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Official 2009-2010 NBA/Toronto Raptors thread (pg. 23)
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| slingshot |
Thank you Chris Bosh and Jay Triano for telling BC not to make a trade when it was totally evident that they needed to do something.
Ugh.
Turk blows.
Triano sucks.
Bosh is gone.
Being a raps fan sucks. |
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| Sly_Guy |
| there's a reason why this thread wasn't resurrected after the all star break. Let it die. |
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| infinity HiGH |
| quote: | Originally posted by Sly_Guy
there's a reason why this thread wasn't resurrected after the all star break. Let it die. |
lol yea i thought about resurrecting it but whats the point? the only trade that needed to be made on the deadline was getting rid of triano for somebody competent. and maybe some miraculous trade getting rid of Hedon't. IMO that's gonna be the hardest contract to move in the entire league (Elton Brand is gonna be up there) |
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| infinity HiGH |
Here's my rant from Raptors Republic:
| quote: | Is There Light At The End Of The Tunnel?
- We're stuck with Hedo for at least another 2 years.
- We're stuck with Triano until at least Mitchell's contract comes off the books. Realistically though, we're stuck with him forever because he's the local boy and MLSEs little pet.
- Our second option is an emotionless, heartless waste of potential. - - Our coaching staff overall is atrocious, clueless and simply oblivious.
- Our PG off the bench makes 8 million a year and nobody would ever take him on as a starter because he's not starter material at all.
I've been asking myself these past few days why would Bosh want to stay? This team has nothing going for it for the next 2-4 years. The only light at the end of the tunnel is DeMar, but he's at least 3 years away from being an impact player. Does Bosh want to waste more of his life playing the waiting game, hoping that this team will make a turn towards competence?
The worst part about all this is that Colangelo seems to be shuffling up the team every year hoping for something that works. It's like he totally lacks any long-term vision when it comes to building this team. The signing of Hedo seems to have been motivated by desperation and ego, not logic. The only good thing that came out of that is that we acquired some very useful pieces along with him.
So,where is this team heading down the line? We've got 19 games left in the season. A quick first round exit all but guaranteed. And we're stuck with this same squad for a few more years. Where's the incentive for Bosh to stay when he's got teams out there better suited for him? Who NEED him to be successful teams, not for a month, but for a whole season and especially in the playoffs.
Unless Colangelo has some miracle planned for the off-season I don't see CB sticking around waiting any longer for this organization to get it right. I don't see why the man would waste his prime years on a big what if.
Maybe I'm being overly cynical. But I've been burned by MLSE's teams too often in the past to hold out blind hope that "next year will be better" |
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| Adamo |
| quote: | Originally posted by jon jon
they'll make the playoffs...
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| quote: | Originally posted by ChemEnhanced
not only will they make the playoffs....I predict home court advantage for the first round. |
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| ChemEnhanced |
| quote: | Originally posted by ChemEnhanced
not only will they make the playoffs....I predict home court advantage for the first round. |
I take back all predictions I made regarding the raptors |
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| infinity HiGH |
| You guys know what the best part is? They're 0-5, but will be 0-7 pretty soon cause Atlanta and OKC are the next 2 games. They couldn't friggin beat GS so they're probably gonna get manhandled by those 2 teams. |
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| ChemEnhanced |
Did partying cost Raptors too many games?
The Raptors’ on-court problems are no mystery. Do they let the other team score too much and rebound too many? As Sam Mitchell might have put it: “Duh!”
But here’s a trickier question: did this team miss the playoffs because it partied too heartily? It’s impossible to say for sure, and Bryan Colangelo, the Raptors president and general manager, has declined to comment on the off-court habits of his players. But there are people close to the club who believe those habits ultimately hurt the win-loss record.
Before we go on, don’t get it wrong: this column is no moralist’s crusade against the legal consumption of booze and consenting beauty. Pro athletes are nocturnal beings by necessity. They play late, they play later. And if sports history has taught us anything, it might be this: great players overcome hangovers. Babe Ruth hit 714 on beer and hotdogs. And mediocre talent is exactly that, stone sober or otherwise.
