“Seven to ten days” is what Colangelo said on Tuesday is his time frame to get the Delfino and Rasho deals done and yesterday was Day 1 of that period. Nothing happened. Six more days to go and if nothing happens by that time, according to Colangelo, he will look at other free agent options. Since the Magic already signed Matt Barnes at a flea-market rate of $1.52 million there really isn’t much out there other than Linas Kleiza who can only be acquired in a sign-and-trade since the mid-level ($1.4M) or bi-annual ($1.9M) will not be enough. Considering that the wing we will sign needs to have a strong defensive presence you’d have to pick Delfino over Kleiza if it came between them (assuming his shoulder isn’t shattered).
If you’re wondering how much money the Raptors have to spend and what their options are for the remainder of the summer, check out NBA Roundtable’s explanation. You already know about the MLE and LLE situation, the only thing to add on to that is that we’re approximately $7.1M under the tax threshold, this money will likely be used to tender Delfino a contract, the question of whether it’ll be a multi-year offer depends if the Raptors are willing to take the risk of going into the luxury tax next year when the cap and tax projections are set to be lower.
I’ve been hounding Eric Smith about the offering and rescinding of qualifying offers and he asked around and posted this:
– Toronto withdrew their Qualifying Offers to both Mensah-Bonsu and Delfino but did not renounce their rights.
– When the Qualifying Offers were originally issued, both players became RESTRICTED free agents. However, once those Qualifying Offers were withdrawn, both players returned to UNRESTRICTED free agent status. Buuuuut …
– They are still, technically, “the Raptors’ UFA’s” until they sign with another NBA team or Toronto renounces them.
So there’s your answer to that! The only thing this does is that it avoids their qualifying offers from being counted against the cap which helps when signing other free agents. We also don’t have the right to match anymore. This was bugging me for about a full week now.
The one guy that we might be over looking or not talking about enough is Antoine Wright who Colangelo thinks highly of as a defender.
“Rick Carlisle told me last week in Las Vegas. You’re going to love the kid, he was my toughest guy and my best perimeter defender and he guards 1’s, 2’s and 3’s. That was music to my ears, those are two areas we really need to address.”
He split his time at the SG and SF last year and had a very comparable PER of 10.7 and 9.0, respectively. His stats aren’t exactly impressive either, he’s a career 41.6% shooter and never shed his preference to rely on the jumper even though he has the slashing ability. His DX Profile still rings true and explains his low shooting percentage:
The biggest thing you would like to see out of him is more of a commitment to using his athletic ability to put the ball on the floor and take it all the way to the basket, even if that involves drawing contact. He seems to have a problem taking the ball strong to the hoop and getting to the line, usually preferring the lower percentage pull-up jumper instead.
The Nets liked the athleticism in his 6′ 7″ frame and picked him 15th overall in the 2005 draft but things never really worked out. He’ll be entering his 5th NBA season and the chances of him reviving his offensive game are low, the only expectation of him is to be a great defender and improve his rebounding which is an area everybody will have to pitch in. Sad to say, his Per 48 rebounding was second-last on the Dallas team and only ahead of Jason Terry. Yikes.
His biggest assignment at the NBA level was to guard Carmelo Anthony in the playoffs and even though he tried, he got scorched. I suppose there’s no shame in ‘Melo averaging 30 PPG on you but that’s not even what he’ll be remembered in Dallas for, it’ll be for this. We’ll have a discussion on Antoine Wright in a couple days or so where we’ll break his game down and figure out what to expect for him.
Yesterday’s ESPN Insider ranked DeMar DeRozan as the fourth best rookie of the summer so far behind Griffin, Evans and Flynn. The comment made was, and I’m paraphrasing, that no player impressed more than he did. His decisions with the ball and discipline were compared to a bigger version of Courtney Lee and he was labeled as being “perfect” for the Raptors who were compared to the Magic of last year, a comparison Colangelo also made. To read the full article you’ll have to be an Insider.
See the Lebron dunk-tape? You know, the one where he apparently got such a facial that Nike locked the gym down, confiscated all recording equipment, set fire to it and then chopped Jordan Crawford’s tongue off so he would never say a word? Check it out (better version than the TMZ one), it happens at the :35 second mark and a replay is shown at the 1:02 mark. No reason for Nike to hide this as there’s been worse done to NBA players in Rucker Park – before it became a commercial dump with an MC and all. Lebron apparently also smoked some weed in high school, what’s Nike going to do next? Put a gag-order on his weed buddies?
Chris Bosh is back on the streets of Toronto filming his DVD, here’s a pic of the neighborhood, any idea where it is? Some people mentioned that he’s added more muscle this summer but I have to say, I don’t see it. I think he looks exactly the same, it’s just that we’re looking at him standing next to “normal” people so he’ll naturally look stronger, but put him next to an NBA player and things will get clearer.
Coach K has already begun the recruitment of Redeem Team II and there’s talk of Chris Bosh returning to the team and there’s also some talk of some players possibly taking the summer off because of free agency.
In other news, Mo Pete is now tweeting.
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