The dark shadow of the 0-4 week is heavily set on the podcast as we go sift through the ruins and search for positives while reflecting on lineup changes and whether they have any hopes of being effective. Are we just shuffling our cards randomly or is their a strategy behind starting Calderon again? Are we really addressing the problem by swapping PGs in the lineup or is the problem elsewhere and we’re just too scared to address it. How much of our lineups are controlled by the coach and how much by Colangelo himself?
Marco Belinelli is accused, defended and accused. Has he been given a fair shot this year or is Triano killing his career and confidence just like Don Nelson? Is DeMar DeRozan our best option at SG? His offensive play would suggest so but his defense speaks otherwise. Or are we making too big of a deal about it?
Can anything be salvaged of these last 17 games? Can this team find a way to climb out of the abyss they’re in by motivating each other and striving for a common goal or are they just a bunch of strangers? What does making the 8th spot really mean? Is it better to miss the playoffs and get a reality-check instead of a false sense of accomplishment?
Colangelo’s only off-season acquisition to address the toughness and grittiness was Reggie Evans, was it enough? Has Evans lived up to the billing, were fans expecting too much for him and what has held him back from having a major impact.
Has Hedo Turkoglu failed us or have we failed him? Why does nobody talk about Turkoglu being completely out of shape? It’s like the elephant in the room (pardon the pun).
The effort was better in the Portland game, but can this Raptors team build on that or was that just a one-off performance spurred by Bosh’s yelling? Is Bosh a leader? Should we expect leadership from our best player?
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60 Raps
arse – you nailed it…as long as both hedo & bargs are starting, nothing else
is gonna make a lick of difference.
fuck that
1.andrea needs to rebound ..; needs to regain confidence …
2.hedo is a troll get off that fatass and do something , show you care.
3.bosh is a stupid cunt without balls shut and play defense for once
4.jose or jack can’t guard anyone…
5.demar is a scrub …
6.wright is our best defensive option ,so he gets more shots up then andrea very logical and all
7.give marco a chance with some consistent minutes …
8.bosh grow a set demand excellence.
9.Just fire triano
10. for fuck sake every ivaroni team has shitty defense , GET RID OF HIS SYSTEM FIRE HIM
11. stop wasting your time on this team all passion has left the building
12.Start weems
Jack has been the problem with our terrible defence in the starting unit? Really?
Fuck – grow some balls, and sit some players down.
Amen.
When Tim Chisholm writes an article that agrees with my half-assed statements, it makes me feel like I make these statements with my whole ass. Seriously, Jack is the problem?
If we fail on signing the Bosh, we should really try to trade Jack. I think trading him would be quite easy. He is not going to be happy here and there is no reason to have more than 18 million in your PG position while you have FAT HEDO there as well.
I do however, feel like BC will trade him for another European player like Sasha V. from Lakers :) man, this is going to be a great team.
Calderon Sasha
LEE AB Hedo
Comming off the bench: Marco , Gali
I don’t mind that, so long as we get their first rounder too. Need as many chips as possible for rebuilding, and selling of Jack for the Lakers first makes sense.
woo-hoo, the 29th pick in a pretty sparse draft. faaaboolus. all so they can get rid of the bloated contract of the cancerous jack. sweet. nice rebuild. of course, is the assumption here that they’ll make the playoffs (and forfeit their own 1st-rounder to MIA)? sweeter.
hey, does BC still have that $3M from the JO trade to buy a pick? or was that ‘re-invested?’
All I’m saying is that Jack has trade value, and we should turn it into picks when the rebuilding process comes around. You can get a lot out of late round picks, if your team does a good job of scouting. Rodrigue Beabois was drafted 29th..Josh Howard 30th. Anyway, I want as many picks as possible.
yeah, but why trade one of the few (only?) decent contracts on your team to get a guy who’s more than likely not going to be any better? i get that part of the reason is because so many other guys are virtually untradeable because of either their play or their contracts, but the idea of trading jack for a POS player & contract is, IMO, like trading your 2-yr old honda accord for an 8-yr old kia rio because it needs an oil change.
Well, the way I see it, we can’t move Calderon’s contract easily. So we need to maximize the value we get from him. Jack is a nice asset, but wasted on a team w/o Bosh (presumably a bfeeder team.) So the goal is to turn as many assets on the books into draft picks. Obviously if Calderon could be sold off for a first or even second rounder, I’d be happy to do that. but his contract has significant negative value, at this point. Makes more sense to hold on to him until he has some positive value and then can be shipped out.
