Fan Duel Toronto Raptors

Bryan Colangelo Press Conference Live Blog

Watch Press Conference Here He talked to all the players. “The season was clearly a disappointment for everyone involved” In the first year we might have achieved “too much too quickly” and he almost jokingly blamed himself by saying “I’ve apparently done a bad job of managing expectations” He still believes this is the best…

Watch Press Conference Here

He talked to all the players.

“The season was clearly a disappointment for everyone involved”

In the first year we might have achieved “too much too quickly” and he almost jokingly blamed himself by saying “I’ve apparently done a bad job of managing expectations”

He still believes this is the best team he’s assembled:

“I can honestly tell you today that on paper, I still believe, man for man it was the best team I’ve had since I’ve been here”

“It’s not about the paper, it’s about the game” said cb4

What went wrong:

Basically said we did not get the ball up the court, did not move the ball, did not execute defensively. That’s all there is to it.

“The trade was made for the right intentions” I did internally forecast that it was somewhat of a ‘swing for the fence’ kind of trade, but not one that would handcuff us for many years to come. The Marion deal eliminated the “tightness” of the budget by one year and the financial problems would have been alleviated if we hadn’t made the deal.”

Biggest obstacle we had all season long was the health of Jose Calderon. It limited him to practice time, game time and when he was playing the majority of the games he wasn’t the same player, particular defensively. But that’s not the issue, the issue that falls back to me is the fact that it was a glaring weakness, it was depth at the PG spot. I’m not going to buy the lack of depth with the roster but I will acknowledge that he depth of the PG position as a reason for concern. We simply didnt’ put enough experience behind Jose.

The jury is still out whether Roko Ukic can ultimately become a starting caliber PG or someone that is capable of maintaining that position consistently as a backup but the kid needs a chance.

Scheduled to sit down with Jay Triano in the next couple days. Will talk about his experience, his growth as a coach and his vision for the team, what he wants to do and what he envisions for the team. The assistant coaching will be changed, the degree of the change is not determined. Jay did a “very solid job” given the circumstance and “never stopped coaching. The “players have a lot of respect for Jay, they respect his basketball acumen, his professionalism, his means of communication and they respect generally the way he leads this team…As much digging I’d try to do and I couldn’t find anything negative about him.” Jay has a “very good shot” at making the job.

Bosh extension:

“I will sit down and talk to him and his agent this summer about the possibility of signing an extension”

“We’ve been keeping abreast of the Carlos Delfino situation. We have an intention of bringing him back and that’s well on track.”

Had a very good conversation with Chris the other day, our formal exit interview. We didn’t talk about the future, some of the things we experienced this year…Bosh is arguably a top 10 player in the league…this organization’s goal is to keep Chris Bosh, will not speculate on what might happen.

The cap will come down, cab will be approx. 57.5M, tax be around 70.5M. It will probably drop the year after too. We have two concerns: team concerns and financial concerns. Teams will be more prudent with their spending, there are only four or five teams under the cap which will limit free agent options. We won’t make any rash decisions this year in terms of FA signing as we might’ve done last year.

Ticket renewals are down from last year but not to the point of panic but it has forced us to reach out to customers the way we haven’t done before. I’m personally making phone calls to season-ticket holders, spending time with suite-holders. We’re having many face-to-face meetings with our customers, as far as I see it it’s part of what I do. It’s not the first time I’ve done this in my career. We value our customers and they’re expressed a degree of confidence.

“I don’t think we’re that far away, we’re a lot further along now than when I got here. We have a solid core of players, very young core of players…Bosh, Bargnani and Calderon…it’s a good place to start. We have a high draft pick, we have free agency dollars to spend. Shawn is a player we will probably look to re-sign or do a sign-and-trade“.

“I have been contacted [by other coaches]. I have no to-date conducted any interviews, talking to Jay first is the right thing to do. In the next few weeks we’ll know the direction we’ll be going. Jay is the only coach that has an obligation beyond this year, we picked up his option for next year”.

Asked about trading the pick in this year’s draft:

“Draft is very important to add good young pieces and there’s some pretty good young players picked at 9 (Pierce at 10, Marion, Stoudamire, Johnson at 9). We’re going to get a pretty good player…we might even add another pick later…I’d rather trade in than trade out of this draft. We might also add a veteran player through the MLE…If you ask me today, we stay in the draft

Jake and Pops:

“Jake Voskuhl was more valuable off the court.”

