Last night, former Raptors player Jakob Poeltl visited town as the San Antonio Spurs took on the hometown side at Scotiabank Arena. Sure, the Raptors won easily, but more importantly Spurs centre Poeltl got an extended and indefinite checkout at the hotel as the Raptors landed the tall Austrian centre in a trade.
Forget the past few weeks of mediocre play surrounded by never-ending questions about who might be traded. This trade is different.
For those who only decided to cheer for the team in the lead-up to the 2019 NBA championship, Poeltl was a popular Raptor and a key member of the so-called Bench Mob alongside a couple of fellas named Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet. Poeltl, at that point, was Siakam’s closest friend on the team. Indeed, the word “bromance” was bandied about with these two, so good was their on-court chemistry and off-court friendship.
Reunited pic.twitter.com/WUrtEIUVIq
— Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) February 9, 2023
Other key members of the feared Bench Mob included Norman Powell, CJ Miles and Delon Wright. It’s a far cry from the bench strength of the team these days, which is one of the worst in the league, although also wracked with injuries including a season-ending injury to a player in Otto Porter Jr. protected to be a top performer.
Back then, the team was lead by Demar Derozan, Jonas Valanciunas, Serge Ibaka and Kyle Lowry and were often at or near the top of the league during the regular season thanks, in part, to a very deep and very exciting secondary unit coming off the bench. The team blew up later when Masai Ujiri worked some trade magic landing Kawhi Leonard and winning the team’s first championship and dropping Poeltl, Derozan, Wright and others in the process.
Back then the ACC would get loud and proud when the Bench Mob took over a game. They were fun. They were scrappy. They flew around the court. And they loved getting the opportunity to turn a game on its head by providing that immediate spark when they came in. What made it even more exciting was the fact that most of the Bench Mob were not even projected NBA players, let alone future all-stars and champions. Fred van Vleet was undrafted, Siakam way down in the NBA draft at 27, Powell was a second-round pick. This was a rag-tag group if ever there was one.
Poeltl was actually the most highly touted prospect of the group taken with the ninth overall pick. His return gives the team its first legit multi-dimensional centre (apologies to Khem Birch) since Marc Gasol left the team following its championship run.
There is a chance the team will trade Fred or other members of the team, but not a big one. And there is every reason to believe that the chemistry from the Bench Mob days will return at just the right team to take the team to the next level, secure a playoff spot and, at minimum, offer a real challenge to some of the top teams in the Eastern Conference.