I wouldn’t ship out Jack for a bad contract. Would be a 2011 expiring + Lakers 2010 or 2011 first.
So you want to basically tank the next 2 season if Bosh does not sign ( That is the only reason why I can imagine anyone to take on Sasha’a contract !!). So if this is the case, why do we want to sign Lee or get him in a sign and trade ?? Wouldn’t that tie us down to another 40 million ,4 year contract !!
Isn’t it just better to let Bosh walk or trade him with scrub expiring contracts !!1
Grabbing Lee would be retarded…he isn’t going to accept cheap money to come here. Then you are again locked into a core of guys who are paid big money but can’t create their own offense.
You have to tank, man. If your team is mediocre with arguably the best PF in the NBA, then it means something is seriously wrong, and the team needs to be rebuilt from scratch. You need to find an equivalently impactful player, and guys like that will only be found for the Raps in the draft. Only FAs who seem to come are guys looking to get paid.
what is ‘understood’ about jersey? would 0-3 shock anyone? really? at this point of the season, after what we’ve seen lately, we’d actually be surprised if they were to lose to NJ?
that record against sub-.500 teams is pretty impressive, until you remember that they’ve just lost to philly, sacto & GS…all sub-.500 clubs. and those games weren’t overly close.
There was some talk about how the problem here was Bargs because he doesn’t play help defense and our guards can’t play their positions. Seems too me that the problem is the fact that OUR GUARDS CAN’T DEFEND THEY’RE POSITIONS. You want to make a change, bring marcus banks out to play some D. Maybe even bench Jack AND Calderon and play Weems and Derozen at the one and 2 with turk running the offense. Maybe putting Amir in for Bargs will help and I’m for Amir getting more minutes but the biggest problem with this team is that opposing guards kill us with drive and kicks and high pick and roles. Until you correct that, this team will never improve defensively.
well, yeah, that’s true, but isn’t one of the reasons our guards get killed because there’s little-to-know secondary line of defense? when you look around the league, there are exceptionally few guards who can be considered 1-on-1 ‘shut-down’ guys, and yet, other teams don’t seem to have the same difficulty with defending both the perimeter & the post. so what is it…does the raps poor help D exaggerate the defensive inadequacies of the guards, or is the ineptitude of the guards’ D leading to impossible-to-defend situations for our post guys?
It could be that our poor help D does make the guard situation seem worse than it is, and like I said I’m all for Amir getting more minutes but that is not the fix. We should know that because last year we had JO, who is a better help defender than Bargs, and we still sucked on D. The problem with this team is and has been for the last few years that our guards can’t defend. Maybe if we had Dwight Howard or some ridiculously good help defender we cold afford turn still guards. As it is we have average defenders in Amir and Bosh, and a poor one in Bargs. So I guess the options are trade for a a ridiculously long defensive center (Andrew Bynum Comes to mind) or maybe for once, we can invest in a complete, maybe even allstar, point guard which we havn’t had since…I don’t know, Damon Stoudemire or Alvin Williams. My dream is we somehow sign Joe Johnson and keep Bosh. That combo=Champioship.
Joe Johnson/JJ
DD/Weems
Turk/Wright
Bosh….Bosh
Amir/Bargs
Agreed. Dribble penetration has always been a problem here and it makes every other player feel like the have to compensate and help on every possession. Not sure why BC has never addressed this but I guess that’s why he’s the GM and I’m not.
Bargnani defends his position better than the guards do, unless you factor in rebounding and boxing out. If you consider those defensive traits (which I do) then he’s not doing his job either but it starts with the guards.
BTW, I have no clue why you guys would think Belli would do a good job against Monta Ellis. Belli plays gimmick defense, he isn’t fundamentally sound and doesn’t have the lateral quicks. Having him guard a guy who is quick as a cat and presumably knows all his defensive limitations from their shared career as Golden State is presumably a bad idea.
yeah, i was a bit surprised by that as well. i guess it goes to the fact that belli does have talent, and you can fall in love with his potential (he’s still really young).
with respect to DD – i thought he did a pretty good job on ellis, for stretches at least. he’s one of the few perimeter defenders that actually forces his check to go to his weak hand. the limitations i see are all mental (i.e. he has to learn how to defend, but the ability to do so – both mental & physical – is there). i wouldn’t be averse to starting weems over him, but i certainly don’t want to see a cut in his minutes.
First you say that they don’t need points in the starting line up and then you say that switching out Derozan is a bad idea.
