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Too many things…can’t think of title…wait, got one: Semi-Hot Girl

Posted by Arsenalist on September 24, 2008

Congratulations to Lexi (I’m assuming that’s her stripper name) for making it to the Raptors Dance Pak. Unfortunately our girl Natalie couldn’t make it but I’m almost positive that 10 years down the road they’ll be doing the exact same thing, whatever that thing is. Most likely it’ll be performing for the Idaho Stampede dance team, a glamorous gig I hear.

The Idaho Stampede will be holding tryouts at Humber College on October 5th and 6th so if you happen to be good enough and tall enough, give it a shot. As the Idaho Stampede slogan says, The NBA dream starts in Idaho.

As a rule of thumb you should know that The Bleacher Report is run by a bunch of imbeciles who are great at producing consistent slime. But there are always anomalies and this article which talks about our bench and their anonymity is one of them. The author of the article is Messiah2315, for those of you who read RealGM occasionally you might remember him as the guy who got banned for stupid reasons, apparently he was humiliating the moderators. Anyway, nice article with a good comment on Roko Ukic:

One thing people will learn immediately about Roko Leni Ukic is that he’s about as good a slasher this team’s seen in a while. He’s a shooters dream—a drive-kick guy who has great court vision, out-of-this universe handles, and plays in control. While, in his younger days, people played off of him due to his lack of upper body strength and limited finishing ability, last year he showed some great skills at finding his shooters. Ukic’s jump to the NBA couldn’t have come at a better time. Had he come two years ago, he might have come down with Yoroslav Korolev syndrome, and been forced to play in Turkey for the next three decades.

The more I read and watch Roko, the more I think he’s going to be a difference maker for us. It took Calderon a couple years to get used to the NBA and Roko actually seems ahead of Calderon when it comes to experience and court awareness. Being a Euro rookie actually has its advantages - the scouts haven’t completely figured you out and you can get away with lots of things your rookie season. See, Calderon’s going to have a much tougher time this year because the scouting reports are out and everyone knows what his strengths and weaknesses are and the defense will adjust accordingly. Roko on the other hand is a relative unknown and it’ll take at least a year before the books are caught up on his style of play, until that time he has a chance to surprise a few.

Even if Roko excels there’s still the issue of bench depth. I don’t mind a shorter rotation with “concentrated” talent but that’s only a feasible strategy for the playoffs, not a 82 game regular season. It’s actually quite startling when you think about it, two years ago our bench used to outscore the opponents on a nightly basis and this year it looks like it’ll never happen. If Kapono starts instead of Jamario Moon it’ll mean that we won’t have a single legitimate offensive player coming off the bench. Say what you will about Carlos Delfino but he was likely to catch fire once in a while and score his fair share, right now you’re looking at Hassan Adams and Willie Solomon - 6′ 4″ and 6′ 1″ respectively - to bring in the offense. Roko’s going to need somebody to pass to you know.

I haven’t even talked about the loss of Rasho Nesterovic who had an excellent year last year. He clogged the lanes, played hard, hit the mid-range jumper and caused grief for opposing centers with his size. I see that we’ve basically replaced him with Jermaine O’Neal but just as O’Neal does things that Rasho can’t, Rasho did things that O’Neal can’t. It’s going to be a void that’ll be felt, unless of course Andrea Bargnani makes us all forget about him. Too many bloody questions and not enough answers with this Raptors team.

Some sad news down the wire with Shareef Abdur-Raheem retiring. He was a good player with lots of talent who never found the right team or a winning team to play on. Leo Rautins hated him and accused him of choking in the clutch which was ultra-unfair to the guy because his fourth quarter success rate seemed just about on par with any other average NBA player. It probably all started on the wrong foot in Vancouver where he got so used to loosing that it sort of became his thing. Vancouver did kill a lot of NBA careers: Big Country, Steve Francis, Brian Hill to name a few. Shareef’s viewpoint on Vancouver:

“Vancouver wasn’t bad for me, as far as the city and the people. The thing that was bad about it was the losing. I always felt that Vancouver would be a nice place to be if we were winning. We were all working hard to get better, but we just could never get it all on the right track. That was the most frustrating thing about it. I don’t think I ever displayed it publicly, but I went home a lot of nights very frustrated.”

