I don’t believe for a second that Chris Bosh had any intention of re-signing with the Raptors at any point in the season. Last night Team Trinity came into fruition and you’d have to be naive to think this was not planned well in advance of July 1st. The least I hoped Bosh would do was to inform Colangelo that there was a low chance that he’d re-up with the Raptors last summer, so the GM could get the rebuilding process underway sooner. To believe that the Raptors post-AllStar break form was the reason Bosh left is being downright silly, I don’t care if the Raptors had played .600 ball after that, it would have no impact on the decision of these three to find a home together. This was planned, but that’s not how Colangelo sees it, in his eyes losing Bosh happened because it was a “perfect storm”.
It sickens me to see stars colluding with each other instead of competing. As they say, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Before you counter, know that the Boston example doesn’t apply because those guys were assembled by a GM, rather shrewdly, nothing of the sort happened here. This reminds me of a pick-up court where the three good players sit out a game or two even when its their turn, just so that they could play with each other instead of competing. Even if they win an NBA title, there will be an asterisk next to it. It would mark the first time in history where three damn good players decided that they weren’t good enough to do it on their own and needed to join forces. There would be more respect for those guys if they struggled for 15 years without winning a title than win one like this, at least that way you can say you didn’t bail out when the going got tough. I don’t put this pass Chris Bosh or Dwayne Wade (not that Shaq’s gone and there’s only so many times you can rely on the refs to hand you an NBA title), but to see James, clearly the best player in the NBA by a distance, succumb to this temptation is almost sad. Even if he wins a title in Miami, what does it really mean? As Kevin McHale, Charles Barkley, Chris Webber, and Reggie Miller pointed out on NBA TV last night, it would be tainted to say the least. This local reporter covered it pretty nicely, and Cleveland owner, Dan Gilbert’s letter is an instant classic in which he guarantees the Cavaliers a title before LeBron gets his. I want Colangelo to say something like that.
Having said all that, even though the balance of power has shifted to Miami, it’ll be great watching teams come at them full-force every single game. And you know that if they don’t win the title, it’ll be a colossal failure. I can already see Orlando, Boston, and LA salivating at the opportunity to take this little dream team down. Bosh will be resigned to play the role of the most expensive garbage man in the league, much like he did in the Olympics. He excelled in that role because there was no pressure of any sort and he could just go out there and not worry about carrying a team. Oh, by the way, remember all that talk about Bosh wanting to be “the man”? What…um…what…er…what happened to that?
How does this decision affect the Raptors? Well, that depends on what amount of money these three are going to play at, but as more and more reports come out, it’s looking likely that the Raptors will engage in a S&T with the Heat, possibly using a third or fourth team. “There’s a lot of things that are still under consideration. I don’t think it’s over yet”, said Colangelo yesterday. The Raptors were persistent about not taking on Beasley (traded to Wolves) and will acquire picks and trade exceptions. The four-team deal reported by ESPN yesterday was dependent on Beasley being thrown around, but that’s not happening anymore. Assuming we do find a deal and get the exceptions and use them (i.e., take on more salary), we’re now flirting with the tax while fielding a 20-win team. That doesn’t compute, which only tells me that the Raptors have to be thinking about swinging multiple deals after the Bosh S&T.
The TPE can come in handy if you are targeting a high-salary player (has to be a starter) on a team looking for cap relief. For example, say if New Orleans wants to cut its payroll by dumping Chris Paul, the Raptors would be one of the only teams over the cap to provide that option. If we use, say, $15M of the TPE, our payroll would be $74M (assuming we renounce our UFAs and sign Kleiza). That puts us over the tax for nothing, which suggests the Raptors would then become sellers in the market and what they’d be selling is the contracts of Turkoglu and Calderon. If those two are shipped for 50% of their salaries and some draft picks, the Raptors would be around $64M. At this point, we’d have picks from the Bosh S&T and the Turkoglu/Calderon deals, and would be looking at Reggie Evans and Marcus Banks’ combined $10M coming off the cap next summer, putting us under the cap. If we just avoid signing Kleiza, we could easily have $9M in cap-space next year.
