Always where he needs to be
Whether it is on the court putting up threes, or by his wife’s side, Raps’ C.J. Miles knows where he is needed
Officially Toronto Raptors’ small forward C.J. Miles became a dad last Thursday night just after 10 p.m.
Daughter Ava Reneé Miles arrived just as Miles’ Raptors’ teammates were putting the finishing touches on a Thanksgiving meal in Indianapolis and while C.J. would not have minded being there for that, it was not his first choice.
“I didn’t miss anything,” he said. “I was right where I was supposed to be.”
And therein lies the secret, although it’s not really a secret, to the success of Miles.
He’s always where he is supposed to be.
If that’s being on the court throwing up a ridiculous number of threes to get ready for a game or a season, he’s there.
If it’s at his wife’s bedside when she’s giving birth to the couple’s first child, he’s there.
And if it’s at the locker of a teammate whispering some private words of advice that will make that player a better person and teammate, he’s there too.
Miles is all about being where he is supposed to be.
And you can easily make the argument that Miles was supposed to be in Toronto this year too and of course he is here.
Miles has made himself an integral part of this team’s success from multiple standpoints.
He’s the father-figure — “I don’t like the bench-dad thing,” he admits — of that second unit whether he likes it or not based on simple experience.
He has tons of it. Most of the young men he shares the court with in that second unit have little.
But the reason he dislikes the bench-dad designation has nothing to do with age. He just doesn’t want to be singled out as any more important than anyone else in that unit.
“I mean it’s even more fun for me because I get to be with those guys every night on the floor and see them take steps and get better and better,” Miles said.
“I don’t like the bench Dad thing but it makes me feel like that when I talk like that because those guys are in here as much as I am, maybe even more and they work as hard as anyone. I look at them as equals. ‘The Bench Mob,’ I run with that name more because we are eye to eye on everything.”
Miles has plenty of father-figure training in his past but it’s all around 20-somethings like he’s surrounded with in Toronto with Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam and Jakob Poeltl and Delon Wright not to mention the baby of the group in OG Anunoby.
He’s also an integral part of Toronto’s closing lineup, that ace in the corner either there to make you pay for cheating off him and paying too much attention to the likes of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan or there to force you to account for him and thereby opening up space for the Lowry’s and DeRozan’s to do their thing.
There’s no such thing as the perfect addition to a team, but Miles, given what the Raptors are trying to do this year with their offence and the number of young men they are trying to develop while still trying to win, is as close as this Raptors’ team has.
Miles now has an addition of his own to account for and based on everything we know about him through basketball he’s going to be just fine with that as well.
It’s not going to be easy. Like a young player making the jump from college to the pros and trying to get acclimated to the speed of the league, the only way you learn to cope is to experience it first-hand.
From the 4 a.m. wakeups to that struggle with the baby seat coming home from the hospital, it’s all something he has to master.
“I did it actually,” Miles said of installing the seat, one of the early tests of fatherhood. “I just did it, because it was a detachment thing. Part of it was already in there so I moved it ... You’d think that thing would a lot easier. You’d think all that stuff would be easier to put together but it’s not. I’m getting better though.”
It might take some time, but we do know this. Miles will be there when he is supposed to be there, because that’s who he is, whether that’s in real life or on the basketball court.