Losing does that to you. You could live in the greatest city in the world (Barcelona) and still hate it if your team’s getting spanked and humiliated on a nightly basis. It reminds of the 16-66 Raptors playing in the Skydome, no matter how nice a city Toronto was it was hard to look past the losing. The fear of reverting to those times keeps me awake on many nights, I can’t bear to see the Raptors being the laughing stock of the NBA - I think Minny suits that role fine.

The Raptors will be unveiling a third jersey on Thursday, apparently its all black. In similar news, Orlando unveiled their alternate jersey and I can’t tell the difference. Stephon’s closer to being unemployed. I wouldn’t put it past him to collect the welfare cheque. Ouch. Never liked him, I don’t know why, he always struck me as too much of an illiterate thug.

Sorry about the lack of daily posts but remember, I’m brewing something. Seriously though, if you come to this blog often enough you should get the RSS feed. I’m not whoring it around, just saying that it’s a good idea to latch on to it in case something happens…

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: , , , | 8 Comments »

Raptors, Mortal Kombat and a Charley Rosen link

Posted by Arsenalist on September 22, 2008

There’s no Raptors stuff going on so lets look elsewhere for infotainment. Starting off with the classic video game Mortal Kombat. Shao Kahn and his coarse soul-sucking voice always echoed in the arenas as the likes of Sub Zero, Scorpion and Liu Kang fought to their ultimate death in a tournament that yielded two Hollywood movies (both mediocre). Today we find out that that Shao Kahn had a distinctly different side which never made it to the gaming consoles, a side that might surprise you, shock you and just may cost you your faith that Mortal Kombat is the greatest video game of all time. See for yourself.

On to the association, somebody remind me just exactly what Ben Gordon is good at. I remember he turned down a multi-year deal last summer only to post a sub-par season on a Bulls team that severely underachieved. One of the signs of the apocalypse (I believe its Genesis 2:34) was undersized shooting guards turning down contracts and struggling to gain form the following year and then getting stuck in two minds whether to take the qualifying offer or a deal at a lower yearly rate. Either way, Ben Gordon is no good.

The Lakers are one of the first teams to start differentiating their regular season games by charging more for “premium games”. I don’t have a problem with this at all as long as they reduce the prices for the “shit games”, you know the ones where you see the Bobcats on a rainy Wednesday night to a tune of 7,000 people. That would even things out.

Quality posting at HoopsHype where the author points out that there’s a good chance that Zach Randolph will start the season as a member of the Knicks thus nixing the idea that they’ll be a different team this year. There’s no doubting that the Knicks roster is oozing with enough slime to pollute an ocean but Zach Randolph is a little different. He’s the one dysfunctional Knick whose talent can be brought out to good potential if a coach is able to harness his emotion and gangsta attitude by channeling his anger properly. The identity of the Knicks has always been that of a strong no-nonsense defensive team that hustles and that’s exactly what’s been lacking in New York since before van Gundy left. Defense brings discipline and D’Antoni hardly addresses that problem so it becomes inevitable that the undisciplined Knicks will continue to struggle.

Darius Miles will be looking to fill the role of James Posey on the Celtics. It’ll never happen. Maybe Miles can bring the same defensive values to the team (athleticism, length) but his jump shot is brutal and he has trouble getting motivated. My money’s on Bill Walker producing more. Actually, my money’s on Willie Solomon or Hassan Adams doing more for us than what Miles will do for Boston. Here’s a fact: we improved more than the Celtics this off-season. That should make you feel better.

Bosh-hater Charley Rosen’s talking about how old timers still have a valuable place in the NBA. He’s right, one can’t expect to win playoff series with young guns alone. On a similar note, this Raptors team right here could use some hard-nosed NBA veterans that can get in teammates’ ears and opponents’ faces when things hit a rough patch. I know I sound nostalgic when I say this but I miss Charles Oakley, hell I even miss Antonio Davis. When was the last time a Raptors team stepped on the floor and you felt like we were the tougher, meaner team?