Look, Weems and Wright are better defenders. It doesn’t matter what Derozan gives us on offense. Let me repeat myself…considering it’s the two guard every single game that kills us, we need whatever defender we can get in there.
There somebody else is agreeing with me…wasn’t sure who the voices were.
I made that point (perhaps not well) on the podcast.
RE: “…it’s the two guard every single game that kills us, we need whatever defender we can get in there.”
Keep DD’s min, but combine him with a better help defender (Johnson) in the second unit.
@The Original Gman – I agree…sit DeRozan down
@Liston – I agree, you tried to make the point, but it’s hard to state it clearly because Ars so passionately disagrees.
Sit DeRozan…Weems or Wright: we need D
Limit Bargnani when playing poor D and free Amir
As for Bosh, why does he seem to blame everyone else but himself of late, esp. talking about his frustrations about how the team performed a few games ago after a thrashing and he himself had 6(?) turnovers? Where’s the accountability of being the #1 banana. He should have owned up and said, “We all played poorly and it starts with me, 6 turnovers is inexcusable.” I’m ok with him leaving on a sign and trade…he already seems like he “wants to be a part of it…NY, NY” or he’s looking for a new “Sweet home Chicago.”
Quite a few people here recognize the correct answer is Bargs off the bench.
Is the Bargnani experiment a failure? Have to feel quite bad for BC having so much faith in this guy and not getting anything back.
define ‘failure.’
doesn’t it depend on what the expectations were of him to begin with? there are quite a few who have felt for quite a while that what he is now is exactly who they expected him to be; if that’s the case, then he’s lived up to those expectations, even if they aren’t high.
is he a ‘failure’ in terms of being a #1 overall pick? i dunno…he’s going to have a decent career; as long as he’s given starter-like minutes, he’s probably always going to be able to produce offensively. the question then becomes, does his rebounding (and to a lesser extent, his defensive) inadequacies begin to limit his PT, and thereby begin to limit his offensive impact…and if he isn’t an offensive threat, what purpose does he serve?
he won’t go down as a bust, because he’ll likely be a high-teens scorer, and people will look to the ‘easy’ numbers first in defining a career. the fact the ’06 class was pretty weak will help him as well, as will the fact that he isn’t an outright bust like we’ve seen with other #1′s. but his career will be…disappointing.
I think it might be too early to say his career will be a disapointment.
Although I don’t expect any drastic transformations, if he continues to improve his game and finds a proper role for himself on the Rap’s or any other team he might play for in his career, he just might indeed live up to loftier expectations.
I don’t think his role with the Rap’s is clearly defined. Is he the secondary scoring option on this team? It’s hard to say when they forget about him in the offence. I agree with others that he should be more aggresive but they should also focus on getting him the ball and getting him shots as well.
Is he here to be a defensive presence? The help d, rotations, and recognition would indicate he’s not but there are times when he is active that he has influenced the game defensively. Can he improve upon it? I think the more you become accustomed to situations the more comfortable and aware you become.
I think the jury is still out on him. It is like you said, what were your expectations to being with.
The problem is…the clock appears to be ticking. If one had to bet money on it, a safe bet appears that BC’s faith in Bargnani is going to cost him both Bosh and his job.
This is why I’m saying you can kinda feel bad for BC…if he’d given up on Bargnani or sold high on him last season, then he could have retooled appropriately, gone in a different direction. But he basically hitched his wagon to Bosh+Bargs working out, which is clearly not the case if Bosh+Amir seems to get arguably better results.
Like, Amir Johnson is a fine player, but the team shouldn’t look so much better when he is on the floor versus when Bargs is.
I would say you’d need to see him under a coach like Larry Brown before you could close the book on him. He’s had mostly ineffective coaches so far.
Ripp, take a look at this article by Dave Berri. It demolishes the adjusted +/- stat that basketballvalue.com uses:
http://dberri.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/john-hollinger-dean-oliver-and-some-other-people-comment-on-plusminus/
I’ll take a look at that. BTW, I’ve never advocated using one stat alone…I like using several, as well as watching games.
Wayne Winston says that Bargs is one of the best overall #1 draft picks in the last 5 years in terms of his PER.
well then it must be true.
Wayne Winston ate a bowl of rhino j*zz and turned into a dragon. True story.
ROTD
Bargs was a fine draft pick with the number one overall. Who should BC have gone for? Aldridge? He was a Bosh double.
