Linkage - May 5
Players such as Elton Brand, Gilbert Arenas, Baron Davis, Corey Maggette, Shawn Marion, Antawn Jamison, and others, may be available, but then again they may not.
If you’re a Raptors fan and you’re trying to figure out what Bryan Colangelo will do this off-season when he simply has to do something to rejig his roster, consider that Marion is Colangelo’s ideal player.
This isn’t to say that Marion will bolt the Miami Heat, but the Matrix is precisely what the Raptors need.
And when you need something, you explore all options.
What leagues such as the NBA should do is not ask voters to select a most valuable player, but rather its most outstanding player.
The CFL doesn’t get a lot of things right, but the league honours its most outstanding player, which is the right thing and only thing to do.
You can argue numbers, how numbers are posted and interpret them, but there’s no judgment call.
“The way the NBA is structured, it’s built on superstar players,” teammate Derek Fisher, a class act in the truest sense, said when asked about MVP recognition.
“The guys on good teams get the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “The guys on good teams who are the all-stars and the MVPs.
“When you’ve got great individual numbers, as well as the team numbers, to be No. 1 in the West, it’s hard to argue.”
Did anyone catch any of the Euroleague’s Final Four on the weekend?
Bryan Colangelo did. He and Maurizio were in Madrid for the games but, as we’ve said quite often, Europe has been pretty picked over and they aren’t going to come away with a Garbo or an AP free agent.
Toronto Raptors G.M. Bryan Colangelo plans to keep restricted free agent-to-be Jose Calderon, which means he will have two choices for handling his point guard duo of Calderon and T.J. Ford: 1) Keep both and run the risk Ford will be unhappy if he loses the starting job or 2) Trade Ford. Moving him would be the best move, but getting equal value won’t be easy. He’s scheduled to make $16 million-plus over the next two years. …
the Nets might be interested in sending Richard Jefferson to Toronto for Andrea Bargnani, Jorge Garbajosa and Joey Graham. He even talked to RJ about it. Beyond promising he would “kill” the Nets four times a year if they traded him inside the division, RJ did note that Raptor GM Bryan Colangelo has watched him since he played high school ball in Phoenix. HoopsWorld’s Wendell Maxey also suggested Jefferson would be a good fit in Toronto. Hmm. Our suspicions grow.
Bargnani is certainly interesting and he certainly would qualify under Kiki Vandeweghe’s definition of “fallen angel”, a young player with potential who has fallen out of favor. Dave D even suggested Kiki might be a good mentor for Bargnani! But the Nets would have to believe the Italian League star is the next Dirk Nowitzki.
Just like every other Raptors perimeter player, Calderon’s defense is below-par. He is extremely guilty of allowing dribble-penetration and has trouble fighting through screens and contesting shots. He’s a victim of Sam Mitchell’s half-ass defensive strategy and you can often find him double-teaming players for odd reasons allowing his man to knock down the open jumper. At 6′ 3″ and long arms he should be a good defender especially given how hard he plays, but so far in his NBA career we haven’t seen anything from Calderon that might indicate he can hold his own on the defensive end.
What kills me about your irresponsible prediction was that you have unbridled access to the players that no one else enjoys. You speak to management, coaches and players on the regular. You see them in a light we don’t. Along with that, you see what the rest of us do, that the Raptors on-off switch only works with teams in the same category/level, and when they beat better teams, they were in a rhythm. But you assume that when the stakes are higher, when teams dig in, the Raptors can turn it on, when their track record shows otherwise.
Ok, so here is the whole point of this rant, at what point do you (and most of the rest of the Toronto sports media for that fact) put the pom-poms away, and give us fans something useful? Instead of saying the Raptors will win, because Bosh is going to destroy them, why not give some analytical supplementary material for us to chew on and debate? Do you not feel any sort of journalistic responsibility to the fans?
But as we saw many times with the Raptors this season, saying things and then going out and doing them are completely different matters. The Pistons beat down on the Magic and did not let Howard rule the interior like he did against the Raptors. They didn’t buy into any of that “Superman” bull, they pushed Howard around, shoved him away from the basket, even had the guy’s hand taped up by the end of the game. You could see the demoralized look on Howard’s face, realizing that this wasn’t going to be like playing the Raptors. To take a quote from the NBA’s new darling, “I don’t think I even looked up at the scoreboard for a while…[i]t’s disappointing.” Now does that sound like “Superman?” Does that sound like a guy who thinks that he is going to dominate the paint? No. Howard was not able to deal with the fact that the Pistons have some big boys who like to bang and aren’t afraid of a little contact. Wallace, McDyess, Maxiell, Ratliff…those guys all don’t mind getting rough if they have to. Now THAT’S the Legion of Doom. As Rip Hamilton said, “You can’t rough up the game with us…[t]hey tried. We like it. We enjoy it. That’s the way we want to play.”
So at the HQ, we decided to once again look at this team based on our expectations to start the season, probably what Bryan Colangelo is currently doing and what may decide the fate of many of the players over the next few months.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Marion or Jefferson… I’m fine with either, as long as TJ and some dead wood are gone.
Regarding the Pistons, I can’t help but like that team. Bunch of scrappy players who really aren’t that dirty at all, IMO. Tough basketball… Joe Dumars is a genious.
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