The Orlando Magic and Toronto Raptors met on Sunday night in Orlando, with the Magic cruising to a 111-96 victory that came as little surprise given the current trajectory of the two teams.
Orlando is a young team on the rise, sitting fifth in the East, making the leap into playoff contention this year behind Paolo Banchero’s growth into an All-Star along with steady improvement from the young cast around him. The Raptors, meanwhile, are beginning their rebuild after finally trading OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam to build around Scottie Barnes, and will surely look to what Orlando’s done as a potential blueprint for how best to build a young roster that can compete on both ends of the floor.
After the game, the two teams’ first round picks from a year ago, Gradey Dick and Anthony Black, met at midcourt and hashed out a plan to do a jersey swap, recognizing a great social media opportunity when they saw it, leading to the Magic tweeting out this image of the two youngsters (which eventually got deleted after someone made a phone call I’m sure, but the internet lives forever).
In case you were wondering if they knew what they were doing with this swap and their positioning, of course they did, as Rob Perez pointed out on Twitter you could see Dick say “f**k it” as they discussed whether to make the swap or not (and Black changed what side of Dick he was on to make sure they got the funniest possible photo opp).
Knew exactly what they were doing. Watch Gradey say “f**k it…” at the beginning of this, and Anthony re-position himself. pic.twitter.com/N70ryyaeC1
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) March 18, 2024
You can see Black trying his best not to laugh, and I would bet that Gradey Dick will be a very popular jersey swap in the NBA as his career goes on because, deep down, everyone is still a teenager at heart.
