Chapter 1: Aboard a sunken shipMasai Ujiri arrived at his office 10 minutes early. It was his first day at work as the General Manager of the Toronto Raptors. However, he noticed something rather odd as he entered the door. A man in his late 40s, wearing an expensive suit, was on the phone. "Well, which one's the worst decision? OK, go with that." It was his former mentor, Bryan Colangelo. Confused, Masai stood in front of the man, looking dumbfounded. "Uhh, Bryan? You don't work here anymore?"
"Oh hey Masai. Didn't notice you there. I'm just making some calls. I gotta call Dougie and put his name on the new article about how efficient we are when Andrea Bargnani is on the floor. I stayed here all night writing it up."
"Bryan, I-"
"And take a look at this! That right there is the mail." Bryan interrupted, holding a handful of letters. "Now let's talk about the mail. Can we talk about the mail, please, Masai? I've been dying to talk about the mail with you all day, okay? Pepe Silvia. This name keeps coming up over and over again. Every day, Pepe's mail is getting sent back to me. Pepe Silvia. Pepe Silvia. I look in the mail, well THIS WHOLE BOX IS PEPE SILVIA! So I say to myself, I gotta find this guy. I gotta go up to his office. I gotta put his mail in the guy's goddamn hands otherwise he's never gonna get it. He's gonna keep coming back down here. So I go up to Pepe's office and what do I find out, man? What do I find out? There is no Pepe Silvia. The man does not exist! Okay. so I decided, ohhhhh shit, buddy. I gotta dig a little deeper. There's no Pepe Silvia? You gotta be kidding me. I got boxes full of Pepe. Alright, so I start marching my way down to Carol in HR. And I knock on her door and I say "CAAAAAAROL. CAAAAAAAAAAAROL. I gotta talk to you about Pepe." And when I open the door, wha' do I find? There's not a single goddamn desk in that office! THERE. IS. NO. CAROL IN HR. Masai, half the employees in this building have been made up. This office is a goddamn ghost town."
Masai, getting annoyed, replied, "OK, Bryan I'm going to have to stop you right there. Not only do all of these people exist, but they've been asking for their mail on a daily basis. It's all they're talking about up there. Jesus Christ, dude you need some help. You know you don't work here anymore. Find another job."
"Oh, get a job? Just get a job? Why don't I strap on my job helmet and squeeze down into a job cannon and fire off into job land, where jobs grow on little jobbies?!”
"Security!!" yelled Masai, as Bryan was dragged away by a couple of men out of the office. As he sat down on his leather chair, Masai contemplated looking at the team's roster on his computer. He knew he had a lot more work to do in order to make the team relevant again. "What a mess that psycho made," he muttered to himself. He made a few phone calls looking for offers for Landry Fields to no avail, then left for the Casino Rama, where the Raptors would be holding an intra squad game in the same afternoon.
Raptors' intrasquad game at Casino RamaMasai was standing on the end of the bench when he asked one of the coaches where Austin Daye was. He was told that Daye missed the intrasquad game as he was placed on a stretcher and taken to hospital earlier after attempting a push up before the game.
"KYLE!! KYLE!!! Lob it!! Im streaking!! Im streaking," yelled Rudy Gay on what seemed like an easy fastbreak opportunity.
Kyle, looking like he could care less whether Rudy could catch it in mid-air, dunk it and what not, made a half-assed pass. The ball ended up getting stuck between the rim and the backboard. "Oh shit, you gotta get that Kyle. You threw it all the way up there nigga."
"What do you mean, in case you didn't notice I'm a motherfucking dwarf. So unless you got 10 foot pole or something you do it yourself." Kyle fired back at Rudy.
Rudy was getting sick of Kyle barking at his face ever since he got in Toronto. "That figures. You want all kind of set-asides. Special treatment 'cause you're handicapped. You're all the same."
"Special treatment? I'm 3-foot-fucking-tall you asshole! It's a matter of physics. Draw me a sketch of how I get that ball up there, huh? Sketch it up, you fucking moron. Fucking Leonardo da Vinci." Lowry continued.
"What did you call me thigh-high?"
"I called you a fucking guinea homo from the 15th-fucking-century, you dickhead!" Lowry was on fire running his mouth to Rudy. Demar, getting sick of Kyle as well, chimed in, "Hey I'll do it" as he leapt up and tipped the ball.
On the next possession, DJ Augustin, the Raptors back up point guard, was bringing the ball up. Rudy and Kyle were still on the other side of the court, barking insults at each other. "Hey, hey hey I'm open," Demar yelled at the top of his lungs. "I'm on fire I made one shot." Augustin, still puzzled by the idea that making one shot suddenly makes you on fire in-game, dumped it nonetheless to a wide open Demar as Rudy and Kyle continued yelling at each other on one side of the court. Demar then proceeded to brick a 20-footer with no man in front of him while Rudy and Kyle were throwing punches at each other. Watching Rudy and Kyle exchange blows, Psycho-T got into it as well and started punching everybody else for no reason. The crowd booed as Jonas, who finally got the ball for the first time in the game, ran on the wrong end of the court for a dunk, then afterwards screamed "WICTORY BABY!!" At the end of the team's bench, Masai stood quietly, covering his face from the embarrassment that he is now responsible for.
