Dana Ford
Then: assistant coach, Wichita State University/Illinois State University
Now: head coach, Missouri State UniversityWe signed him the summer entering his senior year (in high school). It was right before the recruiting period. It was us, Kent State and Northern Illinois. We were just so fortunate we got him to take an unofficial visit to campus literally days before the dead period. I want to say he committed to us the day before the dead period started in July.
He’s almost like a throwback person. When we had signed him, I ended up leaving to take another job (at Illinois State, his alma mater) before he got to campus. I remember having to make that call to Fred and his mom. I thought the way he handled that was probably as mature as anyone who I ever recruited. Basically, I called him and it was a very emotional call, because we had built up such a great bond. But on that call, he was staying true to his commitment to Wichita State, because that’s just the type of person he was. Here’s the type of guy who could have probably used that as a reason to get out of a commitment, and he probably could have gone anywhere in the country by then. By then, he had blown up and other schools were trying to get him — Power Five (schools), blue bloods. Just the fact he would stay true to that commitment, wish me well, understood why I did it, it just showed his maturity and what type of life champion he is, man. They really don’t make ’em like Fred VanVleet.
What would it mean to you to see VanVleet be named an All-Star?
I was told about Fred by a guy named Cavan Walsh (a former recruiting reporter, current agent). We watched him on video. We offered him a scholarship off of video just not necessarily because of his scoring or anything like that, but his gritty plays: first to the floors, 50-50 balls, things like that. To see him rise all the way up and be one of basketball’s best, that’s like a Hollywood script. He should probably be making a movie, to be honest.
NBA Trade Deadline 2022: Toronto Raptors trade deadline speculation – Raptors HQ
Mo Bamba and Gary Harris
for
Goran Dragic, Chris Boucher, Malachi Flynn, Isaac Bonga, TOR 2022 1st
Harris and Bamba make $28.1M, and call that $28.7M with those incentives. Dragic and Boucher being sent as expirings amount to $26.5M. So the Raptors need to make up $2.2M in salary difference.
Sending out another salary (say, Precious at $2.7M) is not sufficient, as the Raptors then need to go sign a 14th player for $0.6M (leaving them slightly above the tax line if they have any playoff success to speak of). And I don’t know whether the Raptors would want to include a guy like Precious in a trade like this.
So I’ve included Bonga as well, as removing his minimum salary and replacing him with another $0.6M signing would clear enough room, even with Flynn outgoing instead of Precious. Ideally Orlando might take Svi in his place, to remove his player option from the Raptors’ books for next year, but I’m not sure how open they’d be to that.
The trick with sending 4 players for 2 is that Orlando has to have room on their roster to absorb the two extra bodies — they can’t do the trade then cut a guy like Dragic to get back down to the maximum of 15 players, they need to do cuts first to make room for the trade. They already have 15 players, so they’d need to cut two guys, which is a big ask.
They have E’Twaun Moore as a veteran minimum guy who has been hurt and hasn’t played for them, so that’s one. The other is tricky. Would they cut and re-sign (after buying out Dragic) Mo Wagner? He’s played a lot of minutes for them as a backup C. Or Robin Lopez, who is owed $5M for this year but has appeared in only 22 games for them.
Tricky, but there are ways around it. If the Raptors are willing to include Precious and take the risk of entering the tax if the team makes a deep playoff run (maybe then it’s less of a concern), then they can make it work with only Precious outgoing along with the two big expirings in Dragic and Boucher. Or maybe the Magic aren’t super attached to some expiring or another on their team and have no issues cutting guys to make room.
It will be interesting where the prospect/pick price falls on this sort of deal. The Raptors can send out as much as they like, the Magic will have no issue with matching salary and we are already asking them to cut players. So do they land on Flynn and a pick? Flynn and Precious? Precious and a pick? All three? Not sure where the value lands. I’d expect lower than the other two candidates I identified, but who knows?
It just makes sense that Raptors add at trade deadline | Toronto Sun
In a week or so Khem Birch should return from a busted nose and he’ll give Nurse an eight-man rotation, but is anyone really comfortable saying those eight will remain healthy the rest of the year? Or even that eight will be enough to maintain health?
