The Raptors won’t be involved in the lottery – they have the 17th pick regardless of what happens tonight – but you can bet they will be watching the proceedings closely nonetheless.
With a handful of highly touted guards expected to be among the top picks and with president and general manager Bryan Colangelo likely to try and trade one of his point guards between now and the start of the regular season, who finishes where could determine possible trading partners.
As well, Colangelo is also likely to contemplate moving up in the draft – packaging his pick with a player or two for a better choice and maybe a player in return – so knowing who’ll draft where is significant.
In this decade alone, only two teams that drafted a top-two pick have turned that into a playoff appearance the following year.
The other team was the Toronto Raptors after picking No. 1 in 2006. But that draft pick was big-man project Andrea Bargnani, who started all of two games and made nothing near the impact the Heat would expect from its top-two pick.
So one of the great strengths of the team has become a potential powder keg and Colangelo has to find a solution. If not, it will destroy any remaining chemistry between the two point men and maybe spill over into the rest of the locker room as Ford and Calderon continue to split time with one watching from the sidelines feeling that he should be on the floor.
In spite of both point men feeling that they should be running the team and playing the lion’s share of the minutes, it says here that regardless of who stays and who goes, there will be diminishing returns in the short term as someone logs more minutes. Right now splitting the minutes is perfect as their styles are the perfect compliment to one another. The decision as to who stays and who goes will also have an effect the make up of the team since it will dictate what parts Colangelo tries to fetch in a trade.
Fast forward to some point next season and I can hear the second guessing cries from Raptor fans that, even when it was working well, were determined to choose one point guard over the other, the wrong point man was traded.
It’s time to call a spade a spade. Mitchell isn’t exactly the easiest head coach in the league to deal with from the media’s point of view. Take a poll. It would be a tad lop-sided. Then again, there is some unbalance when it comes to Mitchell returning to Toronto next season.
General Manger Bryan Colangelo said shortly after the Raptors first round loss to the Orlando Magic that Mitchell was safe. Some reporters interpreted that to mean “as for now.” And with word coming out of Toronto that Colangelo and Mitchell’s basketball philosophies aren’t exactly in sync, could Mitchell be the next coaching casualty?
And with Mitchell taking the Raptors back to the postseason for the second straight season – and one year removed from winning the Atlantic Division – the marriage between Toronto’s front office and their head coach remains a tight bond.
Bryan Colangelo has informed Italy Basketball that Andrea Bargnani will not be available to them this summer. He will remain in North America.
- Italian Basketball Federation
According to team officials and NBA general managers — all of whom require anonymity because they cannot reveal Thorn’s intentions — the most promising discussions the Nets have had are with teams that were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.
Among them: They have made some cursory inquiries with Phoenix (about Boris Diaw and Leandro Barboso), more substantive discussions with Toronto (about Andrea Bargnani), and there has been some dialogue with Denver about Carmelo Anthony.
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The most important tidbit in today’s Linkage (thus far) is the little nugget from nj.com, re: “substantive discussions” between the Nets and the Raptors about Andrea Bargnani.
If Colangelo is talking with other teams about the possibility of moving AB that’s a healthy/productive sign IMHO.
Doesn’t mean that he’s absolutely got to move Bargnani this summer but that, at least, he is thinking of AB as a movable piece rather than a cornerstone for Toronto’s franchise down-the-road.
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