Drake Care
I come not to praise Drake, but to bury him.
Editor’s note: I wrote this piece eight years ago during the Raptors/Pacers playoff series. I have hated Drake for a long time, so the last few days have been very good to me. Made some minor tweaks, but mostly kept what I originally wrote intact. It’s funny this is all coming out in the middle of the playoffs. Five years ago, a year and a day after the Pusha T diss dropped, the Raptors played in their first NBA Finals.
They ended up beating the Warriors and two players who were instrumental in that have Pacers ties: Kawhi Leonard and Pascal Siakam. Leonard was drafted by the Pacers a year after they picked Paul George at 10. Leonard got traded to the San Antonio Spurs for George Hill, an Indy native who was instrumental in the back-to-back ECF appearances by the Pacers.
The Raptors traded for him in the last year of his deal and won a title thanks to his play. He signed with the Los Angeles Clippers in that offseason on the condition that they trade for Paul George. That trade is looking for a real win for the Oklahoma City Thunder as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is now currently a better player than PG and the Clippers have only won three playoff series in those five years. And that’s not even including the picks they sent! PG may be headed elsewhere this offseason if he opts out of the last year of his contract.
One potential, though unlikely landing spot is with the team that drafted him. Making that work salary-wise would be tricky as the Pacers are expected to re-sign Pascal Siakam, who they traded for mid-season and is a big reason they made it out of the first round for the first time in ten years.
It’s also possible the Pacers could make it back to the ECF but they’ll have to beat a really tough and talented New York Knicks team to get there. And even then, the Boston Celtics would likely be their opponent and that’s a daunting challenge, but anything is possible, including an unlikely Finals run.
I come not to praise Drake, but to bury him.
Tuesday night, in a game that likely serves as synecdoche for the 2015–2016 campaign, the Pacers blew a double digit lead in the 4th quarter.
If you’re a Pacers fan, that worrisome feeling crept up your spine as the Pacers built up the lead. And then:
A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
That was the feel of the momentum swing, punctuated by a Norman Powell dunk.
A combination of poor bench play, Paul George not being on the floor and Raptors Coach Dwane Casey making some smart lineup adjustments doomed Indiana. The Pacers were manhandled in the 4th quarter with a 21–2 Raptors run.
Coincidentally, about the time the fortunes of the Pacers changed, the Canadian-born Ted Cruz was making a speech at a gym in Knightstown, Indiana and attempted to recreate a moment from the film, Hoosiers.
Cruz referred to the rim as a ring, technically correct, per the NBA rule book, but not a term as frequently used as hoop.
Not exactly helping your chances in a state where basketball is extremely popular.
Which brings us to one Aubrey Graham. Drake is a fixture at Raptors home games and serves as their Global Ambassador.
Drake got in hot water for comments he made at a 2014 Toronto concert attended by Kevin Durant.
That goes against the anti-tampering rules established by the league and the Raptors were fined $25,000. The league allegedely offered to waive the fine if the Raptors dropped Drake as a global ambassador. The NBA later denied this.
The Raptors declined and since then Drake has designed shirts for the team and the Raptors have hosted Drake-themed nights. All well and good, running an expansion team is a challenge let alone managing the only franchise not in the U.S.
But Drake’s behavior at Game 5 did not exactly cover the team in glory. Rodney Stuckey made an embarrassing play for sure, but Drake’s response, following him and clapping at the back of his head was not a good look for a representative of the franchise.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s a relatively harmless albeit obnoxious action.
However, there are codes of conduct in place for fan behavior. Those were put in place due to The Malice at the Palace. That’s an event that feels like ancient history but any time there’s an altercation at a Pacers game, whether between players and fans or some combination in between, my heart skips a beat and the familiar battery acid taste fills my mouth.
This past January, a Hornets fan was issued a warning for an altercation with Kevin Durant.
Russell Westbrook was fined for cursing at a heckler during the Mavs/Thunder series.
Those are checks and balances to prevent a sequel to the Pacers/Pistons Brawl.
Drake has a habit of testing those limits, given his propensity to stand and prowl the sidelines like a coach.
He probably gets a pass due to his standing with the organization. He hasn’t crossed the line yet, though the five second call on the Bulls back in March was probably pushing things. A non-famous person with courtside seats wouldn’t get that type of carte blanche.
I’m not against talking trash, that’s very much part of the game for player and fan alike. But the dynamic changes when it’s courtside. When emotions are high, especially in a playoff setting, people do foolish things.
My concern is that by testing these boundaries and encroaching on the space of a player, particularly in a tense environment, Drake could be setting himself up for a sucker punch.
As hilarious as watching endless loops of Drake getting decked on Vine would be, it would also be a step backward for the NBA and black eye for both the Raptors and Drake (quite literally and figuratively in the latter’s case).
But perhaps a just comeuppance for this paper tiger. If you haven’t read Meaghan Garvey’s excellent Op-Ed on Drake, here’s your chance now.
