Blake Murphy

Charlie Brown Jr.'s availability is not something the Raptors 905 could have planned for until very recently.His outlook — and the Raptors’ NBA and G League outlook — shifted at fortuitous times to make this a strong fit, writes Blake Murphy.

Andrew S. Warren BS BA ∙ Blake Murphy MD ∙ Nallely Saldana-Ruiz MD ∙ Kirsten Dansey MD MPH ∙ Sara L. Zettervall MD MPH

For better or worse, every game between the Toronto Raptors and Miami Heat over the last decade has felt like a stress test on the aesthetic limits of basketball.

When the quartet of Raptors rookies took the floor together at Scotiabank Arena ten hours earlier, the situation could not have been more different.

The Raptors have never started a younger group of players than they did on Thursday.The result was a loss, but more important was the continued exposure and opportunity for an expanding handful of young players.

With six minutes to go, it wasn’t a question of if the Grizzlies would hang an embarrassing number on the Raptors. It was a question of if it would be a historically embarrassing number. And not even that could coerce much defensive execution, writes Blake Murphy.

The NBA season isn't quite at the halfway point, but with three months of games already played and the new year approaching, it seems like a good time to look ahead and make some bold predictions for the season remaining based on what we've seen so far.

You'd love to be able to use a lack of familiarity together as an explanation. You can't, but it'd go something like this: The Toronto Raptors ' starting

Can a pair of double-digit losses really be all that different?

If you are a fan of the trade machine, then for the next 10 days, you are a fan of the Toronto Raptors