Besides the economy coming to its knees there are other things happening. The most important one being Raptors TV going full (real) HD this season. This means you can watch Paul Jones and Eric Smith copy Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon in the greatest of quality and with the loudest of buzzers. That show is such a blatant ripoff of the ESPN one that it makes me want to switch the channel in shame.
Training camp starts on September 30th and there aren’t any real question marks on the roster which happens to be very well set. Maybe the starting small forward position needs to be sorted out (just like last year) but Moon seems to have a solid grip on the situation. The would-be usurper here is Kapono who has the argument of spreading out the defense in favor of him. I think as much as we would like to see him get more playing time with Bosh and O’Neal, defense wins over offense here.
Tim Chisolm (who I think is awesome and needs to be a beat writer for the Raptors) has another piece out where he’s talking about the Thunder while comparing and contrasting them to the Portland Trailblazers. Nice article, check it out. Interesting thought I had while reading it: You know how the Raptors are gearing up to make a run at free agents in Summer 2010? Well, the Thunder have one up on them. They only have Nick Collison under contract after that year and his salary is $6.75M – that’s it! Contrast this with the Raptors who will have $32.8M tied up (still very much under the cap). The question then becomes which is a more desirable city to play for and the answer should be obvious unless old Canadian prejudices still stand. Either way we’ll have some competition that summer and it wouldn’t even shock me to see us resign O’Neal to a smaller contract if he has two decent years with us. Others competing with us include Golden State, Atlanta, NJ and Minny.
CBS is ranking the top point guards in this league and Jose’s coming in 11th. I have no problem with that, actually I have no problem with 1- 9 except maybe Arenas at #4 might be a stretch, but I can look past that. What I can’t look past is Kirk Hinrich being #10!?!? Hinrich’s a good shooter and happens to have long arms which has automatically labeled him a “good defender”, aside from that he’s lacking in quickness, lateral movement and play-making. I’ll take Jose over him any day, actually I’ll also take TJ over him any day as well.
Article about Matt Devlin in the Sun. Let me sum it up in a sentence for you: He’s not as loud as Chuck Swirsky but there’s quality in the guy and you all should see this season.
In some divisional news the Nets are going to have a short leash on their team and will not tolerate anything less than 100%. I can’t help but think these are comments geared directly towards one Vince Carter who has played 100% about 1% of the time while with the Nets. I like the post in the comments section: They got nothing for RJ b/c they think they’re going to get Lebron in 2 years. Just for that, I won’t go to any games the next 2 years..
Remember, new uniforms tonight. I’ll try to post pics later (not that you can’t find them elsewhere).
