Sunday Special Report! The Raptors 2025-26 NBA Schedule has been released! Key games & observations!

Sunday Special Report! The Raptors 2025-26 NBA Schedule has been released! Key games & observations!

Good morning, Raptor Freaks. Leots here. It is Sunday and I’m doing a Sunday special report on the NBA schedule that just came out three days ago. Uh the NBA releasing the entire NBA schedule for everybody on Thursday. And well, in some ways, I’ve gone over it and looked at it very closely, and it’s time for me to uh kind of analyze it as a Sunday report and talk about what I see, the different interesting uh times where the schedule maneuvers through and where we’re going and when and where, and uh some observations I have about the schedule that are maybe most people won’t see, but yeah, let’s let’s go ahead and do it. You’re watching the Raptor Freak stream. We’ve also got a reaction to some basketball games yesterday, CBL playoffs and Austria against Bulgaria in which the the Austrian team lost to Bulgaria yesterday, but they still qualified to go into the next round, which is great for Yaka Purle and the national Austrian team. So, yeah, that’s all on the table to talk about, plus more about Scotty Barnes on Twitch the other night and other Raptors related stuff, the Instagram stories, all that stuff. if you know what we do here. That’s right, Fierce here. Good morning, fam. And happy Sunday. Congrats to the shooting stars. Y’all kicked our butts. Yeah, the game wasn’t close by the end. The other game, the Western game was close, and uh Calgary just barely edged the Vancouver Bandits to get to the next round to play the Winnipeg Seab Bears next week in Winnipeg. And yeah, that game was not that game was a lot closer. In fact, uh, Calgary was down by one with the Elum ending starting and they came back and won behind Evan Gillard II. Once again, Evan Gillard has been huge and so is Jir Nelson Jr. for the Calgary Surge. Yeah, Ottawa. You know, the the the thing about what happened there, Fiercy, was you guys have had some really good players on your team this season, but they’ve been too good and they’ve been going to other places like Isaiah Moore, Javvante Smart, uh gone right when they needed him the most, right at the end of the season. And the lack of that firepower and uh good players, it hurt Ottawa Blackjacks. They just didn’t have as much to keep up with the the Stars. The Stars have been surging. They’ve been playing very, very well more and more through the season. And as the announcer said, Rob Black at the end of the game, the shooting stars have been building momentum in these playoffs and getting better like against Montreal and now Ottawa in the last couple days. So yeah, Scar Bro’s going to Winnipeg and they will be playing the Niagara River Lions in the Championship week in their Eastern Conference Finals. So yeah, good good job to Well, congratulations to Ottawa Blackjacks. Is a tough season. Good season, but it ended yesterday and Scar Bro’s on a mission. I’ll say that. All right, let’s get back to the schedule, guys. I want to talk about the schedule today. Now, the schedule, we got 15 backtobacks in the schedule this year. And the backto-backs aren’t that bad. Most of them make a lot of sense. There’s one backtoback that’s the it’s the normal West Coast backtoback that’s always kind of a pain in the ass. And it’s in March. It’ll be on March 22nd. We’ll be in Phoenix. And then the next day, we got to fly from Phoenix to Utah to play the Jazz. Now, that that may be the worst backtoback that we have this season as far as travel and distance. You know, in some ways that is a pretty far distance, but in some ways it isn’t. Also, Phoenix to Salt Lake City. And uh you know, also it helps that both teams are kind of shaky teams this year. Phoenix is very shaky. Let’s just put it that way. Uh with their new roster without Kevin on it. And uh Utah is definitely in a rebuild and one of the worst teams in the league. So this that’s why I’m like this is not a bad backtoback because we got to remember Phoenix Suns have been a failure the last few years and uh you know Utah is a definitely a young team that’s rebuilding and doesn’t really have everything organized exactly. So I don’t mind that. All right, let’s start from the beginning. This will be the first year in a long time that the Toronto Raptors will start the regular season on the road. We’ve been granted home uh openers for a long time lately. And I think the last time we had a road opener, Demard Rosen and Andrea Barnani were on our team, guys. That’s how long ago it was. That was like that’s over 15 years ago or something like that. So, it’s pretty crazy. So, yeah, we’ll start the season on the road in Atlanta, guys. We’re going to be in Atlanta playing the Hawks on October 22nd. It’s a Wednesday. And uh yeah, that’s when we’ll get the first official action. Of course, we have a nice uh sixgame uh preseason, I believe five or six games in the preseason. So, we’ll have that October preseason action against teams like Brooklyn, twice against Boston, Denver, Sacramento, uh Washington. I believe those are the teams we’re playing in the preseason. And then Atlanta Hawks, first game of the season on a Wednesday night in Atlanta. And I would say that this is good because Atlanta is kind of being forecasted as maybe a Eastern team that’s rising in the standings, but if they got a whole bunch of new faces and we coming in to see them in the first game of the season, they may not have their [ __ ] organized. They may not have it all together and we may be able to go in there and mess them up. So, this is a good first game of the season. Last year we had to play our first game at home against Cleveland and Cleveland was very good and Cleveland kicked our ass right right away from the start. So yeah, I think we have a better chance on the road to beat Atlanta this year than we did against Cleveland last year because in some ways Cleveland was just a juggernaut for the regular season last year and we didn’t know it at that time. So our home opener will be the next game. It’ll be on a Friday, October the 24th. Milwaukee Bucks coming to Toronto. And normally people would say, “Oh my gosh, that’s a tough game. First home game against the Bucks.” No, listen to me. The Bucks are imposters this year. The Bucks are going to be a horrible team this year. You take Giannis out of that team, if he’s hurt at any time, that team is the Washington Wizards. It basically is because Kyle Koosma’s there now. And I’m just saying uh you cannot trust a team that uh after Janna Sapo and Akto it’s going to be Kyle Kosma, Gary Trent Jr. and uh Kevin Porter Jr. carrying that team after that. No I you cannot you cannot and especially since break Brook Lopez is gone. That Milwaukee Bucks are in for a huge crash this year guys. I’m going to tell you right now this year might be so bad for Milwaukee that Giannis will be demanding a trade out of there by the end of the year. Seriously. Seriously. They don’t have Dame anymore and uh they don’t have u Drew. They don’t have uh Brooke. They don’t have Pat Coneton even anymore. And uh only guys left really with Giannis from the Old Guard is Bobby Portoris. So yeah, this team’s going to be horrible, guys. I’m telling you right now, Milwaukee fans, you’re delusional. If you think you have a good team this year, you’re going to have a bad year. Your front office has been horrible the last few years with their decisions, and you’ve gotten to this point. So, I think we’ll kick their ass in the first game at Scotia Bank Arena this season. Then, we immediately go on a Texas twostep. It’s kind of a mirroring of last season. At the end of the season last year, we played our games in Dallas and San Antonio right at the end of the season. In fact, we’re the last two games of the season. We played in Dallas and then we played in San Antonio. The last two games, two, Texas twostep. Well, they’re putting the Texas twostep at the beginning of the season this year where we go to Dallas and meet Cooper Flag, the number one pick right away at the beginning of the year in the third game and then we go see WBY the game after that in San Antonio. And that’s a backto-back, a Sunday to a D Monday travel. But it’s Texas and it’s San Antonio to Dallas. That’s not a huge trip for making a jump for one day. And uh in some ways, you know, it would may be tough to play San Antonio on the second day of that back-to-back, but we’re getting our visit to Cooper Flag in the Dallas Mavericks and uh out of the way very early in the season. Very, very early in the season. Now, this may be a tough little two-step road trip. We’ll have to see. It’ll be a good test for the Raptors very early in the season. You know, then they come back, they play Houston at home, which is no big deal. And then they get back on the road and they go to Cleveland. This will be our first inseason tournament game. It’s on Halloween and Cleveland Cavaliers at Cleveland. First in seasonason tournament game. This will be our toughest inseason tournament game. I’m going to guess right now already. And uh you know Cleveland at home on Halloween inseason tournament action. That’ll be fun. That it will be the sixth game of our season already. So we’re going to get in the inseason tournament very quickly. Very very quickly. Right away. In fact, that’s the thing I noticed. The inseason tournament was really over a month. uh before, but now they stretch it out to two months. This inseason tournament goes over two months now. So, they’re more spread out. And in some ways, the Raptors have their two of their inseason tournament games at the beginning of the NCE tournament window and then two at near the end. And in the middle, there’s a huge amount of weeks where we won’t do any inseason tournament action action, but most the other teams in the league will be. So, we’re going to get two inseason tournament games out of the way quick in two the first two weeks and then we’ll have our last two games near the end of the inseason tournament play. Now, playing the first game of the season against Atlanta Hawks in Atlanta is good because the Friday after Halloween, we go to Atlanta and play them in the inseason tournament on their home court. So, we need to pay attention to the first game of the season in Atlanta because it’s going to be the matchup that we’re going to do again in about two weeks after that, but this time it’ll be in season tournament in their own arena also. So, both the Atlanta games where the Raptors go to Atlanta are going to be out of the way in the first three weeks of the season. So, I tell my father and my brother and my nephew, if you want to go see the Raptors this year, you guys need to go at the very beginning of the season this year. uh uh because they will the Raptors will make their two appearances in Atlanta in uh by the time it’s November the 7th is the last appearance. So yeah, that the interesting thing after that is that we’ve got uh a game against Philadelphia as a backtoback after going to Atlanta. Now that’s not a huge trip either. Atlanta to Philly is not a bad trip, but it’s it’s it’s a it’s a sneaky thing that the NBA’s been doing to the Raptors the last few years is that one of the things they do with our backtobacks is quite often they give us the second night of the backtoback against an important Eastern Conference opponent. Like last year, almost all the games we played against Boston were on the second day of a backtoback or something weird like that. This often happens to us against important Eastern Conference teams where they may want us to lose to them. And I think this is what this is right here. They put us in a Friday night in seasonason tournament game in Atlanta against the Hawks and then we have to turn around and go to Philadelphia the next night to play Nick Nurse and the Sixers for the first time for the season. Yeah, that’s shady as hell. But I’ll take the challenge. Especially since the Sixers, well, we know where they were last year and we don’t know where they’re going to be this year. And if they’re not healthy and they’re all in disarray, well, let’s go ahead and play them at the beginning of the season when they’re all messed up before maybe Joel Embiid is healthy or Paul George is playing or something like that. You know, we play a lot of these games against some of these Eastern Conference opponents early. Like we get games against Milwaukee, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and uh Brooklyn out of the way very early. Indiana also, it’s like we’re going to get two games against all those Eastern Conference teams before the end of November. And that means half of our season series against important Eastern Conference teams will be determined early in the season. So the Raptors need to get out the gate early in this season and kick some ass because those games against Eastern Conference teams in the first two months of the season, Scotty Barnes, are going to be very important for playoff connotations later in the season. So don’t mess with your food. Don’t mess up in the beginning by losing a bunch of games. get off to a good start so you can have good records against Eastern Conference opponents that are going to be important in the structuring of how the playoffs lay out in the playin. So, I’d say this, don’t mess with your food. Beat these Eastern teams in these important Eastern games early in the season. Now, we go on a very strange fivegame road trip in November, but it’s all Eastern dates. It’s very interesting. We have three fivegame road trips this season and uh two of them are out west and one’s in January and one’s in March and then we have one in November that’s all Eastern Conference trip but they’ll only be gone for like a week and that includes this in seasonason tournament game. Atlanta will be the first game of this trip and then Philly and then they got to go to Brooklyn and then Cleveland and then Indiana. So there’s five Eastern Conference games on the road all in a row at the beginning of the season in November. It’s very, very interesting stuff. And then we play come back and play Philly again in Philly right away. So it’s like we’re getting a lot of Phil all our Philadelphia games out of the way on the road. All of our Atlanta games on the road, all of our Cleveland games on the road out of the way in the first month of the season. So that’s something to look for. Now, it’s very heavy with road games in the first month of the season, but there’s parts of our season that are very heavy with home games. Oh, also, of course, you know, home home games also. So, yeah, that’s a weird backtoback. Later on after that road trip in November, we have another backtoback on a Sunday to Monday, but it’s a home and home backtoback and it’ll be the Brooklyn Nets coming in on Sunday, November the 23rd against us in Scotia Bank Arena. And then we got to stay in Toronto and the Cleveland Cavaliers will play us on a Monday, the next day. Now, that Monday game against the Cavs here in Toronto will be on Peacock and it’ll be the first game the Raptors get shown on the new NBC uh TV deal. So, that’ll be interesting to see the Raptors shown on NBC for the first time in like 25 years. So, yeah, we get all these Cleveland games out of the way. By that game, we’ll have played the Cavaliers. three of our four games for the year and that is very early in the season. So hopefully the Cavs will have some problems at the beginning of the year, maybe not as strong as they go into the season further and we can surprise them. And if we’ve beaten the Cavs two out of the three games by that point by the Peacock game, that’ll be a good litmus test to see where we are with the season, guys. I think we should get at least one against them. But if we can win two out of three against the Cavs at that point, that’s going to be a really big deal because two of them will be in Cleveland and one of them will be in Toronto. Yeah, Thanksgiving game will be the day before Thanksgiving. It’ll be in Toronto against the Indiana Pacers and Seakum. So, yeah, that’s great. Then another road trip starts on the weekend and we’re going to go to Charlotte on Saturday, November the 29th and play the Hornets. But then this is the fishy thing and this is where it’s really shady for this season. We go to New York to play the Knicks on the Sunday, the second night of a back-to back. Now, what was I just talking about? They seem to be shady with the backtobacks where they give us tough Eastern Conference opponents on the second night of the backtoback. So, we’re going to go play LaMelo Ball and the Charlotte Hornets in Charlotte on a Saturday and then we got to turn around and come to uh New York and play in Madison Square