The Wizards are looking for an inconsistent utility tweener so its natural they turn their attention to Juan Dixon. Good luck to Juan, he could’ve done more in Toronto but was a victim of Mitchell’s poor substitution patterns. On that note, remember when we acquired Primoz Brezec and he started off with a great game against the Knicks and we all momentarily thought that Colangelo had swung a deal that could’ve actually helped us down the stretch and heading into the playoffs. How wrong we all were……

Feed?

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: , | 24 Comments »

Mike Ulmer and his pointless interviews

Posted by Arsenalist on September 19, 2008

Been busy for a couple days, got something brewing. Wait for it, its good.

Let’s get to some Raptor talk. The official website’s interviewing Anthony Parker and Willie Solomon. We don’t learn much except that Will Solomon’s thinking the contract from the Raptors is a “gift from God”. He sure sounds like a scrub that’s just happy to be there, reminds me of Jamario Moon all over again. What I can’t get past is Anthony Parker getting excited to play alongside Willie Solomon and labelling him as “ready to contribute now”. Maybe he’s just being nice, Parker’s like that. We did get further confirmation of one thing from the two interviews and that’s that Mike Ulmer needs to be fired. Now.

Jermaine O’Neal’s been spending a lot of time in Vegas this summer, he was training there in August but September’s dedicated to having some fun. He’s hosting a strip poker tournament alongside Robert Horry and some other NBA players. So far the knee’s holding up.

How about Josh Howard dissing the US national anthem and citing his race as the reason. He sounds like he lost his home in Katrina or is listening to too much Kanye. I’m not saying the government’s been kind to black people down south but that reaction might be a bit much. There’s also talk of Stephon Marbury getting waived, a move that’s about three years overdue.

By far the best article this week has been Hoops Addict’s interview of Sam Mitchell where he talks about the development of Andrea Bargnani. Bargnani has to feel the pressure to produce along with O’Neal, both have a lot to prove this season and should be heavily motivated. Chris Bosh wants to follow up his great Olympics with a good playoff run and that should add fuel to his fire. I just hope all three come through by staying healthy, playing smart and avoiding choking. I’m actually confident that barring injury O’Neal will have a strong year and make the doubters of the trade eat their words, its the other two that I’m more concerned with.

Speaking of Bosh there’s a psycho-analysis of Bosh in Slam this morning where there are two points that come up, one which I agree with and one that I don’t. I think you’ll feel the same way. Point I agree with: Chris Bosh is not a true franchise player. Point I disagree with: Sam Mitchell is the ideal coach for Bosh. The article’s subconsciously reiterating a lot of the points Charley Rosen made a couple days ago but this time its padded with enough fluff and niceties to make it sound not so harsh.

Not since the summer we signed Davis, Williams and Carter has there been so much expected from a Raptors team, let’s just hope the results are better this time around.

More tomorrow.

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: , , | 78 Comments »

Ranking the NBA’s best Power Forwards

Posted by Arsenalist on September 17, 2008

I can’t tell if Charley Rosen is being serious about Chris Bosh in this article because the piece has an air of harshness about it while at the same time having elements of pure truth. You decide. When you rank the top PFs in the NBA the list inevitably narrows down to the likes of:

Tim Duncan
Kevin Garnett
Elton Brand
Carlos Boozer
Chris Bosh
Amare Stoudamire
David West

and reaching into the C/PFs:

Dirk Nowitzki
Paul Gasol.

Where Bosh ranks in this list is debatable, obviously Tim Duncan is the cream of the crop and David West hasn’t been good for long enough to claim title to being “the best” but the rest of the PF crew remain very comparable. Bosh’s main advantage over everyone else on that list is quickness but that is offset by his lack of a post-up game, something which is almost unseen of PFs. I like the following quote from Rosen:

“He’s really an outsized small forward with excellent rebounding skills.”

There’s no doubt that Bosh is an unorthodox power forward which relies on his quickness/length more than his size/low-post game, much like Dirk Nowitzki except that the latter has developed his game to be of an all-round variety with the only lacking area being defense. Rosen is right, Bosh might be a tweener who’s tweening between being a SF and PF but there’s no team that’s ready to call him a SF just yet.

