MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and national team head coach Jordi Fernandez will come to town
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Just like the bad old days of the Raptors expansion era (and post-Vince Carter and Chris Bosh editions), most of the remaining interesting storylines this season will revolve around who Toronto faces and not around specific Raptors.
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Let’s take the coming week for example. The main event is easy to identify: it’s the only return trip for the best Canadian player on the planet — arguably the best of all time — Hamilton’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who arrives Friday night with his Thunder from Oklahoma City.
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Gilgeous-Alexander averaged a solid 26.5 points in four appearances in Ontario, shooting better than 50% from the field, including 50% from three-point range.
Gilgeous-Alexander led his Thunder to the second-best record in the NBA on Monday, averaging 31.9 points and the league’s best two steals per game. He’s a leading candidate to win the MVP award, especially if voters decide that two-time winners Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo need to be far superior to Gilgeous-Alexander to win a third trophy.
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Dallas superstar Luka Doncic is also building a case for MVP, but Jokic is probably the better choice – he’s the best player in the NBA, his Denver Nuggets have a record almost identical to Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic’s Thunder is the current favorite. earn.
But Gilgeous-Alexander certainly made a strong case as well.
Before the arrival in Toronto of Gilgeous-Alexander and his Canadian teammate Lu Dort, who is also having an excellent season, the Sacramento Kings will visit him.
Sacramento’s associate head coach happens to be Jordi Fernandez, the head coach of the Canadian national team. Fernandez hasn’t been here since leading Canada to a bronze medal at the FIBA World Cup last summer and the country’s first Olympic berth since 2000.
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The head coach of the 2000 team, Jay Triano, now works alongside Fernandez on Mike Brown’s impressive team with the Kings. Former Raptors guards Doug Christie and Leandro Barbosa are also part of this group.
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Although Sacramento hasn’t taken another step forward after ending a long playoff drought last season, the team remains in a dogfight in the brutal Western Conference for a playoff or play-off spot. -in before the last few weeks. Sacramento found itself in a playoff spot as of Monday thanks to one fewer win but two games in hand against Dallas and Phoenix.
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There will surely be a lot of talk about the upcoming Olympics when Fernandez and Gilgeous-Alexander come to Toronto. They probably won’t talk about it in detail until late summer, when the team gathers for training camp in Toronto.
In the meantime, their presence will be a welcome distraction for a Raptors team that has lost seven straight and 9 of 10 as injuries and off-court tragedies have hit hard.
A loss to Sacramento on Wednesday would extend the skid to eight straight, which would be tied for 10th longest in franchise history.
If a loss to the Thunder also happened, followed somehow by a road loss to NBA-worst Washington the next night, well, then we’d be talking about the seventh losing streak consecutive games of at least 10 games in Raptors history. and the longest since 2010-11.
The 2020-21 Tampa-based team has lost nine in a row, as have two other Raptors teams.
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