Garden against the Knicks. This is the thing. Every single Knicks game this season is fishy as [ __ ] I’m gonna say this right now. You would know these people are have a lawsuit against Toronto Raptors and hopefully it got cleared up. I haven’t heard anything. Did you adjudicate that Adam Silver and it just went away? I don’t know what happened to the Raptors lawsuit, that thing that happened. I don’t know. Either way, all of the Knicks games are fishy this year. Almost uh I think two or three of them, two of them are on the second night of a backtoback. And then the third game of that we’re playing the Knicks is the first game back after a long West Coast road trip at Scotia Bank Arena. And we all know the phenomena of long road trips coming back to home and then kind of having a weird game when you first get back. Yeah. So, two, three out of the four New York Knicks games this year are fishy. Two of them are the second night of a backtoback after and one of them is after travel from Toronto to New York and then uh one of them is at at home for the Raptors but after they came back from a week-l long west coast road trip. That’s fishy. So they are the the one team that they game the schedule for to help against us is the Knicks this year is the one team they really did. Usually there’s a little bit of like helping the Sixers, the Knicks, and the Celtics against us with the scheduling, but it’s heavily heavily helping the Knicks against us, putting us on the second night of backto-back and two of the matchups and then the first game after a long road trip back at Scotia Bank Arena. Yeah, those are fishy. Those are fishy right there. New York getting a little bit of stressful treatment. The Nets got a little bit of special treatment also in that kind of way against us, but it shouldn’t matter. They suck, so it shouldn’t matter with them. Uh December starts with the home stand where we’re going to play Portland Trailblazers, LA Lakers, and uh Charlotte Hornets back to back. So Bronnie and Braun will show up on Thursday, uh December the 4th to play their game in Toronto against the Raptors. And then the next night, the Hornets will come in and play in Toronto against the Raptors also. So, a backto-back at home with the Lakers and the Hornets. That’s not anything bad at all. The second night is against a lower team. We got the tougher team the night before and there’s no travel because we’re staying in Toronto. There’s quite a few backtobacks that are home and home and that’s fantastic. That’s why I’m saying this schedule’s very nice to us guys. There’s a lot of good pacing. Like there’s a lot of good day on day off, day on day off stuff. And some of the big huge gaps that were part of last year, which really annoyed me, where we’d have like three or four days off in between games. And I’m like, why don’t you all just spread it out better? NBA schedule makers, why do we have to have four days off right now? We could have put a game right in the middle of this from another place where you jammed a whole bunch of games together. Now, there’s a lot more uh uh smoothing out and evening out of the schedule as far as days on, days off that make more sense. There’s a lot more one day on, one day off kind of stuff this year. And I like that a lot. I like that a lot. So, we won’t play the Boston Celtics until the first time until December the 7th, and it will be at home. And it’ll be right before the inseason tournament cup uh uh play where they go to Vegas and they do the NBA cup stuff. Now, this is the thing. I think the Raptors in each year in the NC tournament, we won f one game in the first year. We won two games in the second year. Well, this is the third year. Let’s go for three out of the four games won for the Raptors. I feel like if they can win the game against Cleveland, that’s a great start. And you know, Atlanta and Atlanta and then boom, they got to play Washington Wizards at home. Uh, and then Indiana Pacers at home. And this is all before, uh, Thanksgiving. and th those two at home against the Pacers and the Wizards are very winnable. So, if we can win those two home games in the inseason tournament and win one of the other two between Atlanta and Cleveland, I say we have a good chance of possibly making an appearance at Vegas for this cup uh playoff just because a three in one team can get there. Now, 4-0 is more likely to get there, but there are wild card spots and there will be some three in one teams that get there. So, there is a chance. I’m saying that Seymour Pape, there is a chance the Raptors could get to in season tournament play in uh Vegas uh past the inseason tournament games and and we’ll have to see. We’ll have to see if that happens. Of course, there is that long break in December for the NCE tournament and there will be two mystery games for the Raptors added in from that. And uh hopefully there’ll be ones that matter and they’re playing for the NC tournament in uh somewhere in Vegas. That’d be awesome. We’ll have to see when they get back from the inseason tournament, they go to Milwaukee and play the Bucks again. Once again, getting more of these Eastern Conference important opponents games out of the way. Out of the way. That’ll mean most of them half the Milwaukee games are played by then. Then around Christmas, the Raptors will be on the road, guys. We’re going to play uh in Brooklyn on the 21st of December, then Miami on the 23rd, and well, we’ll be in Miami uh the day before Christmas Eve. And then Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, well, Scotty will be right close to Palm Beach and be able to like just go straight there, drive there from the game afterwards. So, it it’s kind of a good schedule for the holidays for the guys. Of course, we didn’t expect to get a Christmas g day game. We don’t want one. We don’t care. In some ways, it’s a hassle. In some ways, it takes the the players away from their families on a a nice day. So, in some ways, let’s enjoy the perks. And a lot of the [ __ ] about playing on Christmas and in in the NBA is overblown anyway, guys. It’s so overblown. So, yeah, the Raptors will have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, but they will play their traditional uh uh Boxing Day game, and that Boxing Day game will be in Washington DC this year against the Wizards on the road. So, that’s a very winnable Boxing Day game, too. So, yeah, it’s good stuff. And then the end of December, the end of 2025, Golden State Warriors, Orlando, and Denver will all come to Toronto and play uh home games uh games against us at home. Now, there’s the Warriors uh Orlando back-to back there where it’s a Sunday, Monday backtoback, Warriors on Sunday at Scotia Bank Arena, and then Magic at Scotia Bank Arena on the Monday the next day. And that’s once again another one of those backto-backs where they put an important Eastern Conference opponent against us on the second night of the back toback. They’ve done that. This is a pattern. They do this. They do this. All right. January is interesting. There’s a lot of games on the road. We’re going to be on the We’re going to be road warriors in January. Of course, January is always a nice month for the Raptors because usually it’s a turn the calorie page and the Raptors get a new fresh uh u uh invigoration of energy and they try and come and they usually they’ve had really good Januaries the last couple years. So hopefully this will be true again for this January 2026 because they start the the new year out this way. They have a New Year’s Eve game, guys, where they’re going to play Denver Nuggets in Toronto on New Year’s Eve. So that’ll be fun. But they’re not playing on New Year’s Day, thank God. No backtoback over New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Day like last year, which was absolutely insane. That was a messed up schedule. I’m just gonna say that NBA that y’all made the Raptors play on Boston in Boston on New Year’s Eve and then come home and play the Nets on New Year’s Day. Yeah, that was messed up. So, yeah, they’re only going to play on New Year’s Eve against the Nuggets and Jokic. That’s when they’ll be in town to play against us. And then we get a couple days off. And then we get a a a twoame series against Atlanta in Toronto where we’re gonna play the same team, both games in Toronto, but one day in between. So Atlanta plays us uh on the 3rd of January and then the 5th of January. And that could have been a backtoback. Honestly, that’s where you could put them together. But no, the Hawks will get a day off in Toronto and to hang out and see the city and do all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I love these these back these uh two game series. Then we have a few of these in the second half of the season where we’re going to play the same team two games in a row at the same place. And the Atlanta ones at the beginning of January and it’s the first one. It’s the first one. Then we go on the road, we play Charlotte and Boston. And then there’s a Philly backto back which is both games are in Toronto. So Nick Nurse has one trip to Canada this year. He’s coming to Toronto uh on Saturday, January the 10th, and they’ll play the uh the Raptors on the Sunday and the Monday. Two days in a row. Both games against the Sixers in Scosia Bank Arena right in a row. Joe Embiid and all them. Yeah, they’re only coming up here for one trip and they’re going to play two days in a row. No day in between. We’re going to play on a m a Sunday and a Monday right in a row. That’s not a bad backtoback once again because we ain’t traveling nowhere and we’re playing the same opponent both games. So hopefully we can catch the Sixers tanking their ass off once again this year and we can kick their ass and sweep them once again this year like we did last year. That’d be awesome. Uh Kawaii and the Clippers come to Toronto on January the 15 16th. It’s a Friday, so mark your calendars if you’re a Kawaii fan, you want that. The Raptors go on their first West Coast road trip in the middle of January. They’ll go to LA first. They fly straight to LA and play the Lakers on uh the 18th of January. It’s a Sunday. And then they got to do a backtoback on this trip between uh Golden State and Sacramento, which is a California back-toback. You know, they’ll play the Warriors on a Tuesday night and then go to play Sacramento on Wednesday night. That’s not a bad backtoback. Once again, it’s a it’s similar to Utah and uh Phoenix back to back, but it’s not it’s not unreasonable travel. And in some ways the them having to play one night in Golden State and then going to play Sacramento. Sacramento is the lesser team. So it it should be an easier back toback. Then they go to Portland and then they go to Oklahoma City. The champs on the 25th of January. That’s the fivegame road trip out west. The first one Lakers, Warriors, Kings, Trailblazers, and then Thunder. And then they come back and play the Knicks at home. And that’s what I’m saying. That’s fishy as [ __ ] The Knicks are on the second night of back-to-back or at the end of a long road trip. That’s fishy. That’s fishy. And February is amazing, guys. The All-Star month is going to be one of the best months for the Raptors this season because almost all their games are at home. They’ve got uh nine games in February and six of them are at home, only three games on the road. And they’ll be playing Utah on the 1st of February. There’s a back-to-back between uh Minnesota Timberwolves on a Wednesday night and then Chicago comes in on a Thursday night. the Chicago game will be on Amazon Prime on national television in that one. So yeah, there’s another home and home backtoback. So you’re seeing a pattern like four of our backtobacks are where we play both games at home and it’s it’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal at all. Indiana and Detroit will also come through before the All-Star break. And then after the All-Star break, we go on a little mini uh Great Lakes trip to Chicago and Milwaukee. And then the Spurs and the Thunder come to Toronto and the Thunder will play the first night and then WBY and the Spurs the next night. Another back-to-back at home. Show up at the arena on Tuesday night, it’s the Thunder and Shay Gilis Alexander. Show up at the arena on Wednesday night, it’s uh it’s WBY and company with the Spurs. So yeah, these are these are tough backtobacks, but there’s no travel involved and they’re home games. So hey, the end of the month we’ll go to Washington and play our last game against them for the season. See, that’s the other thing that’s really important about this schedule is there’s a lot of good balance between the good and bad teams we have to play. Instead of throwing all the bad teams at the end of the season like they did last year and giving us all the tough teams at the beginning of the year, it’s very evenly distributed this year. And that’s why this schedule’s so much better because last year was really bad, guys. They really threw us the fire. They made us play the toughest teams in the league for the first two months. We had all of our tough games before Christmas and then at the end of the season, all of our easiest games were in the last month of the year. To be able to really gauge the team, it we couldn’t do that last year along with the injuries. So, in some ways, this year, because we’ve get a mix of top playoff teams and low bad teams mixed together, this will make it a lot easier for us to gauge the true identity of our team and how good they are when they go through a difference in opponents, like where we’re going to go, all right, we got the Wizards on this night, and then boom, we got to play the Thunder the next night. You know, that’ll be a better gauge because last year our schedule was totally uh lopsided. Totally lopsided. This year it’s a lot more e evenly distributed with Charlotte and uh uh Washington and Brooklyn games distributed all over the schedule instead of all just put right at the end of this year. They were all right at the end of the year. All of our Washington uh Charlotte and Brooklyn games were all in the last two months of the season last year. And that was bad, man. That was not good for us. March will be another road month for the Raptors. There will be on the road a lot. That will be the second West Coast road trip. in that one. Yeah. Uh they’ve played the Knicks again at the beginning of March in Toronto and that will be the fourth game. That’s the only normal game against the Knicks where there’s no interference. There’s two days off before and there’s no real weirdness about it. There’s no backtoback. So that’s the one game against the Knicks. It’s not really kind of a a schedule favoring for them, you know. Then they’re gonna play the Minnesota Timberwolves on March the 5th in Minnesota. Dallas will come to Toronto on Sunday the 8th. If you want to see Cooper Flag in Toronto, that’s your date. Then we go on the road and we have a backtoback on the road in uh down in Houston. We’ll play Fred and Kevin Durant in Houston on March the 10th. And then the next day, we got to go to New Orleans and play the Pelicans. Now, that’s a backtoback on the road. Now, you go down I 10. You just get on I 10 from Houston. You go east and you get to New Orleans and it only takes about four hours. It’s not that far. Driving, I’m saying it. Driving it only takes four hours. If you’re going to fly, it’s like a half hour flight, if that. So, this back-to-back trip is not that bad. Houston into New Orleans Pelicans. And once again, the team that’s kind of struggling and having a hard time is the second night of the backtoback. The Pelicans on the second night. Now, if it’s reversed and we’re playing the Pelicans first, and then we got to go play Fred and uh uh uh uh Sangun and uh Kevin Durant, that may be tough, but the order is the right way. The order is the right way on that one. Uh then we come back home, we play the Suns and the Pistons, and then we go on our last big road trip of the season. And this one takes us out west through Chicago. We go play the Bulls on the first way on the way out. And then we go to Denver and play them. And then the backtoback is the Phoenix, Utah back toback I talked about earlier. And then the Clippers finish that trip and we fly back and we play the Pelicans back at home on the 27th of March. So, I like these road trips being five game road trips instead of six or seven game road trips. And I also like them being only a week long. One of the things about the West Coast road trips is sometimes they can be 10 to two weeks long. 10 days to two weeks long. And that is just really grinding and really wear you down. So, a fivegame road trip that’s over seven days is way better than a six or seven game road trip that’s