Here’s a quote from it that I find particularly relevant:
The old Drake was an easy target, a feather-stuffed Big Ghostface punching bag, a proto-emo Seth Cohen type who’s totally not like those other guys. The new Drake’s triceps are cut like the Canadian Rockies, and his omg-so-random Twitter mode has been swapped for tough-guy roadman slang.
The latter was in full display both during and after Game 5. The aforementioned Rodney Stuckey incident and —in a puzzling display from a rapper with ghostwriters who once did this during one of his various moments of jersey-chasing — took Paul George to task after the game with a soon deleted Instagram post.
It was a real head scratcher of a moment, why would you try to antagonize the best player in the series, who dropped 39 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists and has for the most part rendered your team’s All-Star shooting guard ineffective on both ends?
He probably called George scared because he passed the ball to Solomon Hill who nailed the three point attempt but had the potential OT-forcing shot waived off by officials.
If George had taken the shot and missed, I’m sure Drake would have yipped about that. It’s a can’t win situation. George made the right move. Hill was just too slow, though credit to him for making the shot in a high pressure situation.
Still, if you’re going to talk trash, stand by it. The Internet is forever and this dig will live on in screen grabs and possibly serve as bulletin board material for George. Though the desire to win is typically all the motivation most players need.
But as Drake is a Raptors fan, this is just an extension of their current approach to the playoff trash talking.
There’s no playoff history between the teams and nothing like a rivalry. Since the 2013–14 season, The Raptors are 8–3 against the Pacers, including a sweep during the 2014–15 campaign where Paul George missed all but six games rehabbing a broken leg.
Which was surprising when the Raptors decided to insult the state of Indiana with a tired and boring top 10 list centered on Hoosier stereotypes. It was displayed on the scoreboard during Game 1, which the Pacers ended up taking.
It’s about what you’d expect from a coastal metropolitan. It’s puzzling that the organization would think was a good idea given how previous bouts of trash talking turned out. Raptors GM, Masai Ujiri was fined for shouting, “Fuck Brooklyn!” before Game 1 of the first round Raptors/Nets series in 2014. The 6-seed Nets defeated the 3-seed Raptors in seven games. Last year, before Game 1 of Raptors/Wizards, Ujiri once again tempted fate by saying, “We don’t give a shit about him!” in reference to Paul Pierce’s comments about the Raptors. The 4-seed Raptors were swept in the first round by the 5-seed Wizards.
Playoff agony is par for the course for the franchise that won its only playoff series in 2001.
Earning a third consecutive first round exit might not bode well for the future of this core, so it’s no wonder things are tense with that fanbase.
It’s still puzzling, the Raptors are the 2-seed and finished the season with a franchise best 56 wins. They are playing a Pacers team that many pundits didn’t peg to make the playoffs. A team whose best player is still recovering from a horrific leg injury.
As far as the Pacers are concerned, they’re playing with house money. Every extra game is bonus revenue and valuable experience for rookie big man Myles Turner. There’s a lot to be excited about for the team going forward. Paul George-Myles Turner is a pretty good core to build around.
The Raptors are the better team on paper, they have the better bench and more cohesive roster. Dwayne Casey is an excellent coach and has done great work during his time in charge. Toronto has an excellent fan base of passionate fans who pack the Air Canada Centre and the nearby plaza, affectionately dubbed, Jurassic Park.
So why all the anxiety over playing a 7-seed in the first round?
There’s the prior playoff history of course, but in many ways Drake is the avatar of these anxieties.
The fear of inadequacy and the reliance on hackneyed disses calls to mind Drake’s feud last summer with Meek Mill. Meaghan Garvey had a great takedown of this in that aforementioned Op-Ed.
There was a distinct moment during the OVO Fest set where things immediately flipped from corny but ultimately harmless to legitimately toxic: an unfunny, badly-edited image of a bride and groom, with Nicki’s head edited onto the man and Meek’s onto the woman. (#DrakeHive could stand to take a few notes from #FutureHive in terms of quality meme production.) It was gross, but not out of place with the general thrust of Drake’s disses: “Is that a world tour, or your girl’s tour?”, he sneered on “Back to Back”, before hitting Nicki with some patronizing advice. The hilarious joke, you see, is that Nicki is more successful than Meek, and thus is like the dude in the relationship. That’s a new one! Never mind the delusional mental gymnastics required for a guy who built an empire off projections of sensitivity and simpering anecdotes refusing to let go of a single hook-up of the past decade to declare “No woman ever had me star-struck.” Never mind the years of lyrical and visual receipts of Drake’s shameless, performative thirst for the woman who gets dragged for everything he gets dapped for. (Or the fact that Nicki will probably never be a serious factor in the “best rapper alive” conversation, despite being on the opposite end of the ghostwriting conversation.) On a strictly human level, I don’t even know how to rationally approach the subject of throwing a longtime friend under the bus on this scale, underhanded misogyny aside.
The Raptors go as Drake goes and if they somehow lose Game 6 and Game 7, well if you’re reading this now, it’s too late.