Raptors general manager Bryan Colangelo recently cut short a scouting trip in Europe to return to Toronto, and not because he enjoys battling rush hour traffic during snowstorms.
Colangelo is deeply concerned about the way the Raptors are playing and didn’t feel comfortable being away while his team struggled.
The 35-35 Raptors have lost two straight and eight of their past 10 and are in danger of dropping below the .500 mark (they play host to the veteran Detroit Pistons tomorrow night) for first time since Nov. 24, when they fell to 6-7.
"I would say concerned is the best way to describe it," Colangelo said from his Toronto office yesterday. "I think everybody is doing a bit of soul-searching and trying to get back on track and pick up some momentum going into the playoffs."
"This is where you find out what we’re made of," said Colangelo, adding that he won’t use long-term injuries this season to Chris Bosh and T.J. Ford as excuses.
"All in all, do we look at our record and say ‘given all our circumstances, are we content?’ No," Colangelo said. "You can always do better.
"I always expect to win games," the GM added. "I think we have the players that have proven that they can perform. But it’s about maximizing the performance of all the individuals. We’ve had too many situations where players have been good for a period of games and have not performed for a period of games. We have to find a way (correct that)."
Chris Bosh called out his team following Sunday’s 109-100 loss to the Denver Nuggets at the Air Canada Centre, and his general manager salutes him for it.
"I think it was great that Chris stepped up and made some comments and challenged his team," Bryan Colangelo said yesterday. "We’re always happy to hear a voice from within the locker room step up and address accountability.
"Chris seems to pick his spots and he always seems to be effective (when he does so)."
The Raptors cancelled a planned practice yesterday. No word was given why, only that the players are reportedly fatigued after a recent gruelling western trip. The Raptors will practise today before playing host to the Detroit Pistons tomorrow night
The Raptors have recorded 27 home sellouts this season, only the second time they have recorded that many. The team record for sellouts in a season is 40, during the 2001-02 campaign. The Raptors rank ninth in the NBA in attendance, averaging 19,424 fans.
Sam Mitchell, the Raptors coach, has turned many of his post-loss press conferences into Lenny Wilkens-esque droners, giving the cameras the we-played-well-but-they-made-shots treatment.
Bryan Colangelo, the general manager, speaks publicly in a corporate code that makes his actual opinion your best guess. And most of the rest of the faces of the club – the guys who wear the jerseys – have spent most of a blasé season appearing awfully content with their lives, win, lose or whatever.
So Bosh was right to lay into his colleagues for their every-shot’s-a-jump-shot inanity the other night. He was right to accuse them of hesitating in key moments of winnable games. He was right to announce that now – with three weeks and a bit until the post-season begins and the season begins to get defined – might not be a bad time to ratchet up the intensity level a couple of notches. All of that made sense.
The truth is, though, that what Bosh’s teammates do in the coming weeks won’t matter nearly as much as what he does. The truth is, their first-round playoff fate will rest largely on his shoulders – not to mention on the opponent his team is dealt. (Because, let’s face it, if the Raptors draw anybody but Orlando, if it’s Cleveland or, worse, Detroit, they have no shot at winning a best-of-seven.)
The Raptors are 31-24 with Bosh in the lineup this year. That’s 46-win pace. And that’s with Ford, the best player on the squad during Bosh’s slow November, on the shelf for nearly half the season. That says they could be dangerous if everything fell into place.
Still, if Bosh wants the team to increase the number of trips it takes to the free-throw line, he’s probably going to have to be the one to do the increasing. If he wants less hesitancy, he’s probably going to have to be the one to be more decisive.
And let’s not forget that Bosh has a lot to prove in the wake of his ponderous and underwhelming work in last season’s first-round series loss to the New Jersey Nets.
The flaw in Bosh’s Sunday night call-out of the teammates was that, as well as he’d played, coming within an assist of the first Toronto triple-double in seven years, he was a victim on the two biggest plays of the evening.
His defender, the veteran Kenyon Martin, essentially baited Bosh into unfavourable situations to set up two Denver steals in the final couple of minutes. Nobody’s saying Bosh couldn’t have used more help from his friends. But it’s also essential he dominate his one-on-one matchup.
That’s the thing about making $13 million a season, which is about $5 million more than the other four guys in the starting lineup earn combined.
The team’s built around you.
When the game’s on the line, it relies on you. When you don’t come through, it dies with you.
This whole European takeover of the NBA is taking at least a one-year hiatus.
Thanks to the cyclical nature of sports and the fact the continent has been mined of much of its young talent, there are likely to be fewer Europeans chosen in the first round of this year’s draft than there have been for several Junes.
"If you look at this year and next year … you almost feel like there’s a little bit of a drought right now," said Raptors assistant general manager Maurizio Gherardini. "Generally speaking, I would say the generation after that seems to be pretty intriguing already, with players playing professional level even at that young age."