over 10 or 14 days. So the the having them split up the the road trips the way they did this season is very very very helpful. I’m going to say that right now because you’re not away for longer than a week in a lot of these cases. So that’s fantastic. That’s really really good. Yeah, April is pretty uh run-of-the-mill. There’s a couple notes about April for me. Like we’ve got a twoame set against Miami in April, a home and home where the Heat will come up and play us on the 7th of April, my brother’s birthday, and uh also on the 9th of April. And they won’t travel. It’s similar to the Atlanta home game series that we had with them earlier in the season. Uh yeah, and then on the second the day after the Miami Heat game, the second Miami game, we fly to New York to play the Knicks on the second night of a backtoback. And this is one of those dreaded things like a backtoback from Toronto to New York City is horrible because this means a midnight flight and flying into New York on a backtoback. you don’t get in until 4:00 a.m. And this will be a game where the Raptors are absolutely tired because of customs and being up till 3:00 or 4 in the morning. And that is definitely beneficial to the Knicks at home in Madison Square Garden at that point in the season. So yeah, the Knicks second to last game. Well, they’re helping them by giving them the second night of a backto-back where we have to travel customs and get across the border and yeah, it’s all that kind of [ __ ] The last game of the season is against the Brooklyn Nets in Toronto on April the 12th. It’s a Sunday and that’s the schedule, guys. You know, a lot of uh games are mostly going to be at 7 o’clock, but there are, you know, some afternoon games on Sundays and stuff like that. The TV uh rights have been divvied up and there it’s really confusing. It’s like all these different channels uh between Amazon and Peacock and EB ESPN espe they’re they’re they’re they’re having multiple nights and they’re sharing certain nights too. It seems very confusing, but we’ll see how it all works out in the end with the broadcasting the new broadcasters and stuff like that. So, if there’s any more you guys want to ask or add about the schedule and talking about the schedule like I have for the last half hour, please just go ahead and write in the comments. We’ll talk about the schedule. If you have any questions, anything about what I think I just said as far as about the schedule, the really shady thing is the Knicks. The Knicks games are absolutely shady this year and the little bit of shadiness around the Nets games, but like I said, the Nets games don’t matter. I do really like the home and home matchups, especially the ones with Atlanta, Philly, and Miami. Yeah, and they’re here in Toronto, which is fantastic, too. All right, let’s see what you guys are saying. Also, Cass is here. Good morning, MJ Lex and Rafrey Crew. Good morning to you, Cass. I should check in on my WNBA stuff. Yeah, it’s the last day of the regular season for our WNBA Fantasy League. And yeah, the the matchups are pretty set right now. Coolcat has got a very good lead over Kareem at this point, so she’s probably going to win her matchup. Uh JP is going to beat Edmond. And uh this is the closest matchup. James, you have a chance still to beat Logical Raptors Fanatic. It’s just you got to rise up on the last day and do it. But the other matches are all pretty set. Cass has beaten Fiercy for sure. And I’m going to get beat by MK. He’s got a 100point lead on me now at this point. The referees for today’s games, LA at Washington, Amy Bonner, Michael Price, Claire Aubrey, Indiana at Connecticut, Roy Gibian, Match Forsber, Ryan Ceano, Dallas at Las Vegas, Isaac Barnett, Randy Richardson, Fatu Sissoko Stevens, and uh Phoenix at Seattle, Eric Brutin, Agon Bazi, Jeffrey Smith, and finally Atlanta Dream at Golden State Valkyries, Tim Green, Jeff Wooten, and Bidium Maru. Yeah, get your lineup set for the last day and tomorrow playoffs will start and we have our speculative playoff matchups for our playoffs. Let me go look at it as it stands right now. I don’t know, this could change for tomorrow. The matchups right now for tomorrow are JP will play Cass in the first round as Cass is the number one seed and that’s likely to stay that way. Uh, and it looks like I will play um Coolcat as it stands right now, but I don’t know that could switch. Meredith is playing Fierce, which is the tough matchup, that four five matchup, and Kareem will play Logical Raptors Fanatic in the first round as it stands right now. We’ll see. This could shuffle up a little bit and then in the last day and seeing the results of who wins this week. So, we’ll have to see. James is saying, “Do you think Scotty is Kawawaii 2.0?” Good morning, James. Uh, you know, I’ve called him this. I’ve called him Claw 2. Yeah, I’ve called him Claw 2. And it wasn’t just a a a reference to an alien character in some sort of show. No, Claw 2, meaning Claw number two, because he has the same hands as Kawhai. There’s a lot of similarities between Scotty and Kawhai. I said that around his rookie year. People laughed at me, but honestly, I see it more and more. And the stuff about it that is similar is not just the huge giant hands in the stocks and steals and blocks. It’s also the way he works in the post with his turnaround shot and the way he’s like making his mid-range get better and better. So, yeah, I’m okay with this comparison. I think you being like Kawawaii is not a bad thing. And I think Scotty is more like Kawawaii than most players in this league. So, yeah, I think Colin Murray Bole’s got a little bit of Kawhi Leonard in him, too. So, we’ll just have to see as it goes on. Scotty is his own person, but there’s definitely Kawawaii attributes to him. I thought that the the Scotty’s a mashup of three players. I’ve said this historically. I told him myself personally. I told him on Twitch one day. I said, “You, Scotty, you’re like Urban Magic Johnson, Kawhi Leonard, and Tim Duncan all rolled into one.” And some people hear that list and they laugh at me for it. No, no, no, no. The skills that are there are there. the passing and vision and creativity of Irvin Johnson, the uh very good big hands and steals and blocks and def uh you know uh mid-range shots of Kawhi Leonard and then uh sensibility of team uh duty to be a team defender like Tim Duncan roving around out there getting shot blocks and uh helping on defense in the ways that are optimal for his team to win. that that that those are the three attributes I see in Scotty and why I compare them to compare him to those three to those three right there. Yeah, Kaz is saying so disappointing that Isaiah Moore didn’t play. Yeah, I don’t know what happened with Isaiah. Uh maybe he got picked up by somebody else and he was gone and well the Blackjacks missed him. It really was in the second half the Ottawa just totally lost their gas. They kept up really well in the first half. In fact, they ran out to a nine to zero lead at the very beginning of the game. Scar Bro having a really hard time getting into it. The Gatnau crowd was firmly on Ottawa’s side, but it was just it was just they were tired. You know, they only had nine players, both teams for the game. They only had nine players, just five stars and four reserves. And the one player for Ottawa that they were expecting to step up was Justin Jackson. Justin Jackson is kind of a borderline NBA player. and well he was hurt and he did not play they and so they were down to eight players all of a sudden Ottawa so they only had eight bodies to play and that fatigue really did become a factor and plus you took away some of their premium players like Moore and uh uh uh Smart they were in trouble and in the second half they got uh beat up and bullied by the size of the the scar bro shooting stars they outrebounded the hell out of them Khalil uh Miller broke broke a record. He got like 18 rebounds by himself. He was like 17 and 18 for the game. Double double and uh they just dominated him down low. The the Scar Bro Shooting Stars are a very big team and they have some big players that play very big. And Donovan Williams, Khalil Miller, and uh Foster Jr. these guys are very big wide shoulder guys that dominate the boards. And that was a big part of it. There were some guys on the black jacks are valiantly fighting, but they just didn’t have the firepower. And then Tavian Smith, you just gonna go off and do what he does and just bomb a long three that’s almost half court and it just deflates the other team that they were really tired. I mean in some ways Rob Black was saying these guys are sweating so hard you can tell that Ottawa’s just kind of giving up. So in some ways they gave up in the third and that’s why that margin was so crazy. That’s why that margin was so crazy. Fierce saying glad our schedule is much better this year. However, I would have felt confident that our current squad could face any adversity as they are extremely solid. My only wish is health. I love that sentiment so much. And Fiery, you can get a dunk for it. That’s exactly right. We want to send a lot of positive uh energy to the Raptors for good health this whole entire season. 104. You got the golf 104. Fiery Salsa with your dunks there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this schedule is way more conducive for Darko to work with. Last year when they asked Darko about the schedule, he said, “I don’t care what the schedule is. They’re going to give us a schedule. we just got to go through it. He knew that it was not an easy schedule or a fair schedule last year. He was kind of nodding to that, but he said, “I don’t care. This is our job. The NBA makes the schedule. We have to go do it.” And well, that’s the way he looks at it. But this schedule’s a lot more favorable, a lot more friendly, a lot more doable, let’s just put it that way, than the one last year. I could see us having a lot of success at the beginning of the year even with some tough games and getting some good momentum right from the start and hopefully having a very good record this year. So, we’ll have to see. You know, the East is wide open and nobody is the top dog anymore and Indiana’s not the best. They’re the Eastern Conference champions, right? But they’re not going to be the best because of Hallebertton. The champion from last year, the Celtics is not going to be the best because of Tatum. And you know, the Knicks I have no faith in. They got Mike Brown as their coach now. And honestly, I think they’re gonna be a dumpster fire. And are we really thinking the Sixers are gonna rise up? Milwaukee is gonna be bad. I’m telling you, the spot is there to ascend to for the Toronto Raptors this year. And everybody else may not see this completely because they want to disregard us or just poo poo us and say, “Oh, the Raptors wouldn’t do this.” No. If the opening is there, we’ll run right through it and run right up to the top and kick some ass. And you all mark this right now. This is August the 17th. The Raptor freak is saying this right now and if this outcome comes out by next April, everybody will say, “Damn, that dude did call it because it’s like the P the rush field just opened right up. The Raptors ran the ball right through the open field right down to the end of the touchdown because it just opened up that way because that’s the way I look at the Eastern Conference in the NBA this year. It’s opening up and it’s ready for a team like Orlando or us or Detroit or Atlanta to run that ball up the field because an opening’s there. We might as well do it, Brandon, Scotty, R.J., we might as well do it. Why don’t we run the ball up the field and get at the top of the Eastern Conference standings because the standings are just open for business for somebody to do that. That’s right. That’s what I’m saying right there. That’s what I want to see. That’s right. Cool saying, “Good morning, Rapree crew.” Good morning to you, coach. Always good to see the coach Cool Cat in the chat on a Sunday. That’s right. Isaac Campbell’s got a menagery of uh Raptor faces here. He’s got Brandon Ingram. got uh RJ Barrett, he’s got Emanuel Quickley, he’s got Scotty, he’s got Garrett, he’s got Jamal Shed, he’s got Orish Shamsh, he’s got Jaca Pu, he’s got Darko Rayakovich, he’s got the Dunk, and he’s got Mo, and he’s got me. I love that Mo has got Raptors on her shirt now. This is awesome. Look at these awesome emoticons. Nin, you did good job. Thank you, Tom Duke. Also, thank you, Tom Duke. Also, Fierce saying, “I couldn’t watch the game, but looked at the box score.” No, Isaiah Moore, no. Dang, Adele. Uh, add to that. No, Javvante Smart. I said to myself, “We’re so cooked.” You were. You were. You were. Yeah, you were. So, Carbo is kind of a team of destiny right now. They’ve got a swagger to them. In some ways, they’re a weird team. They They um they don’t shoot free throws well. They really are bad at free throws and that has been a huge Achilles heel for them, but they are giant and they outrebound the hell out of the other team and they block a lot of shots and they dominate with size. And you add a street baller like Turquian Smith and man, they are something. And that guy off the bench from Toronto, uh, Kobe Elvis, he’s pretty good backup, man. He’s a pretty good backup. The bench for the Scar Bro Shooting Stars has been very strong. Very, very strong. Miller and Elvis, huge, huge players for them off the bench. Huge players for them off the bench. That’s right. That’s right. Isaac saying the turnover of players on that team is wild. This is This is something that that level of basketball, whether it’s 905, whether it’s CBL, you’re going to have guys coming and going. Frank Kaminsky, sorry, bro. I I don’t know where you went. Where’d you go? We needed you on 905. Oh, he’s just gone, bro. It’s just how it happens. It’s like in some ways they want to be transitory so just in case they get the call to the bigger league, they can just shoot on out. And well, this happens in CBL. This definitely happens CBL. It happens in GLeague also. Same kind of thing. That’s right. Cool saying the first 20 games are tough. I mean, I want to see what you’re saying about that because I don’t totally see this. Once again, I’m going to tell you right now, Atlanta is very doable to beat in the first game. I want Scotty to remember that game where AJ Griffin hit that gamewinner against us a couple years ago. You need to remember that receipt, Scotty Barnes. We’re going to Atlanta for the first game of the season. Y’all beat Atlanta on both games in Atlanta last year and uh a home and home with the game separating. I know cuz my family went the second one and Scotty high-fived my nephew Harrison on the way out. And I’m just saying y’all can go to Atlanta and win this one, too. remember that buzzer beater by AJ Griffin, Scotty Barnes, and kick their ass the first game of the season. Get that win and get on a high note right away. Atlanta’s got a whole new cast of characters with Nel and Chris Staps and a couple other new players and they’ve switched out a bunch of players. They may not know what the [ __ ] they’re doing yet. So, we need to jump on them right away. That’s how we win it right there at Cool Cat. We got Atlanta, a new nucleus in Atlanta. And honestly, we we we’re working together in Madrid already this summer. Brandon Ingram’s further along. our our new our newest addition Brandon Ingram is going to be more integrated with us than anybody else because he’s been on the team for eight months already. So, I’m telling you this is they’re right for a picking. And don’t get scared of Milwaukee. Come on. You going to tell me the Milwaukee Bucks are tough this year? No, they aren’t. They’re going to be soft. They’re going to be middle of the pack and maybe even play or less. So, we should win both those games to start. And then, while the Texas twostep may be a little tough, I would say both those teams have a lot to figure out at the beginning of the season. also with new faces and new players like Cooper Flag and uh new players on San Antonio. Uh you know, so I I would say these are all doable games because these are teams that are disoriented with new players and they’re figuring out their [ __ ] and it’s better to play them at the beginning of the season than later on when they figure out their stuff. So, it’s actually really good. It’s really really good. Houston will be a tough game. I believe Houston will be a tough game. The second home game of the season, that’s the game when Fred will come back to Toronto. If you want to see Fred Adriana, it’s uh October the 29th. Uh Houston will be in Toronto for that game. Cleveland in season tournament game by far. That’ll be a tough game for sure. But