I look at this unique tweeneyness of Bosh as being an advantage. Aside from Kevin Garnett nobody in the NBA can stay with Bosh based on lateral quicks which is a fact the Raptors need to exploit more (no jumpers). But at the same time when the likes of Trenton Hassell have success shutting you down its time to expand your game into the low-post so that opposing teams are forced to match not only your quickness but also your strength in order to stop you.

In other news 1300 tickets will go on sale for the club’s intramural game on October 4th at Carleton University in Ottawa. If you’re in the area, check it out.

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: , | 5 Comments »

Atlantic Division predictions

Posted by Arsenalist on September 14, 2008

Why not? There’s nothing going on anywhere so it’s time I write the ultimate filler post. Without further ado:

Boston: The Celtics trinity are a year older but they’re still only 31, 32 and 33, one could even argue that they’re in their prime. They lost James Posey who was instrumental in their title run but as we’ll see this season that when you have three Hall of Famers on the roster, you tend to make up for things like that. The Big 3 might be a year slower but Rajan Rondo, Kendrick Perkins, Leon Powe and Baby Davis all gained experience last year that should help the Celtics in the regular season. Short of the Celtics putting it in cruise control and waiting for the playoffs, the Atlantic division is theirs. I highly doubt Boston will “take it easy” during the season because they realized last post-season how important home-court advantage in the playoffs can be. They’re not going to challenge for 70 wins but they’ll win the Atlantic.

Philadelphia: The second spot in the division has to go to either the Raptors or Sixers and I’m leaning towards Philly for two reasons: 1) They play better defense and 2) They play harder. They also happen to have more talent and athleticism across the board with Dalembert, Iggy, Brand and Miller headlining the roster and the team has their coach’s attention, something that can’t be said for the Raptors. Philly has a tight unit that can run, slash, block shots, rebound and starting this year, play in the post. There’s also something to be said for having a PG who can penetrate at will and pass it off to two double-team threats in Iggy and Brand, it’s combination like these that make for fourth quarter scores. Philly edges the Raptors to take second place.

Toronto: The team with the most “ifs” in the division. The hope is to finish with home-court in the conference but that would likely mean finishing above Philadelphia which is hard to see happening unless many things go right. Not saying it can’t happen, just that the odds are against us. Areas of concern last year were: perimeter defense, rebounding, fourth quarter scoring/lack of SF production. Of those three major needs we seem to have addressed one - i.e: rebounding. The Raptors are hoping that the players who played mediocre or bad last year simply play better and produce more. They’re hoping that Bargnani’s miserable season (BTW, great piece on Andrea Bargnani at Hoops Addict) was an anomaly and he can get back to terrorizing centers by taking them off the dribble. They’re hoping that the “addition by subtraction” at the PG spot works out in their favor and that Jermaine O’Neal returns to All-Star form and out-play the Dalembert-Brand combo in Philadelphia. Sam Mitchell needs to gel the team like Mo Cheeks did last year and I simply don’t have the confidence in him. I’d like to think we could beat Philly by a game or two but the reality here is too much to ignore.

New Jersey: Vince Carter, Bobby Simmons, Yi, Devin Harris, Brook Lopez and CDR sound like a good young exciting team but there’s very little of substance here. The lazy Carter’s 15 million dollar contract sticks out like a sore thumb on a team that’s trying to rebuild from the ground up and get some momentum for their eventual move to Brooklyn. The priority here isn’t winning, its developing some young talent and hoping somebody takes Carter off their hands. At least they know exactly the direction they’re going in. The Nets will be fun to watch and might even surprise some people but at the end of the they’re a couple notches below the Raptors, Sixers and the Celtics.

New York: If the Knicks go with the lineup of Gallinari, Crawford, Jeffries, Duhon and Malik Rose they’ll manage to win a few games. This team plays hard as often as AC Green gets laid so its always going to be an uphill battle for them. Mike D’Antoni’s a run ‘n gun coach without a run ‘n gun team. It’s not going to surprise me if the Knicks falter and fail but if all things go right and Marbury returns to mediocrity along with Eddy Curry showing a glimpse of his Bulls days, they might challenge the Nets for the 4th spot.