Still, I’ve been covering the Raptors regularly since the starting power forward based his lively operation out of a Royal York Hotel corner suite (Charles Oakley circa 1998), and I don’t recall a season that brought as much discussion about the off-court indulgences of the local hoopsters, both in emails from tattling fans and conversations with insiders.
Perhaps it’s a symptom of the TMZ age, but as one team employee who was granted anonymity opined: “This year, (the partying) was a little too much.”
Perhaps it’s the double-edged sword of being based here. For most of its 15-season existence, Toronto has been on a mission to sell its merits to U.S.-bred hoopsters. But here’s the truth: most players like the town, and understandably so.
This year Hogtown was confirmed as a jock-endorsed destination in an article in The Wall Street Journal that, along with detailing how athletes receive VIP treatment in the “champagne rooms” of local strip clubs, grew the legend of Mona Halem, a York University-educated party planner who has become an NBA favourite for throwing fetes populated by pretty women.
“She’s notorious. She’s the king, the king,” Antoine Wright, the Raptors swingman, said of Halem in the Star last month. “She got us about 15 wins this year. Throwing those Saturday night parties works great.”
Wright’s implication was that Raptors’ tradition of Sunday home games scheduled between noon and 1 p.m., an NBA rarity, are a home advantage, since it’s only the visitors who fall victim to the T-Dot’s late-night temptations. Alas, the Raptors finished 5-5 in those games this year.
That doesn’t mean Chris Bosh was incorrect when he told the Journal: “People like to come here to party.”
And it doesn’t mean some people don’t like to play here and party. Hedo Turkoglu, the Raptors forward, was suspended by the team for one game in March after he was spotted in a Yorkville nightspot in the hours after calling in sick with stomach flu.
The optics were ugly, and it’s interesting to note the way other teams conduct business in hopping metropolises. The L.A. Lakers populate a practice court in El Segundo, Calif., a traffic-jammed eternity from any velvet-rope lavishness. The New York Knicks practise in a sleepy suburb many miles from the city that never sleeps. The Chicago Bulls work out on the outskirts. And so on.
There are NBA wise men who will argue there are reasons for those locations beyond cheaper real estate. Many players in those cities, because they need to be at morning practices in the boonies, don’t live downtown. Not that suburban-dwelling athletes can’t and don’t find late-night entertainment. But maybe partying, when you’re bunking on the fringes, becomes more of an occasional indulgence and less a pastime.
The Raptors’ Air Canada Centre practice court is a don’t-blink cab ride from the Richmond St. club district, and the players mostly live nearby. Pastime distance, for sure. But the Raptors are far more likely to weed the roster than pull up roots for Oakville. And if Colangelo sounded more philosophical than judgmental when he was asked about his team’s lifestyle choices, consider this: Toronto’s GM was an executive in Phoenix when the Suns employed one Charles Wade Barkley, whose late-night tests of his Ruthian constitution are the stuff of legend, not to mention police blotters. Colangelo has seen worse, in other words, and sometimes they played better.
“Every city in the league has temptations,” Colangelo said Tuesday. “Don’t think that Toronto’s any different than downtown Scottsdale, (Ariz.). Don’t think there’s players who played in Phoenix who didn’t go out in Scottsdale all the time. Every city’s got its culture, to where, if you want to go, you can go. It comes down to common sense.” |
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| ChemEnhanced |
http://twitter.com/ChrisBOSH
| quote: | Ok... Let me rephrase the question. Should I stay or should I go?
4:06 PM Apr 30th via Twitterrific Been wanting to ask. Where should I go next season and why?
3:28 PM Apr 30th via Twitterrific |
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| Sly_Guy |
old news. No biggie. |
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| mute79 |
| i don't want him to leave, but if he does, he would just speed up the inevitable, which is to build around bargniani.. |
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| ChemEnhanced |
| quote: | Originally posted by Sly_Guy
old news. No biggie. |
If I was his agent I would be telling him to stop posting stuff like that.....it may not have any impact but I wouldn't want to take a chance that it would.
I seen a few Youtube videos by Bosh and he looks stoned in so many of them. |
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