those two games really I mean I I don’t see it. I don’t see it. Cool. You’re saying 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20. So that includes all our inseason tournament games. Now in that section that you said is going to be so tough. We’re going to play Charlotte twice. We’re gonna play Washington in the inseason tournament game. We’re gonna play Philly. We’re gonna play Brooklyn. We’re gonna play Brooklyn twice. We’re gonna play Memphis. And they’re disoriented and bad. I don’t see what you’re saying, Cool Cat. Last year, the first 20 games were way tougher this year. No, no, no, no, no, no, Cool Cat. The first 20 games are not tough. They’re evened out. There’s good teams, there’s bad teams, there’s mediocre teams, and there’s a lot of room for the Raptors to go above and beyond and beat any of them. So, yeah, I don’t agree with this. Last year, the first 30 games were tough. The first 30 games were tough last year. This year, no, I’m not going to accept this comment because it’s not true. The first 20 games of this season are not tough. We’re playing Washington. We’re playing Charlotte twice. We’re playing the Nets twice in those 20 games. No, no, no, no, no. There’s a percentage of games that are a easy that are mixed in with the tough ones. So, I can’t say this. I can’t say this. Trevor’s here. Good to see Trevor J. Words of Wisdom. Commissioner of Fund. Trevor Jay, how are you, sir? How are you today, sir? Uh we all woke up this morning by our own strength, but but the love of God will allow us to see another day. Love kindness. I love today. There you go. Like stay in the moment. Stay present and uh have gratitude in your hearts and your life will be happy. Those are the keys of to victory and happiness is just stay present. Stay in the now. Stay in the now and just be very grateful for the great things you have. Roof over your head, clothes on your back, food on the table. That’s the basics. All that extra stuff, the greedy stuff that the billionaires want, they’re never happy because they have to have every everything more and more, more and more, they never get there. It’s insatiable. Insatiable. And these [ __ ] are psychopaths trying to satiate their insatiable [ __ ] Yeah. They need to get back to meager things and things where they can just be happy and gratitude for just having the basics. And then maybe they’ll be humbled and then maybe they will understand truly what the meaning of life is because they don’t. They don’t understand it. I mean, Jeff Bezos’s mother died recently. I wonder like, does that make him humanistic more? Probably not. It didn’t take like he went to space and looked at the earth and it’s like, what did he think? No, he didn’t think about how that’s a beautiful world where there’s a lot of people there and like we should care for humanity. No, he thought about ways to exploit us even further in his business ways and [ __ ] like that. Now, I wonder, you know, did you feel anything in your heart when your mother died recently, Jeff Bezos? Because to me, you’re not a human being. You’re a piece of [ __ ] is what I say right there. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Let’s keep going. James is saying Tim Duncan most underrated star. I completely agree. Tim Duncan never tooted his own horn and he should have in some ways because he deserved it. Well, this is up to people like us, James, to toot the horn of Tim Duncan and put it out there how just badass he is. He honestly is a top five, top 10 greatest player of all time. And uh I I never deny what Tim Duncan has done in this game. Nope. That was one of the most winningest players in the history of the game ever. Ever. That’s right. Pierc saying in regards to national TV games, of course the darling Lakers have more than the Pacers who actually went to the finals. Well, you know, in some ways it’s like, you know, I get it. The Lakers are one of the most popular teams in the world. And of course, they’re going to be put on TV. In some ways, that’s just how it is. LeBron’s going to be retiring at some point. They got to juice him, get all the juice out of him as they can, you know? So, I mean, I’m not surprised by any of this. Once again, I don’t feel slighted by Christmas Day games or national TV games. I don’t give a [ __ ] about that anymore. In some ways, they they want to make it more status and elite. That only speaks to their own inadequacies that they have to make things like this to make themselves feel better. It’s just like the president, you know, it’s the same thing. They had to build themselves up or make some sort of elitist class thing just to make themselves feel better. That’s kind of sad and pathetic if you think about it that it’s like, “Oh, we feel great because we have to play on Christmas.” Okay. Yeah, you you bootlicking sad person. You know, most people should get Christmas off. In a just world, you don’t have to labor on Christmas Day. Okay. You’re so happy about that. You get to play on Christmas Day. Oh, you’re on national TV. Okay, you go ahead and gatekeep and keep people out from being seen on the national scene by not giving them national games. I don’t care. None of that matters. The secret of the Raptors great, fantastic basketball team and the entertainment that is derived from watching them, that can be our own secret. The whole rest of the world don’t need to see it. They’ll find it. Maybe they’ll find it in ways that they can find it online. They can be hidden, but people will find them if they want to see them. And uh you know what? They’ll watch them whether they’re on national TV or not. Who cares? And like you said, Fiery, in the chat, I saw what you said. They’re going to get more games by the end of the season because we’re going to be entertaining. We’re going to be winning and we’re going to be fun. And instead of taking games away from us like last year, they’re probably going to add a game or two by the end of the year to the Raptors. That’s what I think right there. That’s right. That’s right. Boom goes the dynamite. Boom goes the dynamite. Yeah, Kareem Thomas is saying this. Lex, what part of the schedule do you think is the hardest? Like maybe like a 10 game stretch. All right, let me go look at it real quick. [Music] Um, you know, they did a good job of divvying up the long road trips with uh good and bad teams. You know, I think that there’s going to be a really tough stretch in January where we go on that road trip and it’ll kind of be like starting with the Indiana game. We’ll go to Indiana and play uh Pascal and the Pacers and then we had to come home, play the Clippers, and then hit the road right away and we’ll play the Lakers, the Warriors, the Kings, the Blazers, and then the Thunder at the end of that trip and then the Knicks when we get back and then we have to go to Orlando. That may be the toughest stretch right there. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Yeah. And the Philly back to back before it. That’s a stretch that I think’s pretty tough. The one in January there. Um, you know, there there it’s it’s it’s, you know, it really is evened out so well that it’s hard for me to see these stretches. But I think that road trip in January around that time is going to be a little tough. That time will be a little tough. But the rest of it doesn’t really stand out to me as being too difficult. It’s very even and very like usable. Like even the Boston games are hidden and not that uh scary or ominous. Of course, they’re not as ominous and scary as a team with Tatum out, right? Uh so, all right, let’s keep going. Uh Stargate here. Good morning, Rapid Freak family. Good morning to you, Stargate. I like the schedule. It’s okay. It’s not terrible and it’s not amazing. It’s just okay. Staying healthy is the key to a successful season. Yeah, we want the tough spots like the one I just pointed out to Kareem because those are the tests. We want the ability to have beats of every other day games, which a lot of this is. He’s a day on day off, day on day off. A lot of that this season. And then um also we want the chance to have a a range of opponents that aren’t just all tough all in a row. We got a tough game, a easy game, a tough game, a mediocre game, an easy game, a mediocre game. you know, that that’s the kind of like diversity we want and the games coming at us is we don’t want to get just browbeat by a really tough schedule where every single team is just so tough. But I’ll say this, the league has gotten worse since last year. I’m telling you right now, the league was kind of peaking with a lot of teams peeking up and looking really good, but a lot of them were sused out as pretenders and we found out in the playoffs. And this will be the same kind of thing except this year I feel like some of the moves that have happened this off seasonason have actually made teams worse that were good last year. And I think the Knicks will look like a worse team this year. I think they’re going to look way worse. Milwaukee is going to look way worse, too. So, and I think Orlando’s not going to be that good either this year, guys. It’s going to be interesting. It’s going to be very, very interesting. Fiercy, I read that one about Fiercy Kareem saying Orlando, Atlanta, and the Raptors are looking for a good jockeying position in the depleted East. Yeah, Detroit. Put Detroit in there. In fact, I have more faith in Detroit and us than the other two teams. I have more faith in the Pistons and the Raptors than the Magic and the Hawks in this season coming up. I do. Stargate saying the first six games in October healthy. The Raptors match up pretty good with all those teams. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s a good spread out and you know there’s some really good test uh foot puts you into the fire right away. That Cleveland inseason tournament game on Halloween is going to be a big huge test and it’s going to be fun to watch. We’re gonna have to see what happens there. Have to see what happens. Military man, good morning, sir. We do this stream on the Raptors every single morning, 9:30 a.m. Talking Raptors, talking team Canada basketball, talking CBL, talking Toronto Tempo, talking uh basketball in Canada in general. Uh Military Man saying, “Will we beat the Hawks on opening night? Both teams fully healthy?” I think so. I think so. If we’re both fully healthy, like like I was saying earlier, I think that the Hawks have more new faces than we do. Our turnover wasn’t that big this off season. We’ve added Sandro Mamu as a backup center and we got all our guys pretty much back from last year. Brandon Ingram’s been secretly in the fold with us since the trade deadline and he’s been working out with us on the down low behind the scenes and he’s very much more ahead than people will think at the beginning of the season because he’s been very much paying attention a lot and like learning everything behind the scenes and he’s a lot more up to speed than people are going to think. you know, he’s been healthy since June and so he’s been practicing with the Raptors all summer and he was in Madrid with the team at the mini training camp a couple weeks ago. So, I think a lot of people may be shocked at just how integrated Brandon is when we show up with him healthy and on our lineup. And in some ways, I would argue that people like Chrisaps and Nikuel and the other new guys on the Hawks are gonna have to get more integrated and that may be more difficult, especially with Porzingis being such a central player. But I I think that Brandon is going to be on the down low coming in already to play with us in a right way because they’re already I mean, he’s very much a basketball student and he’s talked to Darko about his philosophies and what he visions and he’s been he’s taking it all in. He’s getting himself downloaded to be the kind of player the Raptors want him to be on the court and he’s excited about it. I can tell too. Brandon wants to reclaim his NBA career and show people who he really is. And he knows that Kawhai did something special in Toronto and he wants to do it, too. So, we may very much see a Brandon Ingram this year that is revitalized, healthy, and absolutely devastating power in the NBA this year. I fully expect it. So, I think that yeah, when we go to Atlanta for opening night against the Hawks that we have a really good chance to match them up and uh you know get that win on the road in the first game of the season. Scotty is healthy, Emanuel’s healthy, RJ’s healthy, Yakob’s healthy, Brandon’s healthy, we got our starters, and then we got our amazing bench. We have a very underrated bench that nobody’s talking about. We’re very, very deep. and we’re gonna be very, very, very difficult to play because we have a a starting five that’s offensively super gifted that have all kinds of different weapons that they can do. And if they’re losing because they’re getting beat, we got these defensive stoppers are going to come in off the bench. It’s going to be a little reminiscent of the Oklahoma City crew from the finals this year with Caruso and Kase Wallace. We’re going to have guys like that coming out hounding everybody. Jamal Shed, Elijah Martin, Chucky Heppern, uh Grady Dick, and uh Oshai Baji, Jacobe Walter, the people like that. We have a very, very good bench, and nobody’s going to talk about that in the mainstream raptor, uh mainstream media in the NBA, but they’ll find out as the season goes on, and they’ll report on it by the end of the year. Watch, they will. Good to see you, military man. I hope we’ll see you more often here in the channel. Thanks for the question. Uh, Kat saying, “NBA being sketchy with national games will adjust as usual over the coming seasons. Uh, they um assume but forget about league parody. Snub teams will surprise once again.” It depends. I mean, it is really, it’s not necessarily how good the team is, honestly. That’s obvious with the Lakers treatment. The Lakers have been a 500 or below team for years uh, recently. And it doesn’t matter how many games they get. They’re going to get all the games anyway, even if they’re a loser losing team. So, it’s really about marketing. It’s about marketability. It’s about fandom. And there’s a huge Lakers fan base that will tune in and watch them. And that’s why they get the games even if their team’s poor. It’s just that’s part of it. In some ways, they’re going to schedule the national TV games for what they think the people want. And well, maybe they’re not totally right on all it. That’s what I would say right there. Yeah. Fiery saying, “Agree, Cool.” Uh, Military Man saying, “I believe Scotty will make Jaylen Johnson’s life terrible that game. Same with Trey. We got a lot of good defenders. They’re going to put their best defender on Ingram. Then what about Barnes and RJ? This is the thing. This is the If this is a boat with leaks in it, you can’t plug all the holes. I’m sorry. Because the Raptors have these weapons and they’re diversified. You got to worry about the quick change of speed of Emanuel Quickley in transition. You got to worry about RJ Barrett just barreling to the lane like a freight train and just barreling through people and laying it up like LeBron would. You got to worry about the diversity of Scotty’s game. Whether he’s going to do stuff in the mid-range and the turnarounds and the post or he’s going to bomb threes or he’s just going to be a creative passer and get guys open. You got to worry about the dimension of Brandon now. And that may be the most devastating add-on to our team going forward is having a guy who’s more like the Slim Reaper than the Slim Reaper is at this point because I’m saying I mean I could I could predict this right now that Brandon Ingram may be more like Kevin Durant than Kevin Durant is at this point. And that could be a lot of fun for the Raptors this year, especially with clutch situations where we absolutely need a basket like Kawawaii used to do for us. Well, Brandon’s gonna be doing that for us this year. And Military Man’s exactly right there. You know, to try and guard the Raptors starting five is a nightmare because usually you have one guy you can key on, but you can’t. They’re all going to be potently dangerous. Even Yakob. YaKob has his own set of problems that he presents for people. So, I I really love this. I love what you’re saying about him getting Jaylen Johnson. Jaylen Johnson is weird because Hawks fans love him. They look at him and they overvalue him like crazy. I think he’s a talented guy. I think he’s a great player. He’s got a lot of potential, but he hasn’t done jack [ __ ] in his career hardly and they get ahead of themselves and saying, “Oh, he’s this and this.” And they, you know, I see it on social media spaces where Hawks fan will be