Built Ford Tough

The Raptors had until yesterday at midnight to release Dorsey before his non-guaranteed contract became partially guaranteed. By not waiving him, Dorsey is now due $200,000 (give or take) by the Raptors and if he isn't waived before November 1st, his contract becomes fully guaranteed (minimum salary). Not ground breaking news or anything, but considering there is very little to talk about in regards to the Raptors, I thought I would post this.

After seeing the details of the contract laid out, it doesn't look as bas as I had first thought it was. The deal is: Year 1: $5,000,000 Year 2: $5,500,000 Year 3: $6,000,000 Year 4: $6,500,000 Year 5: $7,000,000 ($5,000,000 of the 5th year is guaranteed). So the deal, is actually 5 years, $30M ($28M guaranteed) with the incentives that he will likely achieve and the extra $4M comes from incentives that he will unlikely achieve. He has a 5% trade kicker as well. So yeah, this deal isn't nearly as bad as it looked to be on the surface. It is still a bit of an overpayment, but if Johnson continues to develop and is able to tone down his foul rate, I don't think that you can complain too much about this contract. *waits for Jammin to come in and post "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"*

Deal isn't going to happen unless Barnes is more concerned about playing time than winning. The Raptors aren't going to be able to offer him anything more than the LLE and why would Barnes go to Toronto for the LLE when he could make the same amount of money playing for the Lakers or the Celtics? Even if he is more concerned about playing time and opportunity, the Cavs have shown interest in him and they can offer the most money out of any of the reported interested teams, so that would make more sense for him financially and he would get just as much PT in Cleveland as he would Toronto, perhaps more. So, the way I see it, this signing is pretty much dead and won't happen. I can't say that I am too disapointed as, like I said above, I'd rather see Belinelli not glued to the bench and have Weems and Kleiza split the minutes at the 3 basically 50/50. This offseason has been a colossal [expletive] up for Toronto though. I wonder what is going to go wrong for Toronto next?

So it sounds like the Barnes deal is basically dead and unless the Raptors make a move for another small forward to fill the void left by Turkoglu, it will come down to Weems or Kleiza for the starting small forward spot. Who do you think should start between the two?

Also, since Barnes only played 1 year for the Magic and they don't have his full Bird Rights, they can only sign-and-trade him for 120% of his previous contract which was $1.6M so that would be $1.92M, which I mentioned above (along with the minimum 3 year deal) as a potential snag in this signing. And, because of these, the signing has hit a major snag. http://basketball.realgm.com/src_wiretap_archives/68246/20100720/barnes_to_raptors_hits_major_snag/#ixzz0uEYNZQYr I'm honestly not too worried about this though. I'd be completely fine with no deal happening and the Raptors just running with a perimeter rotation of Kleiza/Weems/DeRozan/Barbosa/Belinelli. The Raptors and Magic are going to continue discussions about how they can get a sign-and-trade done today though. I really don't care one way or another if a deal happens though.

It is what I do best with my long, rambling posts and "pessimistic" outlook towards everything. Does this make it up to you though? I like the fact that he has a player option for the 2nd year (I'd rather it be a team option but whatever). I can see him opting out and going to a contender after this season. He will make his money this year with the uncertainty around the CBA and then opt out and sign a new contract with a contender next year. Makes sense for him.

Not exactly official just because he posted it on his Twitter (I'm not sure if there was something else). Remember the Charlotte trade? Both Chandler and Evans posted on their Twitter accounts that they would be playing for Toronto and Charlotte respectively, but that never happened. By the sounds of it though, this is basically a done deal and now Colangelo and Smith are seemingly just working out the details of the transaction.

I'm confused about how a sign-and-trade will work considering that Orlando doesn't own the rights to Barnes as he only signed a one year deal with the Magic last year (at least I don't think they have his rights) and also the fact that I was under the impression that in order to do a sign-and-trade the contract has to be at least 3 seasons long. One possible scenario is that the Kleiza signing was converted into a sign-and-trade for a future 2nd or something and then the Raptors are using a portion of their MLE on Barnes. I'm not sure if this works either because I think once you sign an offer sheet nothing else can be added (so no S&T or things like that). I could be wrong on that though, as if both parties agree I think it can be changed. I'm not even going to speculate on anything more here though, because I honestly don't even know how this is going to play out. This is looking like it is going to be a pretty creative sign-and-trade. Should be interesting to come home from work tomorrow morning and see what kind of creative deal happened because I honestly have no idea how this is going to work out.