That’s it for today. Grab the feed for Arsy Raptors stuff delivered to your RSS reader.

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Should we worry about Jason Kapono’s defense?

Posted by Arsenalist on September 11, 2008

The man is a dead-eye shooter who needs an inch or maybe two to get his shot off. Not since Dell Curry have we seen a marksman of his caliber and yet he manages to get lost in the Raptors offense which is designed almost exclusively for the three point shooter. After going through a dreadful drought last spring Kapono managed to pick himself up in the playoffs and had a post-season that made us fans re-think just how valuable he could be to this team.

Kapono came off a decent year in Miami and basically conned Bryan Colangelo into giving him a huge contract. It surprised a lot of us and the fact that it happened on the first day of free-agency made some of us question Colangelo’s priorities (remember, defense and rebounding were problems back then too). Since he’s come here there’s been a constant ebb and flow in his game which borders from being anonymous to lighting it up, there’s very little middle ground. Despite all the inconsistency I think I speak for most Raptor fans when I say that we’d rather have him on offense than any one of Jamario Moon, Hassan Adams, Willie Solomon or Joey Graham. We know his shooting is an asset for us but how much are we willing to give up on the other end?

I personally think his problems on defense are highly exaggerated and we can and should be able to do things to increase his floor time while still being able to make a half-decent defensive stand. Listed at 6′ 8″, Kapono has more than enough size to stay in front of a shooting guard and take away the dribble penetration by laying off of him. He doesn’t have the quickness to take away the jumper by playing tight but 1 out of 2 ain’t bad here. The same holds true when defending SFs except they have posted him up with great success. We obviously need to provide him help here just like we did with Jose Calderon or Anthony Parker. Kapono’s case is no different.

Sam Mitchell has generally done a terrible job of hiding player weaknesses on defense and Kapono is Exhibit A. Kapono started 7 out of 81 games last year precisely because Jamario Moon happened to be a better defender. Keep in mind that this is on a team that has trouble getting off to good starts. Instead of allowing Kapono to have an impact on the game Mitchell often became gun-shy and chose to err on the side of caution by not playing him in favor of Moon who proceeded to miss countless jumpers in the fourth quarter costing us games aplenty. There’s no doubt Kapono has defensive issues, he doesn’t have great lateral movement or great speed but we knew that before signing him. There has to be an effort on the part of Mitchell to utilize Kapono and hide his weaknesses by clever double-teaming, cutting off baselines, forcing his man in an uncomfortable direction or even some ball denial. We saw none of this last year, the reaction to Kapono being posted-up was usually always a double-team coming out of nowhere which segued into an open three. C’mon, we need to be smarter and stop using the “bad defender” label to waste his offense. It’s very mid 90’s New York Knickish.

Kapono’s showed in the playoffs that he’s got the ability to be crafty and score in ways you wouldn’t have thought he could. His leaners, floaters, mid-range jumpers and even drives to the rim are something neither Jamario Moon or Joey Graham could dream of doing. We beg Moon to drive to the rim but ignore that Kapono’s only 3% behind him (Moon, Kapono) when it comes to “Close” shots and has a higher eFg. Granted the rebounding numbers aren’t there but starting next season when the rebounding duties are off-loaded to Jermaine O’Neal, why not play Jason Kapono even more?

Kapono’s major problem is that he’s very cautious about his FG percentage and shot selection, almost to a fault. Instead of taking his changes with a semi-contested three he’ll fake the shot, dribble-drive, do some more Reggie Miller fakes and then end up passing the ball. After such plays you just wonder how bad shooting the ball early on would’ve been. Leo Rautins asserts that this quality is a great one which keeps the defense honest. If you look at his playoff performances, I agree, if you look at the second half of the regular season, I disagree. You have to ask yourself what changed between the regular season and the playoffs. The answer is not a technical one, it’s simply that that Kapono started to assert himself on offense and started to look for his. If we can get a full season of his playoff performance last year I don’t think any one of us will mind whether Tracy McGrady goes to town on him in the post as long the Raptors as a team are doing their best to circumvent the situation.