arguing that Jaylen Johnson’s better than Scotty Barnes. And I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, no. just stop. And that’s why I want to see what you’re saying here. I want to see Scotty lock him up and make it no doubt who the better player in the NBA is, Barnes, over Johnson. Oh, yeah. I I hear this comp uh comparison. I’m just like, what what are you saying? Jaylen Johnson’s better than Scotty Barnes. You’re crazy. You’re crazy. Put down the Atlanta strip club hotwing that’s got you all intoxicated with craziness. Seriously. Seriously, man. Yeah. I I’ve also said this military man any team that is built around Trey Young is going to lose because Trey Young is a high usage low effic efficiency player and he’s a defensive liability and in some ways Atlanta’s doomed as long as their team is built around him. It’s similar to Luca in Dallas. You’re doomed to lose every single time because there’s certain deficiencies with your franchise player that are just going to get you to that road and that outcome in the end anyway. I think Trey Young’s a talented player, a great player, but in some ways he’s not a winning player in the NBA. And it it’ll get proven every time where it’s like, look, you have a deficiency on defense. And in some ways, you can be exploited. And if you’re not making your shot, well, your team’s sunk because they can’t do anything with you in absence. It’s kind of like the Indiana Pacers without Hallebertton. It’s a similar kind of player. It’s a similar kind of player. Great comment. Uh once again, military man. It’s interesting stuff, man. Uh James St. Lex, can we be a top four team in the East? Of course. Of course. We can do this for sure. I think that we can. I think we’ll be top six at least if if we’re I want to be a regular playoff team. I don’t want to be in the playin this year. Let’s get a bonafideed playoff spot because in some ways, once again, that’s another way that they kind of put down other teams. Oh, you’re a playin team. You’re not a full playoff team. No, let’s get that full playoff team this year. We deserve it. Brandon said it’s his promise. He said, “We’re going to go to the playoffs.” He didn’t say playin, guys. When Brandon was interviewed this summer, he said, “I like this team. I think it was very good and we’re going to get in the playoffs.” He said playoffs. He didn’t say play in, so let’s not mess around. And if we get in the top four, that’s home court right there. That’s home court. A military man saying one thing about the Hawks is they don’t have much on on ball scores. I feel their offense is going to take a hit when Trey is off. Should go on big runs. Yeah. And I’m not even sure like I it’ll be interesting to scout them for the first game of the season because there has been a shuffle up there. There is a lot of different parts on their team all of a sudden. Like Clint Capella is gone and they’ve switched them for Porzingis and that’s a big difference in some ways. You’re getting a more offensive center but maybe less rebounding and defense because Porzingis is not as good as Capella. So we have to see where these kind of switches and how it all lays out for that team. And there there’s been a lot of movement with that team. So I’m not I I’ll have to look at them closely the day of the game. I’ll do my preview in the morning and I’ll kind of uh gauge how I see their personnel now with their current unit. Uh you know Dyson Daniels is a amazing talent and uh he is really coming up and like man he’s really something. But you know where where are their weaknesses? Where are their strengths? And I think that their their strength of having Trey Young as a franchise player is a strength in some ways but it’s a huge weakness also. Huge weakness. Yeah. I think the onball uh score scores uh thing is definitely true. Definitely true about them. Fiery saying, “Going to a brunch with my high school friends.” Okay, enjoy your Sunday, fam. Well, look at the Monicon parade. She’s going to have some pancakes, maybe an egg, cup of coffee. There’s the egg and frying in the frying pan. And there’s a waffle. There you go. Brunch time. Hello. Brunch is served. Let’s go. FY saying the whole Raptor squad is going to be a problem. I like the dichotomy between the starters offensive juggernautness. Like I really do want Darko to leave two of the starters out on the court at all times. Like if it’s RJ and Emanuel, if it’s Jacob and Scotty, if it’s Brandon and RJ, I just want to have that firepower from the from the starters out there at all times. We need an offensive outlet so there’s no stagnation with our offense. If we keep some of the high quality, most gifted scorers out on the court, we should always have a a a release valve for getting a basket in tough times where things are kind of not going exactly right. That’s why you got a Brandon Ingram on your team. It’s that there’s no there’s no bumps in the road where you’re not scoring for like three minutes. That’s why I hope Darko has a plan with his rotation where he’s always going to have at least one of the barbecue out there, if not two of them. And that would be good. And then you’re you’re you’re bringing in guys like Shed and Abaji and Jacobe and Sandra Mamu that in some ways they add an active presence that’s a very defensive presence and also a very like agitating presence. And that that’s the thing I love that I love that aspect of like you know we can bring in defensive players to clamp down but keep some of the offensive firepower from the starters out there also at the same time. you know, you know, there’s a lot of promise in that and the benchmob 2.0 hopefully will be coming this year will have that effect. I mean, in the past when we had the benchmob before with Dear and Kyle and Yonas and the starters, there were a lot of games where the Raptors were getting beat, the starters were getting beat and then Fred and uh Norman and YaKob would come out as the bench mob and they’d come take the lead as the bench and they would outscore the other team. You know, I I think this could happen a lot. There may be some games where our starters are flat offensively and they’re absolutely horrible and they’re getting their butt kicked because they’re not playing the best defense either and the other team gets a 10-point lead. But then we put in Shed and his crew and all of a sudden we’re winning in the next couple minutes because they’re just like that. So, we’ll have to see. We’ll have to see. That’s a real sign of a true benchmark is what I just described. If we can see that happen right there. That’s right. Piery got the mic drop. There you go. There you go. There you go. Uh Mon’nique is here. Good to see the super fan. Monnique Lawrence, the greatest, our Facebook uh leader and uh just an in general uh a beacon of hope and light and positivity in this world and especially a role model in our Raptors uh fan uh nation. That’s right. Let’s see what Mo’s saying this morning. Good morning, Rapree crew. Very balanced schedule. I like it. 15 backtobacks. These guys are prepared, etc. Yeah, the 15 backtobacks are not that bad. Seriously going over them, there’s a lot of home and home back to backs where we just stay in Toronto for both games. The some of the travel ones are like Houston to New Orleans, Sacramento from uh San San Francisco, you know, they’re really really u not ridiculous. And the another thing is I like that the NBA is being more green friendly. I like these series where they stay in the same city, less jet travel. It all helps with emissions and trying to be more green. And it’s like it’s stupid for teams to have to fly across the nation here and then come here and then go there and there and there like a lot of zigzag stuff. You want the the course of your trips to make sense so that you’re not flying back and forth in time zones and all over the place extra that you don’t have to. They came out with the stats about the kilometers traveled and the Raptors are in the bottom third of the league for less miles traveled this season in their schedule. So that’s a good sign too right there. That’s a good sign too right there. Isaac’s got the team on blast. I’d love to see it. Military man saying, “Let’s say is Dyson on Ingram, Johnson on Scotty.” Yeah, that could be very likely. That could be very likely. Cool. R.J. would love to drop 27 on your third best defender. IQ would be would love a a bad defender on the perimeter. Let’s not forget Yak is a beast inside. Yeah, this is all exactly right. And uh you know, Porzingis against YaKob. Jacob could kind of muscle him a little bit. the length of Porzingis is is a little bit of a problem, but uh you know if he uses strength and bodies him, you know, Porzingis can fold and get out of the way and Yach can go up and be very powerful. Yeah, IQ and RJ could be a very big part of this scenario as far as like who else is on their starters for the Hawks. Who else is going to come and take care of R.J. after those premium defenders that they’ve got are taking on uh Brandon and Scotty. This is exactly right. There may be a kind of a zone uh defense where they’re kind of just kind of playing on the ball and switching and I don’t know. We’ll have to see how teams deal with us and we’ll have to see how Darko develops our offensive system and especially with new weapons with Ingram involved. Ingram involved. Yeah, good stuff. I like the focus on the first game, the Atlanta game that uh Military Man’s putting on here. Yeah, let’s not forget about Grady as well. That’s right. Yeah, Grady could come out there and hopefully be instant offense for us off the bench. I see him and Jacobe as kind of a similar kind of role as far as like you know we got two guys that are options for scoring a lot off the bench really fast if we need that. And in some ways I want Grady to really be aggressive with his three this year coming into games. And uh you know, Jacobe has a whole growth path as a scorer that I’d like to see continue in his second year where um you know, he’s mixing it up with the drives to the basket with the three-point shooting. And it’s great. If one of them is not having a good night, well, they get the bench for that night and hopefully the other one’s hitting, you know. So, there’s some options there. And Abaji is involved in this, too. Of course, military man saying even then, uh even then Jaylen Johnson is an okay defender. He can’t hold Scotty all game. Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t even think that it’s it’s the kind of thing like they’re going to have to uh respect Scotty and keep tabs on him, but we’re our focal points won’t be Scotty. In some ways, it’s kind of like Scotty will be forgotten about because maybe we’re going through Brandon and R.J. so much that Scotty becomes an afterthought. And then later in the game, Scotty turns it on and says, “You know what? You guys haven’t been guarding me all game because you have to guard R.J., you have to guard Brandon. And now it’s my time and I’m gonna rise up at the end and win the game for us by dominating you in the low post and oh crap. Oh [ __ ] we forgot about Scotty being able to do this. The Hawks coaches said, you know, that kind of stuff could happen, man. I’m telling you. G saying the dog squad will cause problems to the Hawk bench. That’s the other thing. If we have this underrated young bench that nobody’s giving respect to because a lot of them were rookies last year is uh you know, we’ll catch people by surprise. And I really do believe that like everybody who says the Raptors aren’t good enough to compete in the NBA, you’re wrong because we’re so much under 25 years old. And we have so many guys that are working so damn hard this summer as far as uh increasing their game and their skills, getting their bodies better. There’s so much investment of time and effort and these guys want this that they’re going to come up as individuals and then as a collective they come up as a team. And everybody keeps saying, “Oh, we don’t have a good enough team to compete and be a champion.” [ __ ] Let these youngsters grow like Oklahoma City did. And you could see them get Larry O’Brien in the next few years. It’s just that, you know, we got to do it the right way. It’s no rushing and skipping step steps like trying to land a big free agent or go and tank to get to the top of the draft. No, you do it correctly. You draft smart. you make good decisions on all your decisions because making mistakes in the new salary cap era is a is a death death bell for your team and being able to compete. You make a misstep as a GM right now. That is a big big problem. You can’t be uh casual about being a GM and like, oh, we’ll get it next time. No, you need to hit it every time on your picks because this is the new NBA and parody is strong and that’s one of the ways you’re competing. We’re competing through Bobby Webster and Bobby Webster needs to be a capologist and he needs to get the absolute best out of the cap and the ability of what he can do with our roster and in some ways he can’t afford to make a misstep with a free agent or a draft pick because we need to make everything hit. And then when all these guys are on our team, Jamal Shed gets better, Jacobe Walter gets better, great Dick gets better, Scotty Barnes gets better, we get better as a team because they all throw in their bit of getting better and then boom, cumulatively all of a sudden the Raptors are a top four team in the East and people are like, “Holy [ __ ] how did they get so good so far?” They were young and they grew up and they got better and they developed and they developed together as a core. That’s the other part of it, too. That’s why we can’t get impatient Raptors fans. We need to let Darko cook on the simmer and the cook that he’s doing to build this team to where it’s supposed to go. And uh so many NBA fans are so microwave culture. They want everything now like Door Dash. I’m like, “No, it’s not how it works.” And NBA, all the successful teams have years and years of building up to their NBA championships. Denver didn’t win overnight. They had to do it over time. And that’s just how it is. Oklahoma City built up to get to where they got to this year. And the Raptors have to build up again. just like they did with Demar and Kyle to get to 2019. And we’re going to do it. We’re doing it right now. We’re currently in the middle of it. And I really think that the progress is going really well. The the charisma and the attitudes and the aurora of the team is just really high. And these young players are super skilled. And I do really believe in the vision and the roster build of what we’re doing. Some people may be confused by it. They’re like, “Well, the Raptors don’t make any sense. What are they?” You’re not trying to look at us to make sense. You already told yourself in your head, I’m gonna look at the Raptors and act confused. If you really looked at it with open eyes and susted it out, you might have an opinion of it. There’s like, oh crap, maybe they are going to do something really good because they figured out something. That’s how I look at it right there. That’s right. Mo saying, uh, bring on the season. I’m excited and ready. Happy for Evan Gillard. I always send him messages after his games and he sees them. Yeah, Evan Gillard was a huge factor in Calgary beating Vancouver yesterday because it was the eliming and they had a target score and the Calgary Surge were actually behind Vancouver by one point when they started the Elmening. They were at a disadvantage by one point. The target score was 105 and well the score was 103 to 102 for Vancouver. Yeah, Vancouver only need to make one more basket. Evan Gillier got fouled on a three-point attempt and he went to the free throw line for three free throws. Well, guess what happened? He was at 102. Vancouver was at 103 and the score was 105 to win. Well, guess who made all three of his free throws and under pressure and under clutch to win the game at the free throw line. That’s right. Evan Gillard II of the Raptors 905 last year. That’s right. He hit all three of the shots and and he put Vancouver out for the season with those free throws. And that’s tough, man. And I mean, he could have missed one of them and they would have been one short and then the rebound comes off and the Bandits run down this court and they lay the ball in and they win. But no, Evan Gillard hit all three free throws to ice the game for Calgary Surge and they get the ticket to Winnipeg to play the Seab Bears and Jaylen Harris next week in the championship week in Winnipeg. Yeah. And that it’s cool how they do it. They’re g have all the games next week in Winnipeg. They make it a big huge festival with music and uh all kinds of stuff. They make an