Devlin, the new voice of the Raptors, is nothing like Chuck Swirsky, Toronto’s former play-by-play man. While the two announcers are friends with complete respect for what the other does, they couldn’t be more different behind the microphone.
If Swirsky is all pomp and pageantry, then Devlin is meat and potatoes and he makes no apologies for it.
“(Chuck’s) a good friend and a great announcer, and I completely respect the relationship he had with the fans here,” Devlin said yesterday while attending the 2008 NBA broadcast meetings in New Jersey. “I know there will be a transition time and period and hopefully, fans will accept me. This is a place where I want to be for a long, long period of time.”
As for his particular style, Devlin has a definite philosophy when it comes to doing play by play.
“I feel like I have a straight-forward approach,” Devlin said. “To me it’s about the players on the floor and the analysts. I’m there to inform and then entertain. My style is different. I respect everyone else’s approach to the game. I look at it like Jack (Armstrong) and Leo (Rautins) are the guys.”
Bosh and his American teammates captured gold in Beijing in an experience he said forever changed him as a basketball player. And that’s good news for the Raptors, who open training camp for the 2008-09 NBA season Tuesday in Ottawa.
“I have to come back a different dude,” Bosh said. “I don’t think there’s any way I couldn’t, even if I tried.”
“Coming back with that kind of experience will really, really help me out in pressure situations,” Bosh said. “I was able to be effective on the defensive side, so when it gets down to the guts of the game, I can do what I’ve always been doing on offence, and at the same time be effective on defence too.”
Calderon, meanwhile, took a couple of weeks off at home in Spain after Beijing to heal his groin injury, and said he will be ready to go when training camp tips off Tuesday.
“I feel normal. I feel 100 per cent. No pain at all,” Calderon said. “It’s perfect, perfect for the training camp, I’m ready.”
“After (the Beijing Olympics) I went back to Spain for two weeks,” Calderon said yesterday. “I was working out in the morning but it was like a vacation. Just rest, be with friends and family … it was nice.”
“I could be in Spain just resting but I prefer to be here with the team doctors and Scott (McCulloch, the Raptors trainer) and working a little bit on the injury,” he said.
Calderon and Chris Bosh were in town yesterday to unveil Toronto’s new third jersey, an all-black look the team will wear about 10 times this coming season.
The break will come in handy for Calderon, because his workload in the coming season will increase.
the talk is it will just be Sam and His Merry Band of Coaches and the 13 guys with contracts who land at Carleton.
Makes sense in a lot of ways.
Anyone coming to camp couldn’t make the team anyway and any time the staff spent teaching them would take away from the real purpose of the exercise, which is to get everyone on the same page quickly and ready for the season.
Usually, the guys who are added on are there because a GM wants to do a favour for a buddy (getting a client seen in exhibition games is a big plus for someone looking for a D League or a European contract), or for some long-term evaluation that very seldom, if ever, results in a guy with a camp invite ever coming back.
Okay, so what are the big stories heading to Ottawa?
If they had to be prioritized (and I know some of you like to do that), I’d say the top five go in this order:
Starting small forward
Is it Moon? Is it Kapono? What determines it? How they defend? How they shoot? How they interact with the two bigs?
Bargnani
Has he rediscovered his shooting stroke? How much better is he with his back to the basket? Can he defend fours and fives (although he didn’t look bad doing it at times last season)? Is he really bigger?
Bosh and O’Neal
How do they get along on the court? What does Sam have up his sleeve offensively for the two guys with quite similar games?
Ukic
How does a rookie fit in when he’s going to be asked to play a significant backup role at the most important position on the floor?
Sam
There’s a feeling this team could be very, very good if O’Neal and Bosh stay healthy and mesh, as I expect they will. What’s the coach got in his mind, especially offensively, to take advantage of the talent he’s got?
Bosh earned his medal in an unlikely way for an NBA franchise player — by adopting a hustling, scratching, role-player persona on a team loaded with go-to scorers. He hopes to bring those lessons back to Toronto.
“It will help me if my shot’s not falling or I’m in some kind of funk offensively, I know I can find different spots to be effective,” said Bosh, who led Team USA in rebounding (6.1) while shooting a team-best 77.4 per cent from the floor. “And that’s getting loose balls, playing defence and getting rebounds.”