Jamario Moon may be a better defender and come up with some spectacular plays on occasion but how many times have you seen him get absolutely burned by the likes of Bonzi Wells, let alone McGrady? The point is that if Moon is 5 apples better than Kapono on defense, Kapono is 10 apples better than Moon on offense so overall Kapono’s got 5 more apples. It’s time we recognize that and switch the playing time of these two players around. The result of this switch will not affect our perimeter defense to the degree most people think it will and more importantly, it’s imperative for the O’Neal experiment to succeed. As I mentioned in my previous post, we can’t afford to let the defense seduce Jamario Moon into jump shooting.

Check the feed.

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: , | 27 Comments »

Jose Calderon’s game must change

Posted by Arsenalist on September 9, 2008

It’s tough man, it’s tough to not like Jose Calderon’s assist to turnover ratio and insane FG percentage and that’s probably why he comes in at #33 in Fan House’s Top 50 NBA players list. Calderon earned the credit and the contract last year by usurping TJ Ford as the man at the point in Toronto by showing Bryan Colangelo why he’s the floor general the Raptors needed. But you know what’s similar about Jamario Moon and Jose Calderon? If they have the exact same year again we’re in big trouble.

We’ve already discussed the areas where Moon needs to improve so that the wing hole can look smaller but Calderon is an entirely different matter. Last year he got a lot of his assists by kicking out to open 3-pt shooters and finding jump-shot ready Parker, Kapono or even Moon for open shots. His assists weren’t spectacular like TJ Ford’s but came more naturally and in the run-of-play. The drive-n-kick worked well for him last year and he often dominated the ball in the pick ‘n roll situation which fed him a lot of his assists.

Coming into next year the dynamics of his game will have to change. The pick ‘n roll will still be featured but you have to think O’Neal and Bosh’s post-up games will be front and center in the Raptors’ offense which means Calderon will be handling less of the ball and relying on the Bosh/O’Neal outlet to supply the trigger in the offense. The other adjustment teams will make this year is to not double off of Calderon’s man since he proved last season that he can hit the deep two or the three. Just like Bargnani failed to adjust in his second year to the personal space being taken away, Calderon will be given the option to put the ball on the floor rather than to launch uncontested jumpers. Life will get tougher for Jose, no doubt about that.

One of the criticisms against him has been that he’s a little too careful with the ball and doesn’t push it enough for the Raptors to get easy baskets. I tend to agree with this opinion. There has to be a happy medium between Jose Calderon pulling back in 4 on 2’s and TJ Ford forcing it in 1 on 4’s. Calderon has to make the defense fear him when he gets the ball early in the shot-clock after a defensive rebound. And this year we will be getting more defensive rebounds, with O’Neal and Bosh manning the boards you have to think we’re going to clear more rebounds and have more opportunities for early running via the 25-45 foot outlet pass. If Jose starts pulling back in these situations its going to cost us easy buckets and build inherent frustration in Bosh and O’Neal since a big man loves to see easy baskets off his rebounds. Again, nobody’s asking him to do the drugs TJ was doing but maybe a pill here and there wouldn’t hurt.

The Raptors were guilty of getting to poor starts last year and with a rookie backing him up you have to wonder just how much Sam Mitchell can afford to rest Jose Calderon in the first quarter. He’ll likely be playing 11 of the first 12 minutes and probably 9 in the second quarter for 20 in the half. Last year he averaged 30.3 minutes a game and seemed stretched late in the season. This year he’ll have to undoubtedly play more minutes and produce more, how will these new expectations affect him? Truth is that we don’t know, he appears to be in excellent shape and looks like he could play heavy minutes and still produce consistently. The challenge here isn’t Calderon’s though, it’s Sam Mitchell’s and how well he hides his weak backup PG situation. Simply increasing Calderon’s minutes and hoping he produces more is not exactly coaching and I hope Sam has figured that out.

