Arsenalist

If your expectations are in check you’ll never be disappointed. Jason Kapono is a fine, fine shooter. Coming off screens, pulling up in transition, spotting up in the corner, FT shooting, he’s good, really good. What he’s not is what many had expected Bryan Colangelo to import into Toronto: an athletic scoring forward that could create his own shot. The Raptors are a jump shooting team who rely heavily on their outside shooters knocking down shots off of Bosh double teams, TJ Ford kick-outs and the good ‘ol high pick ‘n roll so it does make sense to sure up the outside shooting but does it help alleviate the scoring pressure of Bosh, no. Jason Kapono is something the Raptors wanted, he wasn’t what is needed. And lets face it with a hand in his face you’ll take Mike Miller or Matt Carroll over him.

There’s something to be said about giving a player the ball, sitting out the play and watching him score while the defense for once worries about somebody other than you. It was that player that I was hoping we could bring in which would allow CB4 to not be the main man on the frontline 100% of the time. Players like those are hard to find let alone sign, so you take what you can get and BC found a decent player at a decent rate. Nothing more. Is he an upgrade over Mo Pete? Offensively, yes. Defensively, no. Ignoring the rebounding deficiencies of this team and focusing on the positives, we can safely say that he’ll keep the defense honest but expecting anything great out of him is obviously expecting too much. Here’s hoping Bargnani picks up some slack on the defensive boards.

I don’t have any inside sources or even sources, but I can say with confidence that we’re not done acquiring players yet, BC can’t possibly expect a better result next season based on Delfino and Kapono. Our needs have still not been met, rebounding hasn’t improved (deteriorated?), defense is still suspect and scoring from the forward spot has not increased. If we go with this team into a series with New Jersey again, we’ll lose. Maybe there’s some sense in trading away one of our PGs for some help in other areas. If it makes the team better, why not?

We could acquire Darko but does that really make us better? He’ll take minutes away from Rasho and I’m inclined to call those two even. Grant Hill, Rashard Lewis, Gerald Wallace, Anderson Varejao are all great options but getting them to sign is not easy, and in fact it’s really, really hard. So you look to players already under contract that might be good fits (Gadzuric, Chandler, Evans, just throwing names) and to acquire them you’ll have to give up talent which brings us to tradeable commodities. Or do you sign Jamal Magloire? My point is that we’ll be hard-pressed to address our needs via free agency, it will have to be a trade and it will probably be a trade that as usual, 50% of the fans will hate.