event. So, it’s like a final four like NCAA because you have the Eastern and Western Con conference finals in the same place on next Saturday and then they have the championship game at the same venue also. So, there’s three games during championship weekend CBL and they all play them in Winnipeg. Winnipeg’s the host team and the host place to have it. So, it’s kind of cool, eh? Yeah. Who’s Trey Guarding? Who’s Trey Garden? Trey’s trying to guard Emanuel, right? Trey’s going to guard Emanuel, right? That’s that’s what I would think. Mo saying way to push through these games, Yak for a Austria. You know, this is the thing about Yak and he put this out on his uh his thing yesterday. Let’s talk about the game between Bulgaria and Austria yesterday in Bulgaria. Yeah, Austria lost. Austria lost and uh there was a lot of factors to why Austria lost to Bulgaria. Now, I thought that that would eliminate them from the pre-qualifier for Euro Cup, but no. Apparently, they have qualified. And Yak said in his post yesterday, “Were successful. We got to the next round, even though they’re two and two in their action in this pre-qualifier action.” This weird. The home team has been winning all the games in this. Netherlands won against Austria and Netherlands. Austria beat Netherlands in Bulgaria in Austria. And then they go to Bulgaria and Austria loses to Bulgaria. So they were two and two in their their record in this. Now Netherlands still has to play Bulgaria in Bulgaria. And if Bulgaria beats Netherlands in Bulgaria, that means all of the home teams won in this weird pre-qualifier and all three teams will be two and two. It’s crazy. And I don’t know how they sus that out, but um uh apparently Yakob is saying that they have qualified and gotten to the next round. And that’s all that in some ways his his duty was to help Austria was to succeed to get through the next round. Now the game yesterday was ugly in certain ways. The crowd in Bulgaria was very much like a football crowd or soccer crowd chanting and blowing horns and yelling and singing songs and getting very loud about decisions on the court. the referees make a call against Bulgaria and they’re like yelling and booing and getting angry and it was very lively energy in that arena and the people were going crazy. That home energy helped Bulgaria a lot. Austria is not a good shooting team but when they’re at home they shoot better when the home team home team crowd is there cheering them on. They can get going but on the road they’re horrible in Netherlands they were horrible there and they were horrible in Bulgaria yesterday too. Yakob came out and he got two fouls in the first three minutes of the game. They put him on foul trouble right away and that was a huge factor. It helped Bulgaria get going with good vibes because Yak was out of there and there was no paint presence defensively for Austria. They couldn’t stop them. It’s like Bulgaria was going in the lane and just laying it up and we’re like where the hell is Yak while we’re watching Isaac Campbell, Wayne Strainer and I watching the game yesterday. Where the hell is Yak? Well, he’s on the bench in foul trouble. Then Bulgaria got the good vibes. Some of them got real cocky and they’re, “Oh, we’re bombing shots. We’re making this. We’re making that.” They were hitting a lot of threes. And then at the end of the game when Austria had a chance to try and come back, there was it was close enough. They just got hot Bulgaria and they just started jamming threes through in the last two minutes and they just really accelerated the lead and they killed them and they won the game. And the Bulgarian crowd was very happy. There’s one guy in the front row wearing an orange shirt. He was crazy. He kept jumping up out of his seat the whole game and he was so passionate for Bulgaria. He was like the Nav Batia of Bulgaria. He was just crazy. He was jumping all over the place and stuff. Yeah. And on the Austrian side, Freed Friedrich really pissed me off. The point guard number six, he looks like Ringo Star. I was calling him Austrian Ringo Star. [ __ ] tried to play hero ball too much in the second half. Trying to take the ball himself, but Yakam’s out there, brother [ __ ] Give him the ball. Stop messing around. That man’s in the NBA. He makes 20 million a year. You need to give that man the ball and start pulling through him. No, he was trying to play hero ball and beat people one-on-one. His little short ass. He was a big problem. He really screwed up Austria’s chances to come back because he turned the ball over. He just missed shots. And I’m like, Friedrich, give it up, man. You’re not like that. You are not him. So stop, bro. Get the ball to Yaka Purle. Jesus. So yeah, that’s a bit about what happened in the Austria Bulgaria game yesterday. We watched it on Discord. It’s a a premium uh membership part of the channel. If you love watching games and want to watch them with me where I’m commentating and putting my observations out as the game’s going on, Discord membership to this YouTube channel will get you there. And we watched two games in a row yesterday. It was fun. We had a double header. 11 o’clock Austria Bulgaria and then at one o’clock CBL scar bro versus Ottawa. It was a joy to watch it with Isaac and Wayne and Adriana and a couple other people that came in there. Fantastic stuff. But yeah, that’s what that’s what the breakdown was for Austria Bulgaria yesterday. Yak lost, but they still they still qualify in advance. And I guess that’s the whole thing that’s important. Norman Powell very successful for Jamaica qualifying them. Also, Bruno Fernando helping Angola qualify in the Afro Cup uh stuff that’s going on in Africa right now, too. Yeah, good stuff, man. Good stuff. Yeah. Uh Military Man, I don’t know why I’m always nervous for the first game. You know, it’ll be fun. I’m really excited about this year. I really am. I feel like the Raptors are going to have a bit of a a rebirth of good feelings and positive stuff and fun and there’ll be a lot of enthusiasm around the team. God willing, we’ll be very healthy. Brandon Ingram will be absolute uh uh huge huge huge bonus add-on for our team and fans will get a little bit more excited and you know more encouraged to come to the games and support the team and be more positive about them because they’re not a loser team. These guys are good players and they’re going to show it this year. I really do believe it. So yeah, I I’m not as nervous about this year as I have in past years and stuff like that. I think that I feel a lot more confident about the Raptors in their position this year. And I feel like we, you know, I’m not, Last year scared the hell out of me. Looking at the schedule last year, going into the start of it, I was like, “Holy crap, they are making them go through a gauntlet like in the right from the start. This is insane what they’re making them do right from the start.” And well, it was tough. And it was tough. But you know what? To their credit, even though the schedule was extremely tough last year, they played 500 basketball for a good part of that really tough schedule at the beginning of the year before they got hurt before Scotty got hit in the elbow uh hit with the elbow by Joic in the Denver game. They were 500 team until that Nuggets game and Jokic that Aaron elbow to Scotty’s eye and broke his orbital. So yeah. Yeah. Uh Wayne’s here. Good to see Wayne. I was watching the games with Wayne yesterday. Morning Raptor Freaks. Yep. Dog days of summer. Thanks to FIA, WNBA, and now CBL to break the boredom. Sorry, Lex. European football is not boring when talent is on the pitch like most teams. See, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not watching the European soccer or football. Did I say it was boring? No, I was just saying that they were the crowd in Bulgaria was like that. They were very much like that. I mean, I said I guess I did say soccer is boring this week. We were kind of going over sports and whether we like them or not. I’m just saying I don’t get it. These people going to run around for 90 minutes up and down the field and just like kick a ball around. Okay. And it may be zero and then there’s stoppage time and then they’re going to play even more and then what? Huh? There’s going to be a penalty kick and then they kick it in. The game’s over. Okay. Y’all ran around for like a hundred minutes and um yeah, it was just a bunch of people running around. I’m sorry. That’s just my take. I mean other people see the art in soccer aka slash football as it’s called around the world, but I just don’t. It’s lost on me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just lost on me. It’s just how it is. I like this. Yesterday, Wayne and I were marveling at the professionalism, the sheen, the amazing uh product that CBL is. I think if a league is going to put the word elite in their name, Canadian Elite Basketball League, they better have elite things about it. And I tell you, the graphics, the presentation, the courts, the referees, the talent, the level of play in CBL is very high. and it is elite and it is entertaining and it’s fun. One of the things Wayne and I were marveling about yesterday is that the CBL plays basketball fundamentals and they play all out in some ways there’s a lot of hearkening to 80s and 90s NBA basketball in the CBL and uh there’s a very good talent level in there and there’s like he said he sees more dunks in a CBL game than he does in a FIA game and you know I I I’m more and more a CBL fan this week from going to that playing game against Montreal Alliance and Scar Bro Shooting Stars and watching the game yesterday seeing the presentation and seeing Rod Black calling the game and it’s just a very high quality product and I’m proud of it and you can tell it’s growing really well. Maybe some people in this country are like, “Yeah, screw the NBA. It’s American. We’re boycotting America. Let’s go Canada. I love basketball. I’m a CBL fan now.” And attendance for CBL games has been fantastic this season and it’s all on the up and up. It’s all going up. So, I’m excited for CBL. I think it’s a very good professional league and they they earn that elite status because they put out a good product. They really really do. That’s how I feel. Mo saying wream w vibes go raptors for life. Keep at it Lex always. Raptor freak crew strong forever is helping me limit the comments. I appreciate that. We’re about an hour and a half in. We’ll go two hours. So I got about another half hour to play with to finish up all the the segments that we do. Canada going for gold at Global Jam in the women’s. Yeah, the men were eliminated. uh did not win enough to get to the gold medal game today at Madamese Center. They’re gonna have the the end of the Global Jam today and the gold medal games and I I don’t know who’s playing it exactly. I’ve really kind of not paid attention to Global Jam as much as I should in some ways. I guess I just really got into CBL this week and I’m more paying attention to WNBA and Toronto Tempo and Raptors affairs, but man, I gotta start paying more attention to Global Jam. I was going to go this year, but I ended up not going. I don’t know. You’re right. This is a blind spot. I need to cover Global Jam better. I’m not even paying attention to who won or nothing. You’re paying attention way more than me, Mo. And in some ways, you watched way more than me. I didn’t watch a single minute of Global Jam at all. I probably should have. I probably should have. Let’s see. on ESPN.com there’s an article about the NBA Players Association Union led by Fred Van Vleet that they want to they are backing bet limits to curb manipulation and athlete abuse. This is the way I stand on gambling in basketball is get rid of the personal player uh uh bets. Nobody should be parlaying on specific players because in some ways you’re giving too much power to that individual player to manipulate bets like Jonte Porter did. And it is as a whole other kitten kaboodleoodle. If they’re going to make sports bets on the NBA, they should be team oriented and they should stop putting personal bets on personal players because listen, this is could be cause whole kinds of problems with problems with fans interacting with players because they’re upset about parlays not hitting. And in some ways, you could get rid of this problem immediately by making it only team betting. You can maybe make bets on scores, maybe make bets on uh team rebounds or whatever, but it shouldn’t be on individuals stats and very specific things like you don’t get this many threes. Well, we hit on this parlay. Well, boom, you get Jonte Porter, you get Jonte Porter. And this [ __ ] is going to happen again. Michael Porter Jr.’s right. There’s gonna be a young knucklehead who comes in the NBA and they’re g they’re going to get together with their friends and try and enrich them in a really seedy way, just like Jonte did. So, uh, NBA and just stop being such degenerates. This this this gambling experiment has been, you know, mostly bad. I don’t think it’s been mostly good. I mean, profits are going to gambling companies and they’re making money off of people, but I don’t know if it’s been a good thing or good for the sport in any kind of way other than enriching people in corporations that have gambling companies. So it’s like you need to get rid of the personal bets and Fred Ban Vleet and the players association are gonna come and bring a deal to you for that. That’s what I’m hearing. That’s right. That’s right. Stargate saying Lex, who do you see as the top three teams in the East as it looks right now? Well, without seeing them play and I’m just looking at them on paper. I think Cleveland is one of the top three teams. Um I mean possibly the Knicks. The Knicks may be a top three team, but they’re going to be dysfunctional on the down low and they’re going to be a team that absolutely screws up in the playoffs. Uh even if they have a good regular season and the NBA makes them look good marketing, they will screw up in the playoffs at some point. They won’t win the Larry, but they could be one of the top uh seated Eastern Conference teams. I could see New York, Cleveland, and uh I don’t know, the third team out of the top right now without putting us up there and being a total homer. Um, realistically, I would say maybe it is um maybe Detroit. Honestly, I think those two those three teams might be the three best teams in the East. It’s not Boston. Boston’s going to lose on purpose. Philadelphia, if they’re not healthy, they’re going to be just like last year. And uh Milwaukee, I really have no confidence Indiana’s going to fall too this year. In some ways, Indiana might be not as bad as people think without Hallebertton, but I think that missing Miles Turner will help hurt them, too. And not having a real center at this point, you know. So, there’s a couple problems with Indiana. Uh, let’s see. But, yeah, I think it’s those three teams. I I’m going to say Detroit, but maybe we flip out Detroit for Atlanta or Orlando or even Toronto. Or even Toronto. One of those four teams is the third best team. So, yeah. Let’s see. Stargate saying you’re you’re you’re going to see less of a reliance on the three-point shot this season and an uptick in mid-range shots. Watch for it. We’ll have to see to see. The game is evolving and I’m just glad that we have a basketball philosopher and a visionary named Darko Rayakovich as our coach. He’s trying to get ahead of the trends in the league. He studies everything about it. And in some ways, that’s how he decides what he’s doing is because he wants to be ahead of the curve and innovative in ways that other coaches aren’t doing already. And well, I like what he’s doing with his European style passing offense. It’s been very fun to watch. It’s very entertaining. And I look forward to our gifted, talented players learning it better and playing it better and better as time goes on because look, Darko’s got a phone book of plays. He’s described it that way. And he’s only opening up the first couple pages right now, the very basic framework, skeleton framework of his offensive vision. as these players get more used to him, as he gets more uh trust in them as far as what they’re going to listen and they build more and more on the knowledge of what they’re doing, they’re going to get more intricate. They’re going to get more uh uh specialized. They’re going to get more uh interesting and and more detailed. And he’s going to open up his phone book of plays and go deeper into the more complicated stuff and lay it on his players more and more as time goes on. So, I’m very excited about that. He I know about this phone book. He’s talked about it and well, he says he has plays forever and if we have to get