Let’s talk some X’s and O’s and get back to the double-teaming of Bosh or O’Neal. Assuming we have the lineup of Calderon, Parker, O’Neal, Moon and Bosh on the floor and one of our big men gets doubled, who does the defense leave? I’d rank the defense’s options as:

1) Jamario Moon
2) Jose Calderon
3) Anthony Parker

There’s no doubt that the double will come from Jamario’s man in this case and he’ll either be forced to shoot or the defense will rotate to leave Calderon and then Parker open. It goes without saying that the spacing in these cases needs to be perfect. For example, imagine if next to Moon for whatever reason stood Bosh in the 15-19 foot area? The whole thing would be a damn disaster since the swing sequence would be altered and we’d have to reset. Anyway, now if we replace Jamario Moon with Jason Kapono in that lineup, the defense simply cannot afford to double! That is the offensive lineup that the Raptors hope to kill teams with. If for whatever reason that lineup fails to fire, impending doom looms.

That’s it for today. I might have some big site news in a few days.

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: | 10 Comments »

First Raptors Hall of Famer + Who’s backing up Parker?

Posted by Arsenalist on September 7, 2008

Hakeem Olajuwon. It’s the ultimate technicality but its true. There’s also Lenny Wilkens and Isaiah Thomas but Hakeem’s the first one to go in there as a player so that’s something to celebrate, no? The only Hakeem highlight that I can remember is him hitting the turnaround fadeaway jumper at the buzzer in Atlanta to sink the Hawks. That’s saying a lot. Glen Grunwald had personally knocked on his door in Houston with a contract in his hand awaiting a dream signature. He had hoped to give Vince Carter a low-post scorer. In all fairness to him the intentions were good, things just didn’t work out.

Rhetorical question: Who is going to backup Anthony Parker? The nominees are Hassan Adams, Will Solomon and Roko Ukic. **shudder**. I mean, there are holes in the wing but lest we forget we also have holes at the backup SG. Parker’s been a player that has shown that he can’t be relied upon to be extended in his playing time and Jason Kapono’s seasonal performance leaved much to be desired. Parker’s fourth quarter shooting has been woeful at times and you have to think if we start calling on him to play 35 minutes a game, he’s going to have nothing left by Game 75, let alone the post-season. You can only ask Roko Ukic to do so much in his first campaign while at the same time keeping a close eye on Jose Calderon’s minutes to ensure his legs are still there come playoff time. Lot of challenges, lots.

I don’t know how good Allan Houston is but the Knicks seem to be serious about him. If he can still shoot the ball he might not be a terrible pickup in case the Knicks drop him. All we need him to do is keep the D honest when Bosh and O’Neal are doubled. Houston’s jumper was/is prettier than Ray Allen, Reggie Miller, Dale Ellis, Dell Curry and Jason Kapono. I kid you not. I’m not advocating the move but given how we’re over the cap and close to the luxury we’ll be forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel anyway when it comes to picking up a player. So why not a proven veteran? Worst comes to worst we cut him.

The bad news is that we’re going to have some major competition in 2010 when all the big name free agents are available because the Kings are opening up a lot of cap space. The good news is that its the Kings. I don’t think either the Kings or the Raptors have a chance in hell of landing any of the primetime free agents available that summer but its good to create hope in the fan base. Hope is what kept Tom Hanks from killing himself when he was stuck on that island with that volleyball. I couldn’t quite understand the ending of that movie, too deep.

The Toronto Sun will be relaunching their website tomorrow. It’s about time, hopefully they’ll finally waken to RSS feeds and such. Lance Hornby who some of you may might know will be the latest puckhead to take a shot at covering hoops. No matter how bad he might be it’ll be tough to surpass the benchmark set by Paul Romanunk. I can say with great confidence that the Paul and Paul Fan 590 radio team had to be the worst ever. Ever.

G’day to you.

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: | 28 Comments »

Training camp announced + Timmy C + Get some cheap Raptors gear

Posted by Arsenalist on September 6, 2008

The signs of fall are around us. The weather’s getting a little chillier, schools are starting, women are wearing more clothes and even a few leaves are turning brown. Most of all though there is the sweet stench of approaching training camp in the air. The festivities start on September 30th at Carleton University in Ottawa with an intra-squad game on October 4th (only two days after Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday!). The Raptors will be holding two-a-day practices to start things off and Bryan Colangelo likes it. He figures Chris Bosh would’ve had a full 6-week break since the Olympics ended and will be ready to go:

Chris will be in his best shape ever, and I know he wants to keep the momentum going. By the time we start camp, he will have had a full five- or six-week break, so everyone will be ready to go.