It also means Bosh will have a little more ammunition to use when he needs to get that message across to his teammates.
“I just know what to demand from other guys. Honestly, it is hard when you’re not touching the ball, but you have to find your role and have to be effective in games and not worry about touches, or what’s going on. You have to focus on what you’re trying to do.”
Raptor fans came around, though. Stubborn passion turned into mindful passion. Maybe it took finally seeing Vince Carter for who he was, or the realization that Michael Curry had some incriminating photos of Kevin O’Neill locked in a chifforobe somewhere, but Raptor fans get it, now. And they don’t make fun of my name as much.
And, as I mentioned, they run a fine series of blogs. Just missing the cut was Khandor’s Sports Blog, mainly because the content isn’t exclusively Raptor-ish, Cuzoogle (for the same reasons), and Raptors Den(by a hair, no real reason), AltRaps (too much information for a simpleton like me) and the Arsenalistbecause … damn, I had to leave out the Arsenalist? Tough gig, this.
3. RaptorsHQ.com — Well, it’s the HQ, and how can you not include the HQ?
Great blog, great interviews, great info, great, great, great.
The new uniform, which will be worn a minimum of six times on the road, will be showcased on two special occasions at Air Canada Centre during
the team’s home opener Friday, October 31 and then again New Year’s Eve.
The uniform will be an alternate road jersey and will make the Raptors the only team in NBA history to have a country specific element on their jersey.
Finally, the one central theme about the upcoming season from both players seemed to be talks of chemistry. While most of the core remains the same from last year, JO and Jose’s permanent placement into the starting line-up shuffles the deck a bit and the additions of folks like Hassan Adams and Roko Ukic mean that there will still need to be some degree of “gelling” done early on.
The hope of course is that the majority of this bonding occurs early in the season (or in fact by the end of training camp in Ottawa) and with a number of the Raptors working out together recently and at times during the off-season, hopefully this process is expedited.
Otherwise the new black jerseys could take on an all new meaning…
Key question: How much does Jermaine O’Neal have left in his tank — and how sound are his other assorted parts?
O’Neal has always talked a better game than he has played, which generally has been a testament to him as an interview subject, because he was a pretty terrific player through his first NBA decade, mostly with Indiana. But O’Neal is 30 now and he missed 40 games last year with a bum left knee (and a combined 44 the two previous seasons), so when he talks about his fresh start and fine health and excitement in joining the Raptors, it all sounds pleasantly … hollow. Which it will remain until the six-time All-Star proves he can adapt to playing alongside Chris Bosh, stay healthy and find a dozen other ways to make sure he doesn’t go missing north of the border.
The introduction of the team’s alternate road uniform marks the 11th variation made to the Raptors jersey since the team’s inception in 1995.
Other variations include: the Toronto Huskies jersey worn during the NBA’s 50th anniversary celebration, the St. Patrick’s Day green jersey worn in 2008, the Raptors red alternate road jersey, and the Raptors Spanish and Italian jerseys worn during 2007 NBA Europe Live.
The Raptors say the new second road jersey will be available exclusively at CentreSports, the official team store of the Toronto Raptors at Air Canada Centre, from Wednesday, October 1 to Sunday, October 12.
At first glance the addition of Jermaine O’Neal made the Toronto Raptors an instant threat in the East. Pairing two All-Stars together, though, doesn’t always guarantee postseason success. Take the Orlando Magic’s Dwight Howard and Rashard Lewis as an example. The Raptors will win more games this season but at the end of the day they didn’t go after JO to have a nice regular season record. It has been seven years since this team escaped the first round. An early exit with O’Neal on board would be just as meaningless as never making the playoffs at all.
If the Raptors don’t sail into the postseason, it could be the last time we see Sam Mitchell pacing up and down Toronto’s bench.
Prediction: O’Neal was a big-time acquisition, probably the biggest in franchise history via trade. This should be enough for Bosh’s best season yet. The bench is now a question mark.
Will Bargnani step up? Will we see the Kapono of the regular season or the postseason? And how much can fans really expect from Ukic in his first season? This will leave them slotted in the sixth spot, right beind Philly.
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Congrats on the BDL honorable mention, Scott.
Thank you, Jeff. Certainly a pleasant surprise.
Scotts last blog post..toronto raptors linkage – sept 24