The Price of a Championship and the Raptor’s Injuries

After a heartbreaking 105–104 loss to the San Antonio Spurs Sunday night, a spectacular play by DeMar DeRozan and two Raptors still injured. The 2019–20 Raptor’s season has been plagued with a steady rotation in-and-out of its best players. After a stunning 2019 Championships win, one can’t help but wonder why now are the best players injured? Why are players dropping like flies and skipping games?

Cause and Effect

Because of the roller-coaster season that led to the Raptor’s very first win, one can reasonably assume that the pressure on their bodies was tremendous. The energy needed to stay focused and stay elite is no joke. Not only did last year present the Raptor’s most significant physical challenge, but also the hardest emotional and mental challenge too.

When you’re going at the pace of the Raptor’s during their championship season–there’s no time to slow down. Sometimes, when you’re pushing your body to its limit, you’re worst off if you stop–you must power through.

It’s like pulling an all-nighter for an exam while you’re ten red bulls deep, and you know if you stop to sleep, you’re not waking up.

It’s like when the light turns yellow, and if you slam on the brakes, you’ll cause more harm than if you just pushed harder on the gas pedal.

It’s like when you’re on a drug binge, and you know taking another tiny bump will make you feel better than taking no more

From Top to Right of Injured players: Kyle Lowry, Marc Gasol, Norman Powell, Fred VanVleet, Pascale Siakam

You can bet that all the front-runners for the Raptors pushed themselves to the limit. It paid off; they won the NBA championships for the first time in history. But the issue with this go, go, go mentality is that after the hype has died down, and the rings distributed when it’s time to return to their regular programming with no dopamine, serotonin, to mask their injuries, their bodies retaliate.

Slowly, and inevitably, the day of reckoning came. The injuries finally surfaced, and like an unwanted zit, one by one, they popped up going, “Hey, remember when I asked nicely? Now I’m serious.”

I’m confident they have the best care to treat these grave, multiple-game-skipping, injuries, but it’s a powerful lesson to learn:

No matter how invincible we feel or how hard we push ourselves, our humanness always seems to catch up to us.

Not to say there aren’t days where you need to push yourself, but when you don’t give your body a break, it will take one for you. Not taking time off correctly and running at 10000mph for too long, your body keeps tabs and retaliates.

Your physical health does not need to be the price you pay to win

The Raptors will continue to make history, but this time, I hope they do it in a way that applies more time paying attention to their physical, mental, and emotional well being.