Really, with hindsight, Roy was the guy to go for. He filled a need at the 2-spot and he showed good promise. No one thought though, he could last an 82-game season. There were injury issues. Everyone was wrong.
Look at Blair on San Antonio – no one wanted to deal with his leg problems – now he is the best big man in the draft.
+1million
Hedo is playing like a guy who is washed up – pathetically slow – can’t hit open shots, can’t finish, can’t beat anyone off the dribble, can’t guard, can’t rebound.
The deficiencies of everyone else on the team are amplified by his pathetic performances and now it has snowballed into the current disaster – I don’t see why he wouldn’t be benched – he is at the core of the team’s problems!
The fear is that if you bench him, he quits. You can’t give up on him or let him stop thinking that you need him…otherwise he will coast even further.
Really wish he would stop the smoking and get in shape..he’d be a lot more effective.
he’s a smoker?? r u kidding??
And if he sulks and quits, that would be different how?
You know what my nightmare is now?
The Raps will put forward a great effort after all this turmoil, and lose just barely to the Hawks. And then, instead of building on the loss, they will do what they did against Cleveland and then against L.A. and proceed to lay egg after egg until I just want to shoot myself in the face.
Any bets on this happening?
They play pretty well at home. They made some headway in Portland..hopefully they can build upon it. Bosh has looked really solid the past two games…maybe that and improved play from Turk and Bargs will be enough to get rolling again.
We will win 2-1 games
We will win Atlanta and OKC and lost to New Jersey :P
book it!
I am hoping Toronto could beat either Atlanta or OKC. The Raptors team is not over-confident anymore like it was in February due to the easy schedule. They are more focused and less lazy right now after all the losing.
Have you guys forgot Bargs is scoring 17 points a game, and 2+ blocks? Bench the fat Turk, for good. . Start Amir, bring reggie off the bench. Bargs is down the last couple of games because when he gets hot he is ignored…Rautins has said as much for the games he’s covered.
Bargs has it in him to play better defense than he has. But if he won’t hustle on D because he is looked off on O, then he doesn’t deserve to play.
All year we hear it: the problem is not the offence, it is the defence. So let’s fix THAT.
He does not Hustle , becuase he does not have to answer to anyone !! It is as simple as that. He knows his minutes are not going to be cut down so he does enough to get by. As you can see, many of our fans are actually happy with that level of commitment from their 5 million dollar center !!!
exclamation marks dont make your point more assertive when it lacks depth and intelligence.
LOOLL, really !!! Lets here it from a member AB fan club on how AB is ignored and how his rebound is taken away from him by his teammates and ….
!!!
Clever !!! ;)
5 million dollar center ??
” when he gets hot he is ignored”
Do you know why he is getting ignored ?? Who is ignoring him , Jack or Jose or the whole team ??
Andrea Bargnani takes 14 field goal attempts per game. Far more than Turkoglu (40% more) gets as the third scoring option. Bargnani is not getting ignored.
(1) Bosh = 16.6 + 8.6 FTAs (2) Bargnani = 14.0 (3) Hedo 9.6
(4) Calderon = 8.7 (5) Jack = 8.0 (6) DeRozan = 6.7
Bargnani is getting his fair share of shot attempts.
I wouldn’t pass the ball to him if I were the other guys….not fun playing with a guy who wants to only score.
How is Jose taking more shots than Jack? Jose is a pass 1st point guard while Jack is a shoot 1st guy.
I also think it’s time Triano keeps a short leash on some guys. So if they’re playing poor D, or not rebounding, or just not hustling hard enough, yank em!!
No starting combinations have both offensive and defensive capabilities … only offensive … or maybe defensive … but not both …
Once Bosh, Bargs and Hedo are on the floor, the opposition start shooting threes or driving to the basket … and Bargs and Hedo are to big and too slow to cover the arc or the drive. Might as well try to play zone with those players if you add in Jose and/or Jack. The opposition has been feasting on the Raptors obvious weakness … sooo obvious.
that’s our team right there. bargs, jose, hedo, wright, reggie – all of whom can either score or defend, but can’t do both. so pick your poison: suck in defense or offense?
also our guys who can do both to some degree, bosh and jack, are average defenders at best, while the rest are well…just average.
and there you have it, our toronto raptors. sucks at both defense and offense depending on whose on the floor, and are, at best, average.
must say I agree with you for once :)
How do you explain that run of 25 games where we picked up wins against some of the leagues best? We saw this team play some decent defense that allowed their offence to get unleashed and become confident against whoever they where up against. Same players same coach.