. Being a kid, I really didn’t have any idea whether the Raps were good or not. All I knew was that: they are Toronto’s team, I lived in Toronto, and Vince Carter is good at jamming the ball into the net. And then he left and I was sad, but then I thought “OK, Chris Bosh – also good at jamming it in the net”. But it really wasn’t until I became a teenager when I realized that the Raptors are kinda “meh”.
Here are a bunch of players that the Raptors had during my early to mid teenage years before they became We The North. Linas Kleiza, Aaron Grey, Mickael Pietrus, Landry Fields, Chuck Hayes, Greivis Vasquez, Antonie Wright, Jason Kapono, Ed Davis, Tyler Hansbrough, Sonny Weems, Jerryd Bayless, Reggie Evans, Quincy Acy – those are all the random players I can think of off the top of my head. These guys weren’t scrubs – you can’t make the NBA being a scrub. But as a Raptors fan, this era was clearly just the worst time ever to be a Raps fan because there was nothing exciting. Demar was still raw, Kyle Lowry was a little too pudgy and shooting too many 3’s, and Rudy Gay was scoring 20+ a game but damn was he inefficient.
And even if right now in 2021, the Raptors seems to be a little iffy considering that there are big questions concerning who is going to be the number 1 option, who’s going to be the “it” factor, and if we messed up taking Scottie over Jalen Suggs (I feel like we made a good pick though), there is no way in HELL I would trade watching the 2021 Raptors over the Raptors from like 2010-2013 ish. By the way, this is also how you can tell I’m a real fan, not a bandwagon fan, because I can name all those random players, I watched all those random players, and will still write about how dreadful that era was for a Raps fan.
Regardless of whether the Raps make the playoffs or not this year though, I still think that this Toronto Raptors squad will be hungry for victory and a lot of fun to watch. Mark my words! Scottie Barnes ROY!!