Best shape sounds nice but Chris will have to be his “best ever” in a lot of different categories if we hope to taste some post-season success.

Tim Chisholm - who I always find extremely hard to disagree with - has a piece on TSN.ca where he’s giving some realistic facts about the team and highlighting the importance of the Bargnani factor along with the big fat question marks at the wing position. It’s basically what we’ve talked about all summer long, the media’s finally getting around to it. I think the final paragraph sums it up:

The point is that the Raptors have more questions than answers right now all about its roster. The hope is that at least a couple of the uncertainties work out in their favor as they try to keep the team competitive while they wait for free agent money to come available this summer or next (depending on whether O’Neal opts out in 2009 or lets his deal expire in 2010). By no stretch is this team in danger of losing ground to last year’s disappointing 41-41 record, as just the quality in the top-five should keep them above .500, but whether or not Colangelo’s risks have improved the team enough to become truly relevant yet remains to be seen.

On to Hoops World writing off our chances as Atlantic Division winners. So who do you think they picked? The Celtics? Wrong, its the Philadelphia 76ers who they think will win usurp Boston as champs. The Celtics might go into cruise control for the better part of the year but I doubt it, they realize how important home-court advantage is to them and will play hard from day one despite the veterans. The Raptors’ chances are written off as “As for the Toronto Raptors - they’ll need time to adjust with both JO and Chris Bosh”. I hate these realistic twats.

Fan Boy who has been a great supporter of the blog from early days is having a 50% sale with some good things up for grabs. Check out the site and see if you like anything. In October I hope to give both the readers of this blog a coupon which will give them free shipping on Fan Boy gear. That’s your incentive for coming back again and again.

That’s all there is to it really.

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: , , | 13 Comments »

Raptors finish 23rd in the NBA…

Posted by Arsenalist on September 4, 2008

…in nickname rankings. That’s your Raptors headline story for the day.

I was going to do a big spiel about how crazy Raptors fans are and how we should all try to get along despite our differences and opinions. It seems Raptors nation is split on our off-season and any point of view supporting an argument is quickly rejected by the other party. It makes for some good conversation but after 3 1/2 months a lot of the arguments get redundant to the point of eye-rolling. The dissent that exists in Raptors nation is a little sad to see. Or at least it was until I was reminded of the great Chinese sage Confucius who said:

When everybody says things are right, something is very wrong.

Aah, who knew you could get a dose of philosophy in this space. Point is that despite people questioning each others’ sexual orientation in debate and referring to each other as genital organs when discussing Andrea Bargnani’s effectiveness, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I just humbly request that an argument is somewhat supported by some facts other than the accusations mentioned above.

Our boy Mike Ulmer interviewed Raptors strength and conditioning coach Keith D’Amelio and asked him some inane questions. I was hoping he’d ask him what Andrea Bargnani’s situation was because by the looks of it he had gained a few pounds. No such luck there, instead we find Ulmer suggesting the Raptors eat hemp hearts and husked hemp seeds, he’s basically one step away from recommending pre-game weed.

Training camp starts around September 29th with our first pre-season game being on October 7th at Cleveland. You can check out the pre-season schedule here which takes us all across North America. From the East coast to Moscow to the Mid-West to the West coast and then to Western Canada and finally home. Last year when you asked the Celtics what was the turning point of the season, many pointed to their European trip in the pre-season as being crucial since it allowed them to gel together as a team. I don’t have any such expectations of the Raptors but you have to wonder whether Sam Mitchell can integrate 5 new players into the team. I’m sure having no system actually helps in this case.

Of course we’ll talk a lot more about training camp as it approaches but its imperative that we establish a rhythm early on, especially concerning Bosh/O’Neal/Bargnani usage.

The Fan House has a video of Chris Bosh and Dwight Howard sitting on a bus as Bosh makes the “Hoowaaard, Hoowaaard” chant from the playoffs. Didn’t know you could do that when you lost the playoff series.

Later.

Posted in Raptors, Sports | Tagged: , , | 16 Comments »

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