There’s a sense of Deja Vu with this year’s Toronto Raptors. A pesky defensive-minded point guard awaits his chance to make all the teams that passed him up in the first round of the draft pay for their mistake. There’s the raw, versatile big with homerun-or-strikeout potential. How about the potential microwave scorer off the bench?
Jamal Shead is not Fred VanVleet. Ulrich Chomche is not Pascal Siakam. Ja’Kobe Walter is not Norm Powell. (And this is certainly not a rookie preview. JD does a much better job of that here.) This season’s bench is nothing like the Bench Mob from 2017-18, but there’s enough potential to incite hope!