Reggie Evans
Do you want this guy back? I want his personality back, not sure about the rest of him. The conundrum with him lies that he can only play one position, and in that position he can play one end, and on that end he can do one job, and that job is rebounding. To make matters worse, he’s injured for half the season and although he does travel with the team to spread his infectious attitude, I can’t imagine a fringe player sitting in civies having much of an impact. He also plays the same position as two of the Raptors “core” players in Amir Johnson and Ed Davis, which makes his return even more of a questionable decision. Obviously the solution here is a blood transfusion which will see Reggie’s blood being drained, mixed with performance-boosting tiger jizz for good measure, and then injected into every Raptor. Seriously though, he does leave a leadership void and it needs to be filled, the only guy coming close to it is Amir Johnson and he sells ice-cream part-time.
Ed Davis doesn’t make either rookie team
Blake Griffin, DeMarcus Cousins, Greg Monroe and Derrick Favors. Did Ed Davis a better campaign than any of those guys? His numbers are better than Favors and Monroe, but he did miss 17 games which had something to do with the vote. None of the teams for these guys came close to making the playoffs so you can’t say he got jipped because of being on a bad team. It would have been nice to see a Raptor get some kind of “honor” this season, but as things stand nobody on the team getting arrested has to be the hallmark of yet another season. Jarrett Jack got a DUI but that was when he was with New Orleans. Come to think of it, there haven’t been too many Raptors involved in any off-the-court issues in recent memory. There was Oakley punching McInnis, Bosh being called a deadbeat, and that about sums it up really. I propose having a banner raised at the ACC commemorating this “clean sheet” of ours. In this day and age of crime, terrorism, violence and Justin Bieber, going a whole season without having any of your players arrested has to be an achievement. We’d probably lead the league year-after-year in this category, it would be like our new three-point streak.
Bryan Colangelo is stilll around
Let me lay a soccer analogy on you. And if you don’t follow the EPL, this wlll go straight over your head. As a long-time Arsenal fan, I have had to sit through six straight trophyless seasons under Arsene Wenger. The last six years haven’t been exactly bad, in fact by most other clubs’ standards they’ve been fantastic: top four finishes in the league, the associated Champions League football and advancement into the later stages of the competition have been frequent. However, by Arsenal standards the results are poor and the bottom line is that we haven’t won anything for some time. Much like how Raptors fans are split on whether Bryan Colangelo is the man to do the job, Arsenal fans are not sure whether Wenger deserves to continue. The loyal and blinding allegiance to both men is surprising and something I can’t quite figure out. The major difference between the two is that prior to the six trophyless seasons, Wenger won the title twice along with a host of FA Cups. Bryan Colangelo hasn’t won anything.
Colangelo stated in his press conference that nobody on this team is untouchable, he’s quite right about that and the Colangelo loyalists will agree on that point. However, by that rationale, since Colangelo is the one who assembled every single person on the roster for the last four years (three of which have been failures and one a 22-win season only considered acceptable because expectations were so low), he is the last person who should be untouchable. I can’t quite fathom why his loyalists can’t see that perspective and continue to bring up the, “if not him, then who?” argument. Unlike Wenger, Colangelo isn’t a man who has a track record of great success that we’re counting on him to find his lost touch. Colangleo isn’t even looking for his lost touch, he’s still trying to figure out what his touch is.
