Julian Wright is creating something unlike anything we have ever seen.
He is forming a mutated, monster holiday, an alliance between the two biggest days in the United States.
"Ham, candy yams, macaroni and cheese. Everything,"
the Toronto Raptors small forward said of the things he was looking forward to eating during the Christmas break. "That's Thanksgiving, but we're doing it on Christmas. I was gone [during Thanksgiving in Boston], so I figured, all right, let me get a home-cooked meal. Also in Chicago, it's hard to get out of there if it's snowing. They cancel direct flights like it's nothing. I don't want to risk going home to Chicago."
That is the biggest question for many NBA players during this time of the year: Go home or stay put?
The Raptors play tonight against Detroit, and then have three full days off. The players do not have to be anywhere until Boxing Day at 6 p.m., in Memphis, where they play the following night.
Still, three-plus days do not represent a world of time. A handful of the Raptors -- Wright, Andrea Bargnani, Solomon Alabi, Ed Davis and Amir Johnson -- will all be staying in Toronto. Johnson is from California and, after going home his first few years in the league, has decided to stay wherever he was playing, Detroit or Toronto, since.
Wright's mother is coming to Toronto. So too are Johnson's mother and grandmother, who has already started cooking.
DeMar DeRozan is also from the Los Angeles area, but he is splitting for the coast on Thursday morning.
"It's OK. I know I'm just going there to see my family,"
DeRozan said. "I don't have to worry about nothing else. It makes the year go by faster, just going home to see my family for a couple of days."
"[My bed] is still there. All of my stuff is still there. They better not get rid of my stuff. I ain't got nowhere else to stay."
Coach Jay Triano, who is going to Vancouver for the break (and do not ask him about the existence of a Vancouver-to-Memphis direct flight), is quite obviously using the break as motivation. Better to go on a break thinking of a win, the thinking goes, than dwelling on a loss. It clears the mind.
However, as for what his players do, ambivalence rules the day, so long as they are back on time for Sunday night's practice.
"The way the schedule has presented itself, I think they deserve a little bit of a break. I think right now, getting right away from basketball is not a bad thing with the number of injuries that we have,"
Triano said, making reference to his half-dozen injured players. "A lot of it is strains and [sore] backs. Maybe, getting away from it a little bit, we can heal."
Wright's mother, meanwhile, was scheduled to be in Toronto early Tuesday. But her arrival from Chicago was being delayed.
"I don't know when she'll get here,"
Wright said.
"Like I said, 'Yep, that's confirmation. Don't go home at this time of year.'"