But that’s two or three years down the road. The number of quality players available this year is down. Only Italian Danilo Gallinari and Nicolas Batum of France – a pair of athletic small forwards – are being touted as picks in the top half of the first round this year.
"The problem is, if you talk about a middle- to late-first round pick and that player’s locked in to the rookie scale contract and he’s got a $3 million buyout, it’s pretty difficult to justify that on his behalf," said Bryan Colangelo, the Raptor president.
"The buyout has to be negotiated down or there needs to be some sort of arrangement made between the player and the club. You can see all sorts of different things coming up in terms of those difficulties."
The buyout issue also affects free agents. NBA teams have been raiding European clubs for years and the latter are starting to drive the buyout price up in order to keep their older, better players around. It’s causing some friction between the NBA and European organizations.
"The other thing that is seemingly impacting the relations between the two leagues is the fact there’s a little bit of, I guess, uneasiness from the European clubs and leagues that we’ve come over and robbed those leagues of all their talent," said Colangelo.
"What you’re seeing now is bigger buyouts that are making it very, very difficult to get these things taken care of. At some point, it doesn’t necessarily justify itself because you’ve got to, in some cases, give the guy a huge contract in order to justify a big buyout."
Spain’s Ricky Rubio, as highly touted a European player as there ever has been, is being mentioned in some circles as a potential first overall pick in the 2009 draft. And others may emerge that no one knows about now.
If you’re looking way ahead, here’s how the tiebreakers work out:
Toronto has it over Philly
Washington has it over Toronto
Philly leads the season series with the Wizards 2-1 with a game left so the worst they can do is split.
And it’s impossible to tell about a three-way yet because of that Sixer-Wizards game to come.
Right now, Toronto’s 4-4 in games between the three teams, Washington’s 4-3 and the Sixers are 3-4.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, Philly wins that last game with the Wizards and all three are 4-4 in games between them this season.
That’s when conference record comes into play and it’s impossible to figure that out right now.
Gonna make watching games down the stretch a lot more interesting.
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I don’t know how many of the poohbahs at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment read this – I hope it’s every single one – but they should know that every single fan I talk to has nothing but praise for the raspy-voiced New Yorker.
I’m sure there will be all kinds of networks and teams looking at Jack this summer – he already has an extensive list of clients – but I know he loves it here, he’s part of the basketball fabric and the Raptors must find a way to keep him as heavily involved, or more heavily involved than he is right now.
A so-so seaosn has alienated a few fans already, losing Jack pushes a few more off the cliff.
It hardly takes an insider to look at the Raptors’ roster and gather they’re lacking at the wings, at least by the standard of an upper-tier NBA team.
Every time an opposing shooting guard or small forward drops 30 points on them, it drives the nail a little deeper. Just to be sure, both Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony did the trick on Sunday for the Denver Nuggets. Toronto has yet to get a 30-point game of its own this season from positions that are traditionally about scoring.
Bosh didn’t name names, but one name that could use some calling out is Andrea Bargnani, their enigmatic second-year forward from Italy.
He wasn’t even on the floor during the Raptors’ flaccid fourth quarters on Friday and Sunday, so you can’t blame him for those no-show jobs.
But you can blame him for not showing up.
During Bosh’s 10-game absence with a knee injury, Bargnani might have been expected to take the extra minutes and extra shots and run with it.
Not even close, unless you count 11.2 points on 37.5-per-cent shooting as stepping up.
Most concerning is that for a player whose ultimate trump card was the ability to shoot, he can’t — at least statistically. He’s only made half of his field-goal attempts in three consecutive games once this season. Forget putting together a good month, Bargnani has yet to put together a good week.
Overall, he’s shooting just 36.7 per cent from the three-point line. Of the six Raptors with at least 100 attempts, only Moon is worse. No regular’s field-goal percentage is worse than Bargnani’s, 39.1. His rebounding and blocked shot totals are significant only by their relative absence.
The Raptors aren’t blind to Bargnani’s struggles, though there is still the belief that his ceiling is high enough that it’s worth giving him the time to reach it.
But privately, they acknowledge he’s fallen short of expectations this season and his off-season will be closely monitored, with a priority on addressing his NBA weaknesses rather than whatever national team commitments he might have.
It’s hard to make the case he doesn’t need the work.
You can’t blame Bargnani for what Bosh said was a collective loss of nerve down the stretch over the past couple of games. That’s because he wasn’t on the floor, which says everything.
A few years ago, after the Vince Carter trade and before the All-Star games, doubles-doubles, and national headlines, I had an hour feature interview with Bosh.
Back then, I could tell he’d change Toronto’s culture. Losing would no longer be tolerated. I was also struck by his confidence and candour. The lanky big never shrunk from suggestions of being The Guy. In fact, he welcomed it.