new plays and new ideas, he’s got them. He’s got them in a big huge phone book. He’s ready to teach them to Scotty and crew as they’re ready. As they’re ready, as he builds it on top, he doesn’t want to overwhelm them. He doesn’t want to put too much on them. So, he starts with the basic skeleton framework and they learn and then they build onto that and they get to more of what his ultimate vision is with his offense. And we’re going to see some of that. And mid-range is probably going to be a part of it. Mid-range is probably going to be a part of it. All right, guys. Straight goods on Canadian goods today, guys. You may be out in the sun right now because it’s August and it’s the summertime. And you know, we all want to support Canada more and more in this tariff war with uh USA. So, let’s keep buying Canadian products. If you’re going to McDonald’s, you’re going to Starbucks, just stop. Just stop. You can go to Second Cup. You can go to A&W. These are Canadian companies. So, listen, you got to get sunscreen because you’re going to be out in the sun. Well, there’s a Canadian-owned uh company, 100% Canadian, all around Canadian. You’re supporting Canada is Annabelle. Annabelle Sunscreen is a is a Canadian product. If you’re familiar with Annabel sunscreen, well, you’re supporting Canada and that’s a great sunscreen to buy. So, if you’re going to go buy some sunscreen, buy Annabelle. Annabelle is 100% Canadian sunscreen company. So, there you go. Annabelle, it’s the name of the sunscreen. There you go. All right, let’s see. Next comment, next thing. Let’s go. Uh, let’s do the Instagram stories. We’re starting with, “Where in the world is Sergey Baka?” Well, we knew Sergey Baka was in Toronto this week because we saw him around Bron’s Veils. We saw him with Hello and Welcome podcast. We saw him with Lindsay Dunn. We saw him in select Spanish uh restaurants drinking Spanish beer. Yeah. Well, Serge is back in Congo Brazville. That’s where he is right now. Congo Brazville. Uh he’s back with the Sergey Baka Foundation back in the the motherland back in his home country and he is back to support and philanthropy. There you go. There’s Bruno Fernando’s Instagram is 66 to 64 Angola winning their game yesterday and their top player was Abu Gaku. So good job Angola and I believe they qualified as I said in the Afro basket uh recently in the games that they played right now. So that’s very very good. There’s Bruno in the 24 for Angola. Good stuff man. qualify for the quarterfinals. There you go. What about Lloyd’s putting somebody on blast? I’m not even sure that guy is David. Somebody David dunking the ball. So yeah, Lloyd’s got a friend named David. That’s what that is all about. Also, he’s in Fort Myers. He said downtown Fort Myers, but it’s a dock with a bunch of boats. There’s that. That’s downtown is in the water. Fort Myers, Florida. That’s where uh Lloyd is right now. He’s in Fort Myers. If nothing changes, nothing changes. That’s what he’s saying. Scotty Barnes on the court and uh he was seen working out with Elijah Martin in Florida. Scotty’s down there with Brian Min and uh Elijah Martin and putting in some work on the court. Of course, there was also a clip of Scotty that came out yesterday uh from his Twitch uh session on Friday night going over the signing of Chris Buchet to Boston Celtics saying that it hurt. It hurt real bad to see Chris leave. It’s just that it’s tough. It’s just a business and just how it is. But yeah, he’s sad about Chris going uh leaving the team. He he is very very sad about that. He did talk about that on Twitch on Friday night apparently. But yeah, Scotty’s got workout video on his Instagram with him and Brian Min. And there is video of him with Elijah Martin working out in Central Florida right now. Uh Jonathan Mobile saying this to us on a Sunday morning. Get right with Yahweh. You got to get right with him. The greatest wealth is having God, a healthy body, a peaceful mind, and the right people in your life. There you go, Jonathan. We love that sentiment from you, sir. Your secondyear raptor. Kelly O Linux got the foods on display once again. Man, you you killing me, man. That looks like cheesy bread. He looks like he’s got that fkaca or whatever cheese. And then he’s got some sort of meatballs and sauce or something. Man, Kelly, why you do this to me, man? You’re gonna make me eat like a horse today because I seen this food and my appetite just grew. Oh my gosh, there’s a meatlovers pizza that’s got ham and pepperoni and mushrooms and stuff. Kelly, why do you do this, man? And how much food are you eating a day? Seriously, did you eat is this one meal, all this food you’re showing here, or is that lunch and dinner? Oh my gosh, man. Oh my gosh. How are you not ballooning? That’s what I’m wondering. AJ Lawson at Global Jam in his uh Instagram pictures. There he is out in town. He’s also on a boat, guys, out in Lake Ontario. AJ Lawson cruising around. You see the CN Tower in Lake Ontario. That’s right. He’s just living his life, man. He’s got a good life, man. AJ’s living the dream. The dream of a Bmpton kid. That’s right. Uh JS Battle is putting on blast Jir Nelson Jr. for his 39 points, four rebounds, and three three-pointers made, six three-pointers made for Calgary Surge and their win yesterday over Vancouver. So Jameson has a tie to Jir Nelson Jr. That’s interesting. There’s Evan Gillard’s uh Instagram. All the all the great success yesterday for him and Calgary and he’s celebrating it. Wild ending in Vancouver. Evan Gillard hitting three straight free throws to win the game to book the trip to Winnipeg for Calgary Surge in the CBL playoffs. Good stuff. Good stuff. Uh there’s Terresa Rash on the Jumbotron in Vancouver talking about how the Tempo are going to play two games in Vancouver next year and their regular season home games will be two of them in Rogers Arena at Vancouver. That’s right. So Vancouver 2026, be ready. The Tempo are coming. You’re going to get those tickets. I know y’all are going to get them. That’s right. you’re going to want them. Let’s see. SGA uh is got a guy was wearing a Thunder jersey on the tea in Indie. Interesting. So, there’s some guy went out there and wore Oklahoma City Thunder jersey in golf and he was on the he was on Taylor Gu I think is his name or something like that. I don’t know what’s going on there. That’s goofy. Uh Wubs has got some footage of him walking somebody walking out on the court. Bobby Edwards, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t know who this Bobby Edwards guy is. Maybe he’s a Baylor guy. Something like that. Uh Norman Pal, of course, uh Jamaica all the way. Chubby’s Jamaican kitchen, Sketchers basketball. Understand the grind. This is all Norman Powell’s world. That’s right. Slim Duck is got uh Duski and he’s saying, “How I walk into places knowing God before me.” Okay, there you go. Chris Bush saying this, “Nobody says nothing.” And then Caribbean people play say yes. Fat of God, give me health and strength. He also is saying, “Pray for St. Lucia.” Of course, uh, Hurricane Aaron is picking up strength and, uh, uh, dangerous, uh, speeds of wind, and, uh, it is passing over the home island of Chris Buchche, St. Lucia. So, let’s hope and pray for all people of all island nations that are in the path of any storms this hurricane season, that everybody can be okay and weather the storm safely. And, uh, okay. That’s right. That’s right. Uh, let’s see what else we got. Chris has got all kinds of funny stuff. He’s got Patrick Euan with his knees all iced up and said how it feels to always stand on business. Okay. Okay. Yeah, he’s got some other stuff. Yeah, some of this is goofy, man. But yeah, Scott, uh Chris is a happy guy, man. He’s a happy guy. You can tell. And he’s uh he’s got a new chapter he’s stepping into in Boston now. Yeah. Let’s see what else. Emanuel Quickley was on a boat in Paris. He was driving it. He got to drive the boat around near the Eiffel Tower living his best life. He’s doing that Parisian uh lifestyle there. Let’s see. Sandro Mamu is in Prague uh Czech Czech Republic. He’s getting ready with the Georgian team to play in Eurob basket uh FIA action very very soon. So we’ll see Sandro playing for Georgia soon and we’ll have that all the information on how to watch him and we’ll have watch parties probably on the Discord for Sandro Mamu also guys. So be ready for that in the next couple weeks. Good stuff. CBL lots of highlights on their official account on their Instagram stories from the two playoff games yesterday. Just really, really good stuff. Congratulations to Scar Bro Shooting Stars and Calgary Surge on going forward. And I know that uh the sheriff Seymour Pape is happy about that. Very, very happy about that. Let’s see. Morris Peterson is hanging out with Snoop Dogg this week and he’s at his concert. I think that Morris and and uh Snoop Dogg have a lot in common and that they’re birds of a feather and it’s like it’s like Calvin’s like you know what Morris why don’t you just come with me bro you know why don’t you come with me your vibe is strong and I love like I love that you played with Vince and you’re like I like you’re cool you’re cool man so I think Morris Peterson is on the low key join Snoop Dog’s entourage then he’s now touring with him I think that might be what’s happening right now going by what Morris Peterson ‘s Instagram has been like he’s been around Snoop all week and I think they bonded. Let’s just put it that way. Elijah Martin’s on the ba beach at Delray Beach, Florida. Yeah. So, he’s he went down to the beach with some of his friends. Uh it looks like so yeah, Florida boys are in Florida right now. Elijah Scotty Barnes. Brandon Ingram saying this. I love this mantra. Everything I lose creates space for everything I need. There you go. You lost the Pelicans and you created the Raptors. So, you go Brandon Ingram. That’s right. He’s got some cool pictures. Him scratching his eyes. He’s listening to Kevin Gates. He’s all about the Kevin Gates right now. Listening to him and yeah, he’s like there’s a lot of cool pictures of Brandon hanging out a window of a car. Grady Dick. Uh where are you? Grady Dick. What is this? He’s at some sort of uh place called the Brickyard or something. It looks like his brothers are there and his sister. There’s Carla. Yeah, that that looks like Grady’s younger brother. Is that Grady’s younger brother? He’s wearing a Lithuania basketball shirt, which is interesting. Where the hell are you, Grady? And he’s with Carla at least. We see Grady with Carla. I don’t know where he is. I hope he’s just having fun. That’s right, Grady. There’s your Instagram stories for today. Checking in on where the Raptors are in their lives through Instagram. The window to their lives through the Instagram. That’s right. There you go. There you go. Uh Stargate saying this. I see the whole trade aholic phenomena is not just limited to Raptors fans. So many other fan bases are going crazy with hypothetical trade scenarios. It’s nuts. Yeah. Everything that happens in our fan nation happens in other fan nations. We’re not special. In some ways, we focus on the stuff for us because we just want to see that stuff. But that stuff is going on all over the place. Kevin Durant sweep stakes a couple years ago. Yeah, we weren’t the only team that was involved in all that mess. Giannis sweep stakes every summer. Giannis is going to leave. Everybody starts freaking out. And you know, in some ways it’s a test to see where fan nations will turn on which players and say, “Yeah, we’ll trade this guy for Kevin Durant or Jiannis and Dumpto because they we’d rather get him than this guy on our team.” And it makes the guy on the team feel bad. It’s like, “Oh, they trade me for Giannis. What the hell?” That’s why I very staunchly always say, “I would never trade Scotty Barnes for Giannis Entto. I would never trade Scotty Barnes for Kevin Durant.” No. No. I ain’t selling out my man, my guy Scott like that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I know. This is just a phenomena for everybody. And Lakers Nation’s a little extra, trust me, with it. Knicks nation a little extra with it. So, some of these teams are a little bit more extra than us even with it. Now, in some ways, if we’re detoxifying the Raptors fan nation of some of the toxic behavior that we’ve talked about over the years, I think we’re doing a good job. I feel like Raptors Nation is respecting and loving their team more properly now. you know, a couple years ago after the championship when we didn’t win a championship uh the year after, oh my gosh, a lot of immature takes and people say, “Oh, the Raptors are washed. They’re no good anymore.” Because they didn’t win a championship two years in a row. It’s like stupid. In some ways, it’s like we’ve got to educate the fan nation on how to root for the team passionately and positively in the right way. And a lot of this extraneous noise and [ __ ] is by [ __ ] artists or fans that aren’t even fans of our team, but fans of other teams that want to confuse things. Some of it is just unnecessary [ __ ] Some people are just bored because it’s the middle of summer and they wish Raptors basketball was on and they just want to make up [ __ ] There’s all kinds of different levels to this. But if we can teach them more and more the way to properly root for the team and just be a fan instead of a pundit instead of a a GM instead of a coach instead of like telling the team how it should be run because y’all think you know better than Bobby Webster. No, you’re a fan. You’re supposed to watch the games, enjoy it, and cheer for your team. That’s your job description. It’s not to tell the team how to be better. It’s not to tell the team who to trade. It’s not to tell the team that this person should be coming off the bench more. No, that’s the job of Dark Code. That’s the job of Bobby Webster. And your job is to pay tickets, get to the game, and cheer for your team loud. And that’s the thing. A lot of people get out of their job description in this uh this thing that I’m talking about right here. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. All right, let’s keep going with the tabs. Let’s see. We’ll go look at Raptors Reddit real quick. There’s somebody saying they’re conflicted about next season. All right, let’s read this. This is sounds so stupid right here. All right, first of all, we’ll say this is like this is so dumb. All right, this is this guy named Speed. I don’t know if it’s Speed who comes in and talks to us. Not going to lie, I’m pretty conflicted going into next season. On one hand, I want to see this team win because rooting for the tank isn’t fun. When you ever root, you’re a loser. You shouldn’t do that, bro. First of all, Redditor, I’m just a little add in there. We’ve been middling for multiple seasons now. No, we haven’t been middling. We’ve been rebuilding. And you don’t understand uh the concept here. and the roster is very expensive with a $185 million payroll going into next season. Plus, we have a lot of promising young talent. However, part of me also wants to try for next year’s lottery because the 2026 NBA draft is extremely deep and could be our second chance at acquiring a true superstar. [ __ ] We have multiple true superstars on our team. Idiot. Guys like Darren Peterson, never heard of him. And AJ Dybansa, yeah, I’ve heard that name, but I don’t care. uh look insanely good and watching their tape makes me think about how much drafting a guy like them can change the direction of our franchise. No young players coming to save us just like Cooper Flag ain’t coming to save the Dallas Mavericks. So get over yourself Redditor Gez. Though I understand that nothing is guaranteed since it’s a lottery. Okay, you understand that. So there’s no reason to try and lose on purpose, idiot. Uh and could very well end the same as LA this year’s draft by not moving up at all and bang bagging a top prospect. Regardless, I’m high on the team going in next season and the front office’s ability to continue drafting great talent. What do you think? I think that you shouldn’t be conflicted. I think if you’re a real fan, you just root for them to win. And you should never ever consider tanking an option. That’s what it is, Redditor. That’s it right there. Speed. That’s what I think right there. You should never ever consider tanking as an option. You’re an idiot if you do. So, yeah, I’ll say that those guys that you just named are not worth losing all season just to try and get somebody who may not even be a good NBA player. So, I’m sorry. Somebody has ordered the NBA paint Raptor logo hat and they got it in the mail. That goofy child drawing of a Raptor with a basketball on a hat and it’s amazing kind of in a