Nurse himself has said since the pre-season that a year like this one playing out during a pandemic requires as many as 13 or even all 15 bodies just to get through.
With the rest of his roster Nurse is basically stealing minutes of rest for his starters with Dalano Banton, Justin Champagnie and Yuta Watanabe, although the latter has not been a factor for a while as he is struggling coming back from COVID.
It means an inordinate number of minutes for all five starters and while none will ever complain about the run and while Nurse may be right that 35-40 minutes a night isn’t too much to ask from a professional, there is growing evidence to suggest less time might be wise.
And that puts the ball right back in the management’s court with the trade deadline looming a week from today.
There were only 500 people in the building Tuesday night but had their been more they would have seen VanVleet desperately trying to work out something in his right leg or hip as he sat out those early minutes in the fourth quarter.
VanVleet, rather than catching his breath on the bench as he would normally do after playing all 12 minutes of the third and contributing 14 points to the cause in that quarter, stood baseline stretching out that lower right side knowing he was on his way back into the game and needing to get more range of motion there.
VanVleet still played the final eight minutes of the game but he was limping noticeably. As the focal point of everything the Raptors do, VanVleet is going to always carry a heavy minutes load. That’s just part of the life of an elite NBA player. But even with two games off in the past six to address some right knee soreness, the wear and tear of averaging a league-leading 38.6 minutes a night already taking it’s toll and there’s still a 32 games left in the regular season.
And VanVleet is just the most obvious affected right now. Pascal Siakam is right behind VanVleet at 37.5 minutes a night as the second busiest per night player in the league. Rookie Scottie Barnes at 36.2 a night sits sixth. The red-hot Gary Trent Jr. is 18th in the league at 34.7.
Trade Deadline Intel: Wizards Among NBA’s Most Active Shoppers, Eyeing Sabonis | Bleacher Report
While the Raptors continue discussing Goran Dragic trade scenarios, Toronto has phoned rival teams gauging what Dragic and a first-round pick could bring back north of the border, sources told B/R. That framework was brought up in Myles Turner negotiations before he suffered a stress reaction in his foot. As the Raptors are searching for frontcourt help, Robert Williams has also been mentioned of late as a name on Toronto’s list of big-man targets.
Mitchell: Trent Jr. trade turning out to be a great deal for Raptors – Video – TSN
The Raptors have won three of their last four games and host the Heat tonight in a rematch of their triple OT thriller on Saturday. NBA analyst Sam Mitchell weighs in on Toronto’s solid play of late and how essential Gary Trent Jr. has been to the team’s recent success.
RAPTORS BLOG: The emergence of Gary Trent Jr. should move up Raptors timeline | Toronto Sun
Sure, they likely figured he could put up some points and maybe go on a scoring run from time to time. After all, as a sophomore in Portland Trent had managed some nice streaks, and had shown well in a playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers. Plus last year Trent had averaged nearly 20 points a game in February before being dealt for Norman Powell and he would have three games with at least five made three-pointers as a Raptor, including a 44-point effort that foreshadowed what was to come.
But now Trent is in historical company — one of only four players to ever score at least 30 points and hit at least five three-pointers in five straight games — and the second Raptor to ever score 30 in five straight games. (Surprisingly, Vince Carter’s best was three straight with at least 30, and Damon Stoudamire and Chris Bosh only scored at least 30 in two straight games as Raptors).
Plus, Trent has been excellent defensively, ranking fifth in deflections per game.
Forget the argument from the start of the year on whether Trent should start or become a leading candidate for sixth man of the year. And instead of maybe being the piece that finally lands the Raptors a top-tier centre, Trent has established himself as a key part of the core. Trent only turned 23 a few weeks ago, so it’s also possible he isn’t close to being a finished product. The only bad thing you can say about him (from a Raptors perspective) is his agents smartly worked in an opt-out clause in his three-year deal. That means he can test the market as an unrestricted 24-year-old next season. He’ll get a lot more than the $18.5 million he was owed in 2023-24 on the open market. The good news for the Raptors is they’ll have his full Bird Rights and plenty of room to give both him and backcourt partner Fred VanVleet new contracts while staying under the luxury tax.