“Pops had some flashes of brilliance, he’s far from a complete player. If we choose to, we can retain his rights as a restricted free-agent. That determination has not been made yet, it will be made closer to the time when we have a better feel for what came out of the draft process. Pops turned out to be a nice little piece for us. I’ll be talking to his agent soon.”

Colangelo told Will Solomon that we’d waive him if we couldn’t find a deal. LOL.

Patrick O’Bryant:

“[O’Bryant] has nothing but upside, 7-foot player with a 7 and a half foot wingspan. He made several of us..kids got a chance..22 years old, sometimes the bigs don’t peak until their 26, 27, 28…He’s committed to summer league, he’s on a minimum deal next year. It would be ridiculous to let him go at that charge, we’ll do everything to make him into a player. He’s got something to prove but he’s definitely go the talent”.

Do people who want to drive you out of town bother you?

“Yes, and it should, and it drives me. I should have thicker skin after all these years but I wouldn’t be human and wouldn’t have the same kind of passion if it didn’t bother me. You take the good with the bad, there are moments when you’re a genius and moments when you’re a goat. You just have to look at historical averages…and fortunately I’ve got decent historical averages….We’re not far away.”

Rebounding, do we need new personnel:

“Yes, with Chris averaging 10 a game, Andrea will never be a great rebounder with the orientation on the floor…he’ll never be a monster on the glass…can we get better, can we get tougher, can we physically and mentally tougher. Those are some of the adjustments to the roster we’re going to make. We are too nice, we are too nice. Collectively, the group is too nice. When you step on that court, you better have some fight. A some guys say, you got to have some ‘dog’. It can be improved, it becomes a matter of pride at some point….perhaps we’ll bring players with a different mentality

Does this team suck?

“If given a complete training camp with the group we currently have, we’d have a completely different outcome in terms of wins and losses….we need to do something about the depth at the PG spot. We want to have have a complement for Bosh and Marion [like Marion if he walks]….I would feel comfortable with the team we have…but it’s not enough, I’m not looking at it as if we’re starting with 33 wins, I’m looking at it something north of that. Even if we did nothing, we’d be better than what we are.”

I don’t want to oversell Carlos Delfino but he’s got a toughness and a little bit of that hard-headedness and desire to win. Jose told me…if Delfino comes back it would be great.

Would he do the JO trade again?

“Yes, because it was the right thing to do at the time….here we are with flexibility and assets….the locker-room did miss Rasho…but you still make the deal.”

When asked about the team’s record against teams over .500 he pointed to the close games against Lakers, Celtics and Suns. Came back to saying that Jose’s defense was “atrocious” (he’s awfully blunt about him).

If Shawn comes back, it will affect the 2 or 3 spots, if you have a solid defender at the 2 you can protect Jose’s defensive deficiencies, but again, he’s not that bad.

“Every player I spoke too and countless people in the industry say that our talent belies our record…I would agree them…The good news is that we have options”

Anthony Parker:

“I did acknowledge to him that there are quite a few teams that had interest in him. All of those teams would’ve been looking at him as a reserve…moving forward, I made the recommendation that perhaps he needed to adjust his scope…for his whole life he’s been a starter and needs to find a way to be effective coming off the bench…as a starter, he’s probably looking at Europe. If he wants to stay in the NBA, he needs to start adjusting his scope downwards. I would every much like to have Anthony back, he’s been invaluable to the organization…As far as the role, I would anticipate that he’ll be coming off the bench if he comes back.

As far Bosh he’s not saying much, just stating that we can sign him to a 3-year extension after July 7th. Not a whole lot at all. Says there’s no reason to panic and trade Chris Bosh. Saying we always have the option of sign-and-trade since we can offer him max-money. “If Chris is ever traded, there will be sound reasoning behind that move…it could go into next summer…there will not be any panic on the part of this organization”.

Jose playing for Spain:

FIBA and NBA agreement prevents NBA teams from discouraging players to play in international ball unless there’s an injury. He says that “it’s got to come from the player” meaning the realization has to come from Jose that fatigue might be an issue with him. He’s played straight basketball for a straight year and at some point players need to say “enough is enough”. He gave an example of Steve Nash as a guy who’s done that.

Backup PG:

Will likely look to get another backup PG but doesn’t want to discard Roko just yet and will deal with it after free agency, draft etc. Says we had success with Parker playing the point and next year it might be Delfino who assumes that role.

BLOG OVER

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