It wouldn't surprise me to see him traded before the season starts. With Barnes most likely coming to Toronto there really is no room for him on the roster as the majority of the wing minutes will be given to DeRozan, Weems, Barnes and Kleiza. All three of those guys will be getting at least 20 minutes a game with DeRozan probably getting around 30 minutes. That leaves little to no time for Belinelli outside of garbage time (which there will probably be a lot of). His contract is up at the end of the year so I could see him being a throw in in a potential Calderon trade or something like that. The talent is there and I'm sure a team would be willing to take a chance on him at such a low cost on a one year try out of sorts. It really sucks though because when Beli is on, I absolutely love him as a player. The problem is that he is on about once every 10 games. And it sounds like this is basically a done deal and will be announced tomorrow morning as official. It will be a 2 year, $9M deal according to Woj. After what happened with that Bobcats trade, I'll wait until it is actually announced as official before getting my hopes up though. I'm not in love with the signing as I would've rathered to see the Raptors run with a perimeter rotation of DeRozan, Weems, Kleiza and Belinelli simply because that lineup is younger and cheaper, but I don't hate it either. Getting a physical vet like Barnes could be a good influence for DeRozan and Weems. If he plays within himself I like him as a player, but when he starts to think he is better than he is, I hate watching him chuck. We would have to be delusional to think that Colangelo would simply stand pat with the lineup that he currently has. As much as I hate the fact that he is going to continue to make tweaks to the roster that will probably make the Raptors a better team, you have to respect the competitive nature that he has. The guy really does hate to lose. This move is going to spark some trades though. By my count, the Raptors have about 16 or 17 players on their roster right now.

Raptors improved their record to 4-0 so far this summer with an 88-82 win over the Kings. DeRozan was the best player on the floor once again. He finished the game with 22 points, 7 rebounds and 3 assists on 6-12 shooting. He set up Ed Davis for a wide open jump shot that sealed the game with about 30 seconds left in the game. He did a very good job of getting the the foul line and, more importantly, he was converting when he got there (10-13 from the stripe). He was also very active on defense from what I saw, much more so than in previous games. His handles have definitely improved since the season ended and he looks a lot more comfortable when he has to put the ball on the floor. The lesser competition is probably part of the reason why, but regardless he looks a lot better at putting the ball on the floor. If he can continue to get more comfortable putting the ball on the floor, it is going to be huge for him considering how good he is at drawing contact and getting to the foul line. Weems had a nice statline with 19 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists, but this wasn't his best game of the summer. To be fair to him, he did a lot more ball handling and seemed to play the point for stretches so he was in uncharted waters for parts of this game. He shot poorly (6-19) and forced things that weren't there (7 turnovers), but you can see he is more comfortable handling and passing the ball. The next step for him is to be able to read the defense better as he was trying to force passes into areas where there was no room. On the bright side, he did finish the game strong and seemingly made the right decision with the ball all of the time down the stretch. He stopped trying to be too cute with the rock, stopped settling for jumpers and got to the line to help seal the game. Davis was very, very impressive today. That was the best game of his that I have seen so far. He finished with 17 points, 7 rebounds and 5 blocks (I think he had around 7 though). He was all over the place on defense disrupting the Kings whenever they went inside. His rotations were very sharp and a lot of his blocks were because he was in great position because of great rotations. He still needs to get stronger as he was pushed around a bit whenever he was matched up with Cousins, but you can just see that he gets it on defense and that he has the potential to be a very good shot blocker. On offense, he did a nice job of taking what the defense gave him. When they sagged off of him, he nailed the jumper. When they bodied up on him he did a good job of getting to the stripe (6 free throw attempts). He hit a 16 foor jumper that put the game on ice as well. Considering he hasn't really played since January, I have been very impressed with his play so far. He seems to be a lot more NBA ready than I had originally thought, but playing against NBA competition and SL competition is obviously a huge difference to I'll with hold judgement until I see him in NBA action. I spent most of the game watching these three so I'm not going to comment much on anybody else. Dorsey did a great job of guarding Cousins and Davis gave him a lot of help. Alabi did a nice job of being where he needs to be on offense and was the recepiant of some nice passes as a result, but it is also clear that he needs to add a lot of strength as he was getting pushed around on the block whenever he was matched up with Cousins.

So every team that is going through a transitional period after losing their franchise player is viewed as a joke then? Rebuilding teams are a joke? The Raptors signed a 25 year old small forward who could possibly be their starter this upcoming season to a deal that wasn't even valued as the full MLE. He has supposedly added some elements to his game last season when playing for Olympiacos and averaged 17/6 while leading them to the Euroleague Finals (I think, I don't pretend to know about how his time over in Europe went). Yeah, he got overpaid a bit but when you sign restricted free agents more often than not, they are overpaid because you have to give them a large enough contract that the team who owns his rights won't match. Considering the Raptors don't have a true small forward on their roster (Weems and DeRozan are both two guards) I don't see why exactly this deal deserves a: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" response. And you do realize that none of the Raptor fans on this board are saying that the Raptors are going to do anything noteworthy this season right? Basically all of us have talked about how they will be one of the frontrunners in the Harrison Barnes Sweepstakes.