But that’s a long way off. For now, the Raptors should look to capitalize on the fact that the East is wide open and they can make a playoff run as soon as this season with this group, provided a bit more help arrives.
To that end, I still favour the idea of using Goran Dragic’s contract (and Chris Boucher’s, if necessary), to take on a useful bench player or two that have contracts extending into next season. It doesn’t matter if they take on money next year, because they’ll still be able to avoid the luxury tax, it’s the following year that matters, because Trent and VanVleet will have to be paid. So as long as the incoming players come off the books by then they’d work nicely.
What kind of names might make sense? Dallas (Reggie Bullock and Dwight Powell or Maxi Kleber); New York (Alec Burks, Nerlens Noel); Detroit (Cory Joseph, Kelly Olynyk); Orlando (Terrence Ross); Indiana (Jeremy Lamb, T.J. Warren, Justin Holiday); Washington (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Thomas Bryant) spring to mind.
Only one week to go until the trade bonanza (or, possibly a boring trade deadline).
NBA teams noticing Raptors playing with an edge | The Star
Contrary to anecdotal evidence, the Raptors aren’t among the most foul-prone teams in the league, even if opponents are telling VanVleet a different story.
The commit about 20 fouls a game, on average, which puts them right on the periphery of the league’s top 10 before games of Wednesday night. But they do get up on opponents and swarm them when they get a chance and it’s a constant physical style most teams don’t sustain.
“I would say this is one of the hardest teams I’ve played with, defensively, with how hard they go,” Gary Trent Jr. said. “Everybody has some form of energy, everybody has some form of effort and it starts with Freddie VanVleet. He comes in every single day, he gives 110 per cent effort. He leaves it all on the line — whether it’s deflections, whether it’s steals, whether it’s communicating — and I try to help as well with that and continue to grow and defend.”
The Raptors would love to play every game from the front, to go wire-to-wire ahead every now and then, but if they have to scrap and get tough, they welcome the opportunity. It’s a characteristic that has emerged since the roster sorted itself out after a COVID-19 outbreak around the holidays.
The tone is intense because the team’s most important players, the leaders, set it. VanVleet and Pascal Siakam, the truly heavy-minutes guys, won’t accept lackadaisical play. They call out teammates when effort is lacking and it creates an overall level of toughness and effort that has become the squad’s calling card.
“There was a possession (Monday in Atlanta): me and Pascal running around, scrapping, chasing a fast break down and there were three guys on the other side at half court. And it’s just like, if we’re going to do that with the minutes that’s being played and you got your top guys competing on that level, it just sets the bar pretty high and everybody’s got to fall in line,” VanVleet said.
At the last FIBA World Cup in 2018 the team placed 7th — after winning gold at the 2015 Pan American Games on home soil. Team Canada has placed in the top 10 at every event they have played in since 2010.
To long-time fans of the Canadian Women’s Senior basketball team, this roster may look a little different. Due to injury, COVID-19 protocol, NCAA commitment, and players who have retired, the roster looks a lot different than it did even in Tokyo last summer.
Some prominent names missing include Kia Nurse, who is currently recovering from an ACL tear she suffered in the WNBA semi-finals in September, and young star Aaliyah Edwards, who made her Olympic debut last summer and currently plays for the UConn Huskies in the NCAA. Miranda Ayim, long time veteran of the program, announced her retirement from competitive basketball after the Tokyo games last summer.
There are still a lot of familiar faces on the roster who will likely make the cut and head to Osaka next week. Natalie Achonwa and Bridget Carleton, who both play for the Minnesota Lynx in the WNBA, have been with the team for many years and join Kia Nurse as the only Canadian players currently in the WNBA.
Kayla Alexander, who also has WNBA experience, and Shay Colley are two players who have made an impact on the national team in recent showings. Laeticia Amihere is another young player currently playing for the University of South Carolina under Dawn Staley, who has a promising future ahead of her in pro basketball.
To qualify for the FIBA World Cup later this year, the team has to place in the top three in their group in Osaka. They will play each of Japan, Belarus, and Bosnia one time in hopes of qualifying.
This team is continuously on the rise as basketball in Canada continues to grow. With more young players getting scouted by NCAA colleges, playing overseas, and drafted into the WNBA/NBA, the team is expected to perform well in future appearances.
