Blake Murphy Sports Writing

Welcome​ to another edition of​​ Raptors Reasonablists with​ Eric​ Koreen​ and​​ Blake​​ Murphy. Throughout the year, Raptors staff writers Koreen and Murphy discuss hot-button issues surrounding the Raptors, but with an even-keeled approach in pursuit of finding a reasonable middle ground. If we have faith in anything, it is that reasonable middle grounds lead to: a) workable long-term solutions; b) increased empathy and understanding for others; and c) more wins — at least more wins when they truly matter — probably. We hold these truths to be self-evident, and we hold these truths to be good truths.

MURPHY: It’s been a minute since we’ve done one of these, Eric. Feels like home, in the sense that “home” for me often involves DMing my roommates in the next rooms over instead of just talking to them. Supplementing our weekly podcast with a written version might seem superfluous, but sometimes getting out of bed and stumbling into the living room just feels like a lot, y’know?

Beyond the podcast, there just haven’t been many calls to reasonablize so far this season. Part of that might be the glow of a championship and the lessons imparted by the steely Kawhi Leonard keeping our readership (relatively) more even-keeled, and part of it might be that any drama that has struck the Raptors has had an almost unanimous root cause: injuries. There are only so many ways we can shoehorn self-deprecation in a discussion centred on “well, things will be better as the team gets healthier.”

Well, here we are, man. The team is getting healthier. Assuming this cruel one-in, one-out policy their injured list has maintained for half a season has been excised, the Raptors will soon look more like themselves than they have since the first few games of the season and a brief stretch between injuries to Serge Ibaka and Kyle Lowry and injuries to Pascal Siakam, Norman Powell and Marc Gasol. Terence Davis remains the only Raptor to appear in every game, with OG Anunoby (38) and Chris Boucher (36) the only others to appear in at least 31 of the team’s 39. It’s been dire.