I'm pretty excited to watch this matchup as well. I haven't caught many SL games other than the two of the three Raptors games (watching the Raps/Kings games right now) and bits and pieces of games here and there, but I don't plan on doing anything tonight as I work tomorrow morning and night, so I plan on basically doing nothing but watching SL games on Raptors TV, and that game is on after the Raptor one. That should be a very intriguing matchup. As for your comments about Wall, I obviously can't comment on how Wall has played in the SL, but from the sounds of it, he has basically played how he did on college and the same questions/concerns apply to him. I'll try to post some comments while watching the game, but it is hard to actually get any sort of conclusion about a player from watching 1 SL game.

I was watching a stream on ATDHE of the Raptors game against the Kings but it was terribly choppy and laggy, so I'll just watch it in on Raps TV in an hour and a half. From what I saw (about 6 minutes of the first quarter), the game was really sloppy with a lot of turnovers and careless mistakes. The Raptors held the Kings to something like 3-19 shooting in the first quarter (Cousins was 0-6 before I stopped watching) so that is nice to see. I'll try to post more observations when I watch on Raps TV though.

Denver won't match, which was pretty much a given after their signing of Al Harrignton, but it sounds like it is official. http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/07/16/nuggets-wont-match-offer-sheet-on-linas-kleiza/ This deal is looking a lot better now that Turkoglu is out of the picture as he will play a pretty large role on the team and won't be buried on the bench and only play backup minutes behind Turkoglu. It also doesn't mean that Weems and/or Belinelli won't be completely buried on the bench because if Turkoglu was still on the team and Kleiza was brought in it would've drastically reduced the roles of these two. Call me crazy for thinking this, but I still think that Beli can be a solid player. It is always nice to get players that actually want to be in Toronto as wel. He made it pretty clear that he wanted to be in Toronto, especially when he straight up said in that one interview that he hoped Denver didn't match.

Here is the video with the dunks in it.

That averages out to about $9.4M per season which is a reasonable contract for Scola considering how overpaid some players have been this offseason so far. I definitely think that he took a bit of a paycut to stay with the Rockets because I could easily see him getting around $10M a season with somebody else who has cap space to blow. If Yao is able to stay healthy next season I think the Rockets could be a pretty formidable team. They have very nice depth with Battier, Lowry, Patterson, Buddinger and possible Hill depending on how much he improves off of the bench and a rock solid starting 5. I think that Ariza and Martin will benefit greatly from playing with Yao and having him healthy will only make them more efficient, especially Ariza. Losing Scola would've been a pretty huge blow to this team so it was crucial to lock him up, especially at a reasonable price.

Triano isn't really cut out to be a head coach, but he is a pretty good coach when it comes to player development. He was integral in Bosh's improvements coming into each season and worked very closely with him. Bargnani has played much better under him than he did under Sam Mitchell as well. Don't just look at the head coach when it comes to player development though. Eric Hughes has done wonders with both DeRozan and Weems since they came to the team last season. Weems was absolutely awful for the first couple of months of the season and was considered to be a border line NBA player. Now he is looking like a promising backup shooting guard who could potentially be a starter if he continues improving at this rate. DeRozan has praised Hughes for helping him grow as a player as well. I know it is only Summer League, but he is looking like a completely different player from when he was drafted and even from the end of this past season. Also, I don't remember where I read it but Jack has praised Alvin Williams for helping him grow as a point guard and as a leader. Alex English is a wealth of offensive knowledge as well and I'm sure he has played a part in the growth of Raptor players over the past few years. As for the comment about having no star on the team, that could be a negative as players could be thrust into situations that they aren't comfortable with like having to create their own shot in the final seconds of a tied game, but it could also be viewed as a positive attribute for developing the young players. Guys like DeRozan, Weems, Johnson and Davis are all going to have increased roles on the team because of not having a star on the team which could be good for their long term development. They still have somebody like Jack to handle the crunch time playmaking and to ease some of the pressue so it isn't all bad. Trading Turkoglu for Barbosa is clearly a backwards move in terms of talent, but considering the direction that this team is headed in and the difference in salaries, it is about as much as I can hope for. The Raptors shed long term salary and managed to increase their odds in the Harrison Barnes Sweepstakes. Sounds good to me.

