The AltRaps Blog

All of a sudden, two bad teams are good and the bottom half of this year’s playoff lineup – read Toronto, Philly and Atlanta – are a tad nervous.
That puts a tremendous amount of extra pressure on Mr. Colangelo to improve the roster and on Mr. Mitchell to get the most out of it

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Raptors centre Rasho Nesterovic exercised the player option on his contract for next season yesterday.
The 7-foot, 270-pounder averaged 7.8 points and 4.8 rebounds in 71 games last season, his second with the Raptors.
Nesterovic, who will make $8.4 million US next season, has averaged 7.0 points and 5.5 rebounds in 699 career games with Minnesota, San [...]

With so few teams having cap space, the most Calderon can expect is a mid-level offer, which is expected to be in the neighbourhood of $5.6 million US, doubling his stipend from last season.
Sign-and-trade scenarios are possible and teams conceivably can clear space, factors that could lead to a more lucrative offer for Calderon.
But the [...]

That means someone has to go. And it’s probably not going to be Calderon, who had a great season and wasn’t hounded by injuries like Ford has been throughout his career.

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Jose Calderon said on his personal website that he wants to be a starting NBA point guard, which is the same position coveted by T.J. Ford.
Calderon’s posting was his first public declaration that he wants the No.1 job. “I want to be a starter and be in a team that aspires to everything,” he wrote. [...]

No, I don’t think Richard Jefferson allegedly getting into a scrap in a Minneapolis bar last January makes him any less desireable to the Raptors, who will probably have him on the list of players they’d think about trading for.

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“He really ratcheted up interest in the team,” Millman said. “No one worked harder at his job or harder at promoting the Fan. He’ll be with us for awhile yet and we’ll get around to discussing replacements in the summer.”
- Toronto Sun
Swirsky, who previously worked in Chicago for 10 years, said it was “family considerations” [...]

Thanks to Jeff for the tip:
Swirsky joins the Bulls from the Toronto Raptors where he most recently served as the team’s television play-by-play announcer for seven seasons. Prior to that, he called the action for the Raptors radio broadcasts for three seasons.
“I am honored, humbled and appreciative to the Chicago Bulls as I return to [...]

I’ve come to one inescapable conclusion over the past month or two: Basketball journalists in Canada, by and large, do not have a clue.
Toronto have sputtered and floundered their way to a record 3 games above .500 as of Sunday afternoon, with some terrible losses, some convincing wins, and some squeakers. As you would expect [...]

Where the team stands

The holidays are over, and how. After returning from their marathon 7-game road trip with an as-good-as-can-be-expected 3-4 record, the Raptors endured a shellacking at the hands of Detroit, who still look like the class of the conference despite being written down, if not off, by several pundits pre-season. Toronto played [...]