Did you get all that? What I’m trying to say is that if Colangelo plays his cards wisely, by next summer the Raptors could be a young team, coming off a season where Weems, DeRozan, Johnson, and Davis would have gotten great playing time and developed considerably. There’s no need to spend this summer on people like Kleiza, we should be focusing our gaze on a year or two down the road instead of applying a bandaid to a wound that’s got gangrene. Listening to Colangelo, that’s what he appears to be thinking, so I have no idea why the spending, When asked about next year’s team and losing Chris Bosh for potentially nothing he said:
Andrea Bargnani will have much more of a platform to be the dominant scorer on the team, or the predominant scorer. You’re going to have the ball a lot more in Hedo Turkoglu’s hand if he comes back which we’ve talked about, I think his role will be much more important and critical to the way we’re going to play. You got these young players who are showing a tremendous amount of enhusaism, energy, athleticism, shot-blocking, defending….we’ve got such a great young nuclues of athletic, younger, energized youthful players that its exciting to see what could come of it.
I’d like another glass, please.
Of course, the current Raptors story to follow is Linas Kleiza and the 20M/4yr offersheet put forth by the Raptors. The Nuggets could match this and pay the tax, just because they don’t have any options at the SF, and Kleiza has proven to be a good fit for them already. Kleiza did clearly state that he’s like to play for the Raptors and is hoping the Nuggets don’t match, this makes it unlikely Denver would want to keep a player who doesn’t want to be there. If they don’t match, the Raptors will have added another long-term role-player contract to the roster. Defensively, Kleiza’s effort is consistent, but his 245lb frame gets in the way of his foot-speed, especially when guarding threes which is what he’s going to be asked to do here (log-jam at PF), so expecting him to be a defensive stopper is not possible. The 8.6 rebounds PER48 is above average, but wing rebounding was never our problem.
Kleiza’s great off the ball and aggressive in his occasional drives which sees him throw one down on the weak-side quite often, but that’s a product of playing with other great players, none of which he has in Toronto. His role in Denver was to spread the floor and he responded by having 42% of his shots be threes, and hitting them at a 32% clip. Not great, but as already mentioned, his off-the-ball slashing and rebounding made up for a lot of it.
The contract is fair. The player is serviceable. I just have to question handing out long-term contracts to system players when there seems to be no established direction or system for the team. The Raptors would be better off to create cap-flexibility, rebuild via a true rookie-scale contract youth movement, and try to find their next franchise player. The offersheet to Kleiza speaks of Colangelo trying to be competitive and aiming for some sort of win total, while rebuilding at the same time. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to do that and we risk getting stuck in the doldrums of mediocrity. The “safety net” here is that, just like Jarrett Jack, we will have the opportunity to trade Kleiza because of his serviceable nature to potential contenders. However, with the lockout approaching, you have to question just how many clubs would be willing to add guaranteed contracts into the mix.
Amir Johnson was officially announced yesterday and he made the cardinal sin of answering a reporter honestly. When asked about what other teams were offering him, he responded by actually giving out a number – $25-30M. He didn’t say the years, but assuming it was the same and going with the middle figure of $27.5M, Colangelo had to “overpay” by $1.3M/yr. The overall theme of the press conference was Amir being ecstatic about striking gold after being on the brink of the NBA just over a year ago. Good luck to the young man, the hopes of this franchise are now on Johnson, Weems, DeRozan, Davis and Jack, all players acquired within the last year. If there’s a silver-lining of any sort in all of this, it’s that the ever-changing landscape of the Toronto Raptors is at least getting younger and maybe, just maybe, two of these guys can pan out and become an All-Star caliber player who can revitalize Raptors basketball.
Now that the major free-agents have made their decisions, the rest of the pieces can fall into place. Keep your eyes peeled to the front-page for updates, it should be a riot.
