But he does seem to have become a bit corrupted by his color guys since coming to Toronto! Don’t play along with Jack & Leo – do your own thing Matt!

That’s reason enough for young NBA players to love a city like London. Great bars, great night life – at least that what I figured from when my son was there! lol

I don’t know. Maybe most of the people in your life tell you your crap and that’s the cold light of reality in your world…if it is…sorry about that but don’t go wearing your damage like a sign you know more than you know.

At no point has JT or BC sounded anywhere near as Hannibal Lector as you have. Look man, you can call me a tribal honker all you want, but I’m not the Priestess sitting in the dark with the voodoo dolls pricking them one by one.

So why did Sonny Weems team let him go? For the role he’s going to play he looks pretty good to me. How about Amir Johnson? Flashes of potential as he gets himself acclimated to the different sets and personalities…

I get it…your the joke on RR aren’t you. The guy who’s supposed to fluster the new guy logging on. Talking unsubstantiated crap while everybody else giggles…

If not? Wow…

I’ll give him another season before I start calling for this head (a new hair stylist would be a good start) but those interviews on RapsTV are a painfully bad start (”yo sonny what is up my man” lol)…leave the hip-hop to the hip I say.

He always seemed to me like the rare kind of player who didn’t give a shit about a paycheck, he just wanted to play (and hopefully win).

holy shit thats so true .
anon. your a genius

These are not games, trying to win, only scrimages trying to get defensive/offensive principles installed. PRESEASON ! TRAINING ! GETTING IN GAME SHAPE ! GETTING TO KNOW PLAYER ABILITIES VS OPPONENTS RATHER THAN TEAM MEMBERS ! GETTING TO KNOW HOW JT WANTS TO PLAY !

Real NBA life begins OCTOBER 28th. Until then nothing is REAL NBA life, only practice/training.

Re the games vs Philly, take Iggy and Brand (to equal CB & Turk) out of those games and what do you think the results may have been ??

Regarding Calderon he had 6 assists, 0 turnovers in 12 mins, in the 1st quarter and the Team scored 27 points in 12 mins. I consider that good progress !!! If you think Jack and Banks will take over for JC you do not watch Raptors basketball.

As for Matt, he is a professional announcer, vs the tricks by the Swirsk, who was OK and served a purpose in his day when the Raps needed the entertainment factor. If you think Matt is bad, listen to some of the other teams guys.

Ordinarily there wouldn’t be any side story to this.

However, Johnson played 2 years with Sioux Falls in the D-League. During last season Johnson was voted to the all time Sioux Falls starting five. I don’t recall if he was also voted their best player ever.

In any case he should get a pretty good ovation when he enters the game there.

Chuck Swirsky — I liked Chuck. He wasn’t great or anything, but he was solid. He was a habitually happy guy who was always upbeat and excited to talk about the Raptors. You don’t want a debbie-downer (commentators who criticize their own team’s players are highly over-rated in my eyes) … or some dull personality who drowns the fun out of everything (Devlin!!) … commentating on games.

Chuck wasn’t the too good on the basketball side of things, but at least he was positive in the other two areas, which made him a solid commentator in my eyes. Just couple him with someone better than Leo or Jack and things would have been very good.

LOL. Just like when you said other people speculate, but you strategize right? Funny thing is, it seems you’re hedging your bet right now when you associate your “superiority” with JT and BC, except BC was the one who put together this team and it’d be farfetched to say he has as little faith as you do regarding this new assortment of players. Yeah, yeah, they’re not “players” and they’re not a “team”, but they’re also not going to need the years that you predict before they become a .500 team (unless Bosh leaves, then yeah, I’ll agree). More important than “will they gel” are 1) is Calderon going to perform closer to his half season as a starter two years ago, or his current preseason play; 2) will DeRozan’s defense be at an acceptable level; and 3) good Bargnani or bad Bargnani? If the answer to those 3 are on the positive side, then this team will do fine. Swapping in DeRozan and Turkoglu isn’t much different from the swingman-by-committee approach the last couple of years, nor is it different from having to adapt to O’Neal and Marion. Even if the rest of the bench is entirely new, they’re also entirely superior to last year’s allotment.

P.S. You keep mentioning that all our new players are retreads, and while that is true, don’t forget that all our old players were retreads too — we just couldn’t find teams to take them!