I would consider doing something for the Raptors, but I work nights so I sleep during most of the day and then I'm starting college in the fall so that may limit the amount of spare time I have to write something frequently enough. I am looking for a new job right now though as I hate my current one, so if I do end up getting a new one and will no longer have to work nights, I may be open to the possibility depending on how frequently you guys want to have something written.

Oh Toronto Raptors

I wasn't implying that Turkoglu won't be able to play alongside Nash because I don't think it is possible for a player to play alongside Nash and not play up to their capabilities or beyond. I was simply pointing out that Turkoglu was upset about not handling the ball enough this past season and he is going to a team with a more ball dominant point guard so it is understandable why somebody would think that Turkoglu might not exactly be thrilled playing with Nash. I don't think it will be that much of a problem considering Nash is a much, much better player than either Calderon or Jack and will get Turkoglu the ball more, but it is a valid question, at least as far as I am concerned. I never said that Turkoglu isn't a good spot up shooter, I was saying that he is more effective at shooting off of the bounce, off of a screen and roll situation or coming off of an off the ball screen. I didn't say that he was terrible as a spot up shooter but he isn't a great spot up shooter either, which is exactly why I said so I don't get why you are acting like I called him a terrible shooter or something. By the sounds of it, travesy knows a lot more about basketball than your mom though. You may not like the guy or see eye-to-eye with him, but to basically flat out say that he knows nothing about basketball simply because you two seem to clash about everything is pretty sad. I don't agree with you on everything but you won't see me throw out comments like that simply because I share a difference of opinion as you do. And travesy never said Turkoglu can't shoot nor did he say that he is going to suck in Phoenix because of NASH. He said that Turkoglu isn't as effective as a spot up shooter than he is with the ball in his hands, which is pretty much a fact and he said that if he was unhappy with his lack of a ball handling role in Toronto than he may hate playing for the Suns considering how ball dominant Nash is. You are reading into mine and travesy's comments too much here and you are trying to jump to conclusions that simply aren't there.

Sonny Weems won't be returning to the game. I guess he bruised his knee earlier (I wasn't watching when it happened) and he is out for the rest of the game. Looks like it will be the DeRozan show in the 2nd half, which I have to admit, I'm glad about. It sucks to hear that Weems is a bit banged up, but with how effective DeRozan was in the first half and how easily he was scoring, I want to see how big of a game he can have. I don't know much about Michael Roll other than he played for UCLA, but he has a very smooth game. He is a very good shooter and does a great job of utilizing pump fakes, head fakes and ball fakes to create space for himself to get his shot off. There probably isn't any room for him on the Raptors roster considering Calderon, Jack, Banks, DeRozan, Belinelli and Weems have the guard spots on lock, but I think he could be a decent shooter off of the bench for some team. He would have to improve his defense though because he would get abused by both point guards and shooting guards. That would probably be the reason why he never sticks with an NBA team, but he is a very good shooter and a very smart player. I love Dorsey though. That guy seems to get every rebound and is an absolute tank down low. Once he gets position he is basically impossible to move and he throws his weight around very well. I figured that it was a 50/50 chance that he would even be on the team this upcoming season (his contract isn't guaranteed) but I'm guessing he is basically a lock for the team considering the fact that he is an ideal fit on the team with his skill set. I haven't noticed much of Davis or Alabi so far though, other than one very nice big-to-big feed from Davis to Alabi that resulted in a dunk. I haven't been paying too much attention to them though as my raging hard on for DeRozan's first half is blocking basically everything else out. EDIT: Looks like Weems is back and on the floor.

Good thing the announcers are completely ignoring the Raptors during this game. I know that they are the MSG announcers and all, but I've been watching for 5 minutes and I have heard them say one thing about a Raptor player. The only player they talk about is DeRozan (probably the only one they have heard of, haha) I didn't watch the game against the Rockets but I'm not liking the defensive effort so far, at least in comparision to the defense that they played against the Suns team. I do realize that the Suns SL team was pretty weak (not sure of who is on the Knicks team other than Rautins, Douglas, Walker and Jordan), but the effort and hustle was much greater in that game. I'm also very unimpressed with the poor free throw shooting, which has been a problem all SL long so far. Despite the poor FT shooting and defense, the Raptors are still up right now. DeRozan has looked impressive so far with 14 points on 5/8 shooting so far. So far I have seen him with a very nice second chance jam, a nice driving layup, avery nice turnaround jumper from the right elbow and a three pointer that he looked comfortable taking (I think it was a three at least, hard to tell). I'm not going to get too excited because it is the SL and all, but I am loving what I have seen from DeRozan so far. I'll finish his post here so that I can actually pay attention to the game, haha. If he isn't traded, which I think he will be, he actually would be a pretty good guy to have around this season. He could be a decent mentor for Davis, Dorsey and Alabi. Keep him around as a veteran presence until the deadline (if he isn't moved before the season) and then move his expiring then. With all of these young bigs on the roster it would be nice if there is at least on veteran big man on the team.

