Taking the ache of Drake
Raptors might want some of rapper’s passion in Game 2
As the air was sucked out of Toronto’s NBA balloon at Tuesday night’s Third Annual Game 1 Loss to Cleveland, some of the dissipated oxygen fuelled a social-media sideshow. Drake, the Forest Hill-raised hip-hop artist and Raptors courtside fixture, spent eventful bits of the evening jawing with Cleveland’s Kendrick Perkins.
In a couple of verbal confrontations, first at halftime and then after the Raptors threw away a winnable game in overtime, profanity was spewed and threats of violence were implied. And there was, as a result, an exchange between Raptors management and the league office about the matter.
Members of Raptors management, as it turned out, weren’t particularly enthused to talk to the league about Drake (they preferred to steer the topic toward Kevin Love’s elbow to the head of DeMar DeRozan, a foul deemed “incidental” by the officials that the Raptors felt deserved a video review. The league office agreed later on Wednesday, upgrading the foul to a Flagrant 1).
But if Drake had to be the topic, it’s important to understand that president Masai Ujiri has been unfailingly supportive of the artist’s presence around the team, whether the artist is jawing with Perkins or NBA all-stars like John Wall or James Harden. Ujiri, who tells stories about the late-night phone calls he occasionally receives when Drake is jonesing to talk hoops, appreciates the passion — even if the altercation with Perkins was unusually heated.
“I think it’s a great thing that the guy’s invested in our team like that,” Ujiri said. “You could tell he was stung (by the loss). I like that. What’s not to like about that? … I went to Drake and I said, ‘Let it go. Let it go.’ And that was it. To me, it’s done.”
Ujiri, mind you, said he would follow up with Drake to relay the league’s message that it’d be best to contain tete-a-tetes with players to verbal barbs from the sideline. Given the DrakePerkins brouhaha spilled into the tunnel at the game’s conclusion, the situation could have led to considerable chaos.
So, a sideshow. And, hey, it beat talking about the actual basketball game, wherein the Raptors essentially giftwrapped the home-court advantage they’d won over an 82-game slog and presented it to LeBron James on a silver platter while bending a knee in subservience to the king.
Given the potential ugliness of a celebrity-player confrontation, there are those who’d suggest that the franchise’s relationship with the self-styled Champagne Papi has run its course. Drake is more of a pain than he’s worth, the argument would go.
(And certainly, if you hang around the Air Canada Centre enough, you can detect the audible groans of security and service staff who occasionally can’t hide their gripes around catering to Drake and his occasionally boisterous raft of associates).
You can understand the urge to throw jabs. Is it probable Drake is a fake tough guy would have been broken in half by the six-foot-10 Perkins had they engaged in so much as a thumb wrestle? Well, yeah. But that’s why you roll with bodyguards.
Does Drake occasionally grate? Well, sure. But as superfans go — hey, at least he’s not trying to sell you a Hyundai.
Still, the Raptors can learn some things from their global ambassador’s latest imbroglio, and not only that the occasional show of bleep-you defiance might actually endear you to the team president.
Beginning with Thursday’s Game 2, they need to play with a lot less “we’re-not-worthy” self-doubt and a lot more Drake-esque “we-own-theplace” swagger. They’re better off inhabiting the spirit of a hip-hop god than playing like they’re haunted by the ghosts of LeBron-induced failures past. This team doesn’t need to ban Drake. It needs to be a bit more like him. It needs to play as though it thinks more highly of itself than it has so far shown.
The only way to explain their Game 1 under-performance, after all, comes down to mindset. The Raptors are the best team in the East — they’re the better team in this series — but on Tuesday they trembled in the presence of the best player in the world. How else do you explain pro hoopsters botching all those layups, not to mention missing 18 of 23 three-pointers that were, according to NBA tracking data, either “open” or “wide open”?
Lest anyone lament Drake’s injection of himself into the proceedings as a sign of the impending demise of our society, it’s good to remember that the celebrity fan in the thick of controversy has been an NBA staple for decades. Back in the 1980s, when the Lakers and Celtics dynasties were at their height, L.A. courtside pioneer Jack Nicholson more than once took over the storyline. There was the time Nicholson, the movie star, allegedly mooned the crowd in Boston. There was another time, during the 1987 NBA final, when the scrum of reporters around Nicholson dwarfed the crowd of scribes speaking to Magic Johnson.
And film director Spike Lee carried on the tradition in New York, engaging in untold trash talk with opponents and referees from courtside at Madison Square Garden. Lee, of course, was famously blamed for fuelling one of the great flourishes of offence in NBA playoff history — the eight points in nine seconds scored by Lee’s most famous foil, Reggie Miller, that led to a crushing New York defeat.
On Tuesday the Raptors certainly couldn’t hang their loss on the man known as Drizzy. Raptors Dwane Casey, for his part, said he appreciates Drake’s presence on the sideline. It doesn’t hurt to have more than one voice volubly asking the referees why so many NBA rules don’t apply to LeBron.
“I love it,” Casey said of Drake’s antics. “No problem whatsoever with Drake and being excited and passionate. We all should be that passionate.”
There are players on Toronto’s roster who ought to take that as a message.