So Bosh speaking up isn’t anything new. Fixing the Raptors’ recent slide is no different than the challenge three years ago. He’ll get it done. Anyway, here’s my featured piece with CB4 from May 2005.
Nuggets coach George Karl praised Kenyon Martin’s defense on Chris Bosh in this one, which is fine, but he thankfully stopped short of praising his team’s overall defense.
Fans tend to think of the Toronto Raptors as a run-and-gun team, and the Raps do gun, but they do it in a slow-down set. There were only 86 possessions in this one, and the Nuggets gave up 116.3 pro-rated points per 100 possessions. Pretty lousy.
Wednesday at Toronto. Here comes another potential playoff opponent for Detroit that has more at stake than the Pistons. Chris Bosh’s injury problems have the Raptors a bit nervous, especially with the playoffs next month. The Pistons should win this one with relative ease, but we’ve seen what can happen to Detroit when they play a team with more on the line than they do (see: Washington and Cleveland games from last week).
The schedule can be gruelling, but Armstrong wouldn’t trade his best-of-both-worlds gig for anything.
"There’s nothing like being at the Air Canada Centre on a Friday night and witnessing a great Raptor game. When you have a sold-out house and both teams are totally engaged in the process, there’s nothing like it. These guys are the greatest players in the world, and when they put their minds to it, it’s just remarkable to watch," Armstrong says.
"Then the next night, I’ll be doing a St. John’s-Louisville game, or a Syracuse-Providence game for ESPN, and guys are diving over tables, and the band’s playing, and the crowd is going bananas. That’s the beauty of the college game."
Especially at this time of year. March Madness, with all its drama and unpredictability, is reaching its crescendo, the stakes are huge, the lights are bright.
"The cheerleaders, the band, everyone’s proud of where they went to school – it’s just a very traditional thing, and people just get all swept up in the emotion and intensity of it," Armstrong says. "The passion, the enthusiasm, it’s something to behold. It’s a really neat experience."
Armstrong coached Niagara University for 10 seasons, and led the Purple Eagles to a 23-7 record in 1992-93, earning MAAC coach of the year honours.
The 45-year-old commutes from his home in Lewiston, N.Y., where he lives with his wife Dina, a former women’s soccer coach at Niagara, and his three sons.
"The pairings get announced Sunday night and then you find out where you’re going Monday morning, and then you have a game on Tuesday night," says the personable Brooklyn, N.Y. native. "Your day is spent preparing for the Raptor game, and also on the side trying to prepare a day ahead, and then you’re flying the next morning, and trying to prepare for the game that night.
"You always feel like you’re cramming, because a lot of times you’re seeing different teams."
"I don’t miss the stress and the headaches that come with recruiting, that come with the winning and losing, the sleepless nights, the watching film at 3 o’clock in the morning," he says.
"There’s so much pressure on coaches today, you reach that point of neglect where you at times have to neglect your family, your friends, your health, because the stakes are so high.
"Now, I’ve got the best seat in the house, I haven’t lost a game in 10 years, I’ve gone from idiot to expert. It’s funny when I go back and do TV games at Niagara, the same fans that were killing me for a bad substitution or not calling the right play after a timeout, are those same people that now are quoting me chapter and verse. I think it’s hysterical. I’m the same idiot I was 10 years ago."
I present to you, Podcast #4 where amalgamated thoughts include Forderon, Bryan Colangelo, some of our technical issues and the playoff push:
There has been a sense of complacency around this team for much of the season. Some of it was early season optimism. For the record I still think that this group, operating at close to optimum efficiency, was good for 50 wins this season.
But even as injuries and other issues have made that mark unattainable there was a sense that the Raptors would comfortably make the playoffs and make some noise in the first round, depending on their match-up.
The fifth seed seemed their worst case.
It still might happen, but are the Raptors justified in expecting anything better than the seventh seed and a first-round match-up with the Detroit Pistons?
Somebody please throw Toronto a line. The Raptors have lost eight of 10 and have fallen to seventh in the NBA East standings. Only a complete collapse would push them out of the playoffs, but post-season success doesn’t look too likely now.
March 24, 1996 Toronto’s Damon Stoudamire sets an NBA rookie record for three-pointers made in a season with 126 (breaking Dennis Scott’s record of 125), after sinking six shots from behind the arc against Chicago during the Raptors’ 109-108 victory in front of 36,131 fans at SkyDome. Stoudamire finished the season with 133.
Mediocre . That’s the word to describe the current Raptors team. I’ve repeatedly said it before and now it becomes obviously clear. GM Bryan Colangelo refused to shake the line up before the trade deadline and now it’s too late to make it competitive. Here are what’s in store for the team :
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thanks for the post. i hope to read some more.
Best regards from Sebbi