I didn't even consider using Evans in the trade to make it so that the Raptors won't have to use their TPE or dip into the luxury tax. I guess that is what you get when you come home from working all night and try to post about the cap, haha. I like this trade though. The Raptors go from around $45M committed to salaries for 2012/13 to having around $28M committed. Their cap situation improves a great deal as Bargnani will be the only player making $10M and they will still have DeRozan, Davis and probably Alabi on their rookie contracts (although Alabi is supposedly going to get more than the 2nd round rookie scale contract). They manage to shed the long term contracts of Turkoglu and Diaw without giving up any sort of asset other than the expiring contract of Reggie Evans who's only value to the team was his contract. Now they have Chandler's lucrative expiring contract as trade bait for next season. Chandler and Banks combined are about $17M in expiring contracts and that could prove to be very valuable at the deadline for teams looking to dump salary. Add that to their TPE and there is even more flexibility there. I don't care about this from a basketball perspective. This trade may or may not make the team better (hopefully it doesn't hurt their ping pong balls). Best case scenario is that Chandler goes down with his usual half season long injury. It opens up more minutes for Davis and Johnson and will result in more losses and more ping pong balls. I hope this trade doesn't effect their place in the harrison Barnes sweepstakes too much. Even if they can't get Barnes, I'd "settle" for Kyrie Irving. All in all, I'm just happy to get rid of Turkoglu and Calderon's contracts without having to take on worse contracts. That is really all I care about with this trade.

If the Hoopsword rumor is true (Calderon for Diaw, TPE for Chandler or something like that), I love this trade. They dump Calderon's bad contract for a slightly less bad contract in Diaw and they also manage to get a starting center in Chandler which would allow Bargnani to slide to the 4 spot. Chandler's interior presence would greatly improve the Raptors defense as it would give the Raptors somebody who would actually make opponents think twice before driving into the paint, which is something that they haven't had for what seems like forever. A front court duo of Bargnani and Chandler would be extremely long and a pretty capable shot blocking duo. However, I don't think this is too legit considering if it does happen, the Raptors would be in the luxury tax for next season which I don't think is going to happen. I haven't actually looked into it so I could be wrong, but I do think they would be in the tax. As far as the Raptors using their TPE to get Diaw, I don't like it. The Raptors have a glut of power forwards already and I'd just rather see them give time to Davis, Johnson and Dorsey and see how they handle a substantial role on the team. I don't want to see Diaw take minutes from these guys and I definitely don't want to pay him $9M a season to do it, unless the Raptors moved Calderon for him.

His point was that Turkoglu complained this past season about not handling the ball enough with Jose Calderon and Jarrett Jack as the point guards. They had USG% of 17.9 and 19.1 respectively and their AST% was 33.8 and 27.7 respectively. Steve Nash's USG% was 22.9 and his AST% was 50.9. If he was complaining about not getting the ball enough with Jack and Calderon as the point guards, he might not be all that happy with Nash considering Nash is more ball dominant than both of those two by a fairly considerable margin. The Suns could be getting Turkoglu in hopes of relieving some of the pressure off of Nash and relieve him of some ball handling duties in hopes of keeping him fresh, but if Nash is as ball dominant as he has been in the past, it isn't ridiculous at all to think that Turkoglu may not be too thrilled with playing alongside him. He has made it pretty clear that he wants the ball in his hands and wants it often. And yeah, Turkoglu isn't all that great as a spot up shooter. He is much better at shooting after putting the ball on the floor, off of the pick and roll or coming off an off the ball screen. In terms of simply spotting up behind the arc and waiting for a pass, Turkoglu isn't nearly as effective as a shooter. I'm not saying he is terrible, but he is better at shooting off of the dribble or off of movement rather than simply spotting up. I love the fact that you are throwing out the "do you watch basketball" remark though. How many Raptor games did you actually watch this season and how do you think that compares to the amount that travesy watched? As for the trade, all I care about is the fact that Barbosa is making $7.1M this season and $7.6M next season. I honestly couldn't care less if he plays one minute for the Raptors considering the much better contract he has in comparision to Turkoglu's. If he manages to become that Sixth Man of the Year candidate again, awesome, but I really don't what he does on the floor.