Congratulations to Lexi (I’m assuming that’s her stripper name) for making it to the Raptors Dance Pak. Unfortunately our girl Natalie couldn’t make it but I’m almost positive that 10 years down the road they’ll be doing the exact same thing, whatever that thing is. Most likely it’ll be performing for the Idaho Stampede dance team, a glamorous gig I hear.
The Idaho Stampede will be holding tryouts at Humber College on October 5th and 6th so if you happen to be good enough and tall enough, give it a shot. As the Idaho Stampede slogan says, The NBA dream starts in Idaho.
As a rule of thumb you should know that The Bleacher Report is run by a bunch of imbeciles who are great at producing consistent slime. But there are always anomalies and this article which talks about our bench and their anonymity is one of them. The author of the article is Messiah2315, for those of you who read RealGM occasionally you might remember him as the guy who got banned for stupid reasons, apparently he was humiliating the moderators. Anyway, nice article with a good comment on Roko Ukic:
One thing people will learn immediately about Roko Leni Ukic is that he’s about as good a slasher this team’s seen in a while. He’s a shooters dream—a drive-kick guy who has great court vision, out-of-this universe handles, and plays in control. While, in his younger days, people played off of him due to his lack of upper body strength and limited finishing ability, last year he showed some great skills at finding his shooters. Ukic’s jump to the NBA couldn’t have come at a better time. Had he come two years ago, he might have come down with Yoroslav Korolev syndrome, and been forced to play in Turkey for the next three decades.
The more I read and watch Roko, the more I think he’s going to be a difference maker for us. It took Calderon a couple years to get used to the NBA and Roko actually seems ahead of Calderon when it comes to experience and court awareness. Being a Euro rookie actually has its advantages – the scouts haven’t completely figured you out and you can get away with lots of things your rookie season. See, Calderon’s going to have a much tougher time this year because the scouting reports are out and everyone knows what his strengths and weaknesses are and the defense will adjust accordingly. Roko on the other hand is a relative unknown and it’ll take at least a year before the books are caught up on his style of play, until that time he has a chance to surprise a few.
Even if Roko excels there’s still the issue of bench depth. I don’t mind a shorter rotation with “concentrated” talent but that’s only a feasible strategy for the playoffs, not a 82 game regular season. It’s actually quite startling when you think about it, two years ago our bench used to outscore the opponents on a nightly basis and this year it looks like it’ll never happen. If Kapono starts instead of Jamario Moon it’ll mean that we won’t have a single legitimate offensive player coming off the bench. Say what you will about Carlos Delfino but he was likely to catch fire once in a while and score his fair share, right now you’re looking at Hassan Adams and Willie Solomon – 6′ 4″ and 6′ 1″ respectively – to bring in the offense. Roko’s going to need somebody to pass to you know.
I haven’t even talked about the loss of Rasho Nesterovic who had an excellent year last year. He clogged the lanes, played hard, hit the mid-range jumper and caused grief for opposing centers with his size. I see that we’ve basically replaced him with Jermaine O’Neal but just as O’Neal does things that Rasho can’t, Rasho did things that O’Neal can’t. It’s going to be a void that’ll be felt, unless of course Andrea Bargnani makes us all forget about him. Too many bloody questions and not enough answers with this Raptors team.
Some sad news down the wire with Shareef Abdur-Raheem retiring. He was a good player with lots of talent who never found the right team or a winning team to play on. Leo Rautins hated him and accused him of choking in the clutch which was ultra-unfair to the guy because his fourth quarter success rate seemed just about on par with any other average NBA player. It probably all started on the wrong foot in Vancouver where he got so used to loosing that it sort of became his thing. Vancouver did kill a lot of NBA careers: Big Country, Steve Francis, Brian Hill to name a few. Shareef’s viewpoint on Vancouver:
“Vancouver wasn’t bad for me, as far as the city and the people. The thing that was bad about it was the losing. I always felt that Vancouver would be a nice place to be if we were winning. We were all working hard to get better, but we just could never get it all on the right track. That was the most frustrating thing about it. I don’t think I ever displayed it publicly, but I went home a lot of nights very frustrated.”
Losing does that to you. You could live in the greatest city in the world (Barcelona) and still hate it if your team’s getting spanked and humiliated on a nightly basis. It reminds of the 16-66 Raptors playing in the Skydome, no matter how nice a city Toronto was it was hard to look past the losing. The fear of reverting to those times keeps me awake on many nights, I can’t bear to see the Raptors being the laughing stock of the NBA – I think Minny suits that role fine.
The Raptors will be unveiling a third jersey on Thursday, apparently its all black. In similar news, Orlando unveiled their alternate jersey and I can’t tell the difference. Stephon’s closer to being unemployed. I wouldn’t put it past him to collect the welfare cheque. Ouch. Never liked him, I don’t know why, he always struck me as too much of an illiterate thug.
Sorry about the lack of daily posts but remember, I’m brewing something. Seriously though, if you come to this blog often enough you should get the RSS feed. I’m not whoring it around, just saying that it’s a good idea to latch on to it in case something happens…