way, but also in a way it’s kind of childish and stupid. I don’t know. Y’all can have fun with this. I’m not going to be a killjoy, but I won’t be buying in the kids stuff. The kids hats, the kids shirts with the kids logo. Kids, you go ahead and buy it. It’s for the kids. I’ll stick to the grown-up Raptors gear. Yeah, I’ll stick to the grown-up Raptors gear. That’s right. Yeah, there’s the footage of Scotty and Elijah practicing together in Florida in the last couple days. On Reddit, if you want to see it, there’s like a two-minute clip if you want to see it there. There’s your Raptors Reddit on there. Yeah. And uh there’s your Raptors Reddit reactions. That’s right. There you go. Let’s see. We got a birthday today, guys. It’s not a birthday that we really want to celebrate too wholeheartedly. It is Rudy Gay’s birthday. And Rudy Gay is turning 39 today, guys. 39 years old for uh the old big truck, the great Rudini. They call him the great Rudini. Who the [ __ ] calls Grooty Gay the great Rudini? Have you ever heard him be called the great Rudini? That’s crazy, man. That’s crazy. Of course, Rudy played for the Raptors for 51 games in his career and then got traded and he’s best known for being traded for players from Sacramento that absolutely helped us get into playoffs and uh win. Yeah, Rudy Gay, happy birthday, [ __ ] You talking trash about Toronto? Say, “Oh, I don’t want to go to Toronto.” Yeah, we didn’t really need you and that’s why we traded you and Messiah traded you and got all kinds of good stuff. you maybe just sore at Toronto because you’re a footnote as you got traded for Chuck Hayes, John Salman’s, Patrick Patterson, and uh I forget the other guy. And uh uh and yeah, who cares? Gravis Vasquez, who cares? It’s like you’re a footnote in Raptors history, but happy 39th birthday, Rudy G. You know, that man made almost $190 million in his NBA career. Isn’t that crazy? That’s crazy. All right, let’s keep going in the chat. Let’s see what else you guys are filling it up while I’ve been doing the the the the stuff there. QQ QQ Q. When these players go and play for their respective countries in the summer, are they accompanied by someone from the Raptors coaching staff, is there a Raptors representative with them? I wonder about that with Dark uh with uh Yakob YaKob being over in Austria right now. whether Jim Sans lurking around maybe. Uh I didn’t see anybody for the Raptors around there. There was a guy sitting in the front row at the Bulgaria game that looked like Darko. He had the same haircut, but he was a fake Darko. He wasn’t actually Darko. So I was like, it was Darko at the game watching Yako. No, I don’t think anybody was there with Yach. The thing about the games that Yak just finished yesterday is that they were spread out four games over like two weeks and they weren’t like one after the other and they were in different locations. He went and played in Ne Netherlands first, then he went and played two games in Austria and then he went to Bulgaria yesterday. And uh you know that’s a lot of travel and that’s a lot of time in between. Now, maybe they call Jim Sand and his wife and say, “Hey, do you guys want to go on a extended European vacation and follow Yak around uh in Europe just to be his guy with them?” Uh Jim’s like, “Yeah, I did that last year. I don’t know if I want to go this year.” I I don’t know. I don’t know. I didn’t see any signs of any Raptor staff being around team Austria in the games that I watched. So, I don’t think there was I think that Yak was just there on his own and doing his thing with the Austrian team. Yeah, I think that’s what it was right there. uh military man saying, “Yeah, that logic doesn’t make any sense. So why wouldn’t teams like the Pistons, Hawks, Magic, and many other teams do that?” Yeah. I mean, you know what? I’ve always thought that tank philosophy is ridiculous. The NBA does not like teams losing on purpose to try and get high draft picks. So, they’ve done a lot of things to safeguard discouraging them from doing this. And in some ways, team fans saying, “Oh, we need to tank. We need to tank.” You don’t understand. You’re putting the team in a bad position because the team can’t tank. they will get penalized. They can lose [ __ ] like get fined, lose draft picks because they overtly trying to lose. So, Raptors fans, stop this tank mentality. Tanking is so stupid. It’s dead. That whole strategy may have worked in another era of the NBA, but it won’t work now because Adam Silva changed the rules to make it extremely punitive. if you are tanking, he will blame, he will, you know, and even the way that the lottery worked out with Dallas getting the number one pick, San Antonio, and then uh Philadelphia as the top three picks, none of the teams that were at the absolute bottom got even at those top picks, whether it was Washington, Utah, New Orleans, any of those teams, Brooklyn, none of those teams got to touch those top picks. And uh the team that had the least chance got rewarded with it for trading their superstar to LA. They got it in there. And Philly is a darling team. So they can have, oh, Joel’s out. Let’s boost you and give you a VJ Edgecom real quick. So it’s like it’s a it’s a failed loser mentality. Tanking mentality. It’s losers. Losers talk about me tanking. Losers want to take an easy route. That’s what it is. Oh, we need to lose on purpose to get a savior in the draft. Oh, this this AJ die guy is gonna he’s gonna save us. [ __ ] We don’t know he didn’t save us. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And that guy is coming up in college next year that you think is going to save the Raptors, there is no guarantee that [ __ ] is qualified or trained to save the Raptors. Seriously, that’s not how it is anymore. Even Victor, Victor, a generational talent coming in this league, a a huge monster, a unicorn, an alien. He didn’t even transform the Spurs overnight. He didn’t have that kind of impact. Oh, we’re gonna get get the number one pick. We’re get Victor and everything’s going to be all right. No. Did that happen for the Spurs the last couple years? No. They have been out of the playoffs and still struggling even with young early Victor Wyama because nobody comes in this league ready to be a a presence that just takes over and has a huge impact in this league like people like LeBron and others before in the past. It’s just not how it is anymore. players aren’t trained correctly out of college to be like that in the NBA. Cooper Flag is not going to be a transformational player for Dallas this year. He’s going to be an ordinary rookie who comes out there and learns just like every one of them. He’s not going to add more to anything in any way in those kind of ways. They they they over over value young players that ain’t done jack [ __ ] and have improved nothing and thinking, “Oh, we should lose on purpose this whole entire year to get a chance. It’s not even for sure at a guy who’s not even for sure gonna be good. It’s the most ridiculous asinine thinking and I’ve ever thought. That’s why I have no respect for tank people. People that talk about tanking, tank this, tank that. No respect because it’s stupid. It’s a horrible strategy and Adam Silver will punish you for it. That’s it right there. That’s it right there. That’s right. Wayne’s saying reading reading Reddit should go the way of the sunset this evening. You know, it’s dark out overcast right now. It looks like it’s going to rain in the middle of the day right now. Yeah. I mean, Raptors re Reddit reactions is a good news segment because in some ways, if I read the Raptors Reddit, you know, maybe I can point out jackasses and kind of shame them and say, “Oh, why’d you post that?” And maybe there’ll be less of that kind of jackass uh toxic posts in Reddit. Reddit is getting more positive. Reddit is getting more for the team in the right ways, in the ways that I would like to see it. And a lot of the goofy [ __ ] that I used to see in there is kind of getting cleaned up. So, I don’t know. Maybe we can have an impact in this by being good leaders as fans and showing how to be a positive fan for the Raptors without all the extraneous toxic [ __ ] that some of the other people in Raptors Nation are all about. You know, the trade rumors, the tank uh theories, the [ __ ] like that. Stargate saying, “I see uh Bam’s name being brought up by Heat Nation now.” Shaking my head. More novous adolescent nonsensical paddle on Reddit. ignore it. You know, that’s the thing. You know, old school Heat fans love Bamab Bio and they would never ever think about trading him. But youngsters that came along that don’t have the respect for his longevity and his time with the team will be very easily like, “Yeah, let’s just trade him. No uh no loyalty.” And that’s that’s some of it. That’s part of it is like, you know, we get a lot of growing fan base for the Raptors. And we have a lot of newer fans that are just not educated on the NBA or understand basketball. uh and they have really unrealistic ideas. Some people are fans of hockey first and they try to apply hockey logic to basketball and they’re absolutely wrong. There’s all kinds of different ways that, you know, ignorance and stupid takes on the NBA and Raptors come from. Some of it’s just people are young and they don’t know what the [ __ ] they’re talking about. Some people are old and they don’t know what they’re talking about. There’s there’s all kinds of different places it comes in. That’s right. Shaq Lindsay is here. Good morning, Shaq Lindsay. Thank you for being a member of the channel. Oh, let’s not forget Washington, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Charlotte. That’s right. Those are all teams that uh kind of missed out. Philly got it, though. Philly got it, though. They moved up and got the third pick, which was a favor from the NBA. Trust me, that was a favor from the NBA. All right, let me see what else do I got. Let’s do the classic card. That is what’s next on the chat. And there’s only four minutes, so let’s get it right in the last four minutes of the stream before two hours hits. Who is that? Oh, yeah. We’ll do this guy. All right, guys. Here I’m going to show the back of the card because once again, it’s really hard to show these cards without showing the name. So, who is that, guys? I know it’s a very much a sliver of the card. Full name answer. You get the classic card of the day and Raptor Freak trivia points added to your total score. Who is that, guys? Maybe I should show the front. Maybe. I don’t know if you can figure out who this classic card is right there. Let’s see. Let me try and cover the name right on the front. It’s just that the name’s in two spots. It makes it hard. All right. Who is that, guys? Who is that? Full name answer. Give me the full name answer and you will get the classic card of the day. I think this guy just retired. Honestly, yeah, you got that’s a halfass answer. Neil, what are you doing? Halfassen. Halfassen. I told you full name answer. That is one of the rules of this. You know that there’s two guys with that name in this league, so you better get the right one. You better get the right one. You telling me Bdonovic. Come on, man. You better get this right. There’s two guys in this league like this. You better get which one it is. Which one is it? Which one is it? That’s right. John Stockton Bogdanovich. What are you doing, Isaac Campbell? What are you doing? What are you doing? That is not That is not John Stockton Bogdanovich. What is that, man? Come on. Give me the full name answer. Seagull that from Neil. Neil wrote the half name in. You deserved a seagull it. You can’t remember the first name. Well, you can’t get it then. You can’t get it. You can’t remember. He was on Detroit. Yeah, he was on Detroit. In fact, this guy just recently retired from the NBA. The guy on this card. So, that should tell you everything right there. The other guy is still in Atlanta, I think. No, wait. Maybe he went to another team. Did the other guy go to the Clippers? I want to say the other guy went to the Clippers. Yeah, that’s not right. Uh, Mon’nique, that’s not Boon. Bob Marionovich. His name’s not Mo Bob. Boon’s not right. It’s close though. You’re one letter off. You just need to change one letter and you’ll get it. But Mo’Nique, you’re very close. Yeah, he’s a shooter. Yeah, this guy was kind of a shooter. He was on the Knicks last year. Remember? He was involved in uh being around OG and Precious, but they didn’t keep him around. And then I don’t know, you guys just get it. I can’t believe that this this has been fumbled. A couple of different people have fumbled it. John Bogdanovich. What are you doing with your life, Neil? When has a When has a Serbian man been called John? Come on now. Come on now. Yeah, somebody’s got to know the retired Bdanovich. Come on. What is this first name, y’all? I just need one person to spell it correctly. Mo’s got it. All right, I’m gonna give it to Mo even though she didn’t full name answer it. Is Bojan. Buan. Boyan. Boyan is Is You’re saying John. John is the spelling as the English name for Boon. I mean, I should give it to I’m going to give it to Mo. I’m sorry. I’m giving it to Mo. She got it first, even though she didn’t put Bdanovich in. In some ways, I’m going to give it to Mo. Isaac, you could kind of get it. I should maybe give it to you, but I’m going to give it to Mon’nique. Mon’nique’s gonna get it today. She’s gonna get Boyan Bdonovich is the answer of the classic card today. He actually retired this summer, guys. He’s not going to play in the NBA this year. He retired. It could very well be that he’s gone back overseas and he’ll probably play over there. But Mon’nique Lawrence is getting the classic car of the day today. And uh I’m gonna give her 100 points for today’s classic card. So Mo, you got a 100 point classic car of the day. Boyan Boyan Bdanovich. Boyan boy. Yeah. Remember y’all when you play trivia, Raptor Freak trivia, it’s always full name answer. Never half a name. Full name answer. First and last name is very very important. John in a brotherman language it may be but the card has this spelling on it right here. And that is the accepted answer right there. The answer is on the card. That’s what I want to see exactly right there. If you want these answers right b I see. That’s right. Buan Badanovich. Badovich. All right y’all. We’re at two hours. Let’s get the hell out of here. Thanks for watching the Sunday special report. Today we covered the NBA schedule for the Raptors 2025 2026 season. I think it’s very fair. I think this is one of the better schedules we’ve had in like the last five years and I’m excited for it. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. I think that the Raptors can be very successful moving through this schedule. The backtobacks are very doable. the the the setup of the games and the the distribution of even team uh good teams and bad teams is really good. So, I’m excited for this season. The NBA schedule makers were not mean to us this year. They were way worse last year. Last year was [ __ ] up. I’m not going to lie, that was really really uh a strategy the way they built our schedule last year. This year, I can’t see it. The only thing that’s a little bit of a red flag is the stuff with the Knicks. The Knicks games are in weird spaces and places, but otherwise the schedule’s pretty fair and I’m excited for it and I’m excited to get into it. I hope you guys will join me tomorrow for a Monday moment and Tuesday trivia on Tuesday. I’ll be back tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. every single day. The Raptor Freak streak continues four years straight on September the 14th. I’ll be doing this stream every single day for four years straight as of the 14th of September, guys. So, yeah, in just a little bit under a month. So, I’ll see you guys tomorrow, Monday moment, 9:30 a.m. Eastern time every single morning. Rap your freak out. Please subscribe, join the channel. You get membership privileges on our Discord. And uh you know what? Uh you can comment, you can share me. If you want to clip out some of my stuff, if I say something on the stream that you like, you have permission to clip from my stream and post it somewhere else. I don’t care. It could be basketball related, it could be politically uh related, whatever. If I say something funny, you’re just like, “Oh, this guy’s goofy. Let’s put this clip out.” I I don’t mind you guys clipping from me and putting it in other places. I appreciate you. Isaac’s got Mon’nique on blast. I love it. There’s Scotty number four. We love Scotty and Stargate. Peace to you, my guy. All the best you guys. I’ll see y’all tomorrow. Let’s go.

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