People love giving Rob Babcock credit for finding Jose Calderon and passing up on the Gerald Green hype to select Charlie V. For a brief period we even had people singing songs about him for unearthing Roko Ukic before the latter melted away to obscurity. All that is trumped by him passing up on Andre Iguodala and Danny Granger (twice). Funny thing about Hoffa was that he was one of those players that you just know sucks without even having watched him dribble a basketball. In that respect he’s a lot like pretty much any Jim Carey movie. Personal thank you to Bryan Colangelo for getting us something for nothing. Humphries didn’t amount to much in Toronto but it was still a good deal.
Grade: A
Team impact: Minimal, but positive
Great trade for the Raptors because Rasho was a central part of the division-winning 2006-07 team. He was a great positional defender and added a timely scoring punch while spacing out the paint. His character traits were spoken of highly by his teammates and his influence was so positive, that he was brought around for a second run through the bi-annual exception, although the second stint wasn’t nearly as memorable.
Grade: A
Team impact: Very positive
Edin Bavcic now parks my car when I eat at Keg Mansion.
Grade: N/A
Team impact: None
If Rasho was central to the division-winning team, then TJ Ford was at the epicenter of it all. He led the point-guard tandem as the Raptors dominated the position that year, too bad things fell off rather dramatically for TJ soon after. Villanueva to the day is an erratic player who is about as reliable as Chinese pacemaker.
Grade: B+
Team impact: Very Positive
Half-decent player for crap really. Dixon was the better player, the only good thing Jones did was win the dunk contest, and that was before he came to the Raptors.
Grade: B
Team impact: Minimal, but positive
Drafting second-rounders is a lot of work, you have to do research, scout, and all that other mumbo-jumbo which Colangelo sucks at (Jawai, Tucker etc.), so he played to his strength of trading away picks, this time it worked and he nabbed Delfino. A good defender and a serviceable point-forward with a streaky scoring punch, all in all not a bad player. He played one season in Toronto and was a mediocre player on a poorly constructed team.
Grade: B
Team impact: Positive.
After bumbling his way in the European leagues for too long, any irrationally high hopes Raptors fans were had for Printezis faded away. He was much, much later traded for Alexis Ajinca.
Grade: N/A
Team impact: None
Where Dixon was a serviceable backup who could handle the ball and nail an occasional shot, Primoz’s game resembled a blindfolded guy trying to play musical chairs without any chairs around.
Grade: C
Team impact: Minimal, but negative.
