by BOSS on Fri Sep 09, 2005 5:44 am
Free Agent Signing
Jose Calderon
Purportedly, this guy is a scoring point with some passing skills and an inconsistent shot, but reports vary. After the tournaments this summer, I heard that he was an aggressive score-first type player. I’ve also since heard that’s he more of a distributor, so what to expect out of this guy is that he appears to play basketball. How he does so will be seen in the pre-season. The Raptors don’t appear to be hoping to get much out of him other than spot minutes as a 3rd stringer if all goes well anyway. The hope is that Rafer Alston will play intelligent ball and look to set up his teammates, all of his teammates, for easy buckets this year. With the Raptors still looking to sign another point guard at the time of this writing, Calderon isn’t going to see much more than 5-10 minutes of playing time in any game, barring injuries.
The Draft
Roko Leni-Ukic
This season, he has no impact whatsoever unless he masters the fine art of duplicating himself and sending his clone to Canada to play ball with the Raptors; Roko decided to stay in Europe which is what prompted the Raptors to sign Calderon. He’ll stay there, possibly the way Matt Bonner did, developing his skills and getting ready to come over in a few years.
Uros Slokar
It is doubtful that he will play with the Raptors this year but he was in the summer league and he did show promise. Slokar is a typical Euro forward; big, pretty mobile, likes to play more on the perimeter than anything. He showed some nice post skills, decent shot-blocking and good rebounding instincts in the summer league. It’s just the summer league but the fact that he was flashing those skills is promising and considering he was the third-last pick in the draft, expectations are not super-high. Still, if he does play for the Raptors this year, he would give them a little bit of versatility and more depth.
Unfortunately, the prospects of this happening are slim; though the Raptors have but one stand-out player in their frontcourt, it is a deep one. The Raptors have Rafael Araujo and Loren Woods at center, with Chris Bosh and Matt Bonner at power forward. Pape Sow can play either spot (and theoretically Bonner can play a couple of minutes at the 3 in a big lineup with a good match up). Then the Raptors added Charlie Villanueva in the draft, whom I’ll talk about later; he’s going to play at the 3, 4 and 5 positions for little spurts as well, leaving very little room for Slokar either from a playing time or roster space perspective. The Raptors might send him to the NBDL or he might play in Europe for another year or two.
Joey Graham
Graham was the top-rated athlete at the pre-Draft Combine. He is extremely strong, pretty quick and an explosive leaper. He was a good defender at the college level, a strong free throw shooter and a pretty good shooter in general. He did play more power forward than small in college though and as a result, his ball-handling is weak and mechanical. His defense and rebounding will be welcome in Toronto, however, and if that’s the only way he can make an impact as a rookie, then so be it, it’ll be enough to make a difference. Down the road, Graham has the potential to be an Artest-type player. How much of that potential he realizes is something no one can know yet but it makes him an intriguing pick. The Raptors got him with a mid-first round pick when he was projected by some as top ten, so there should be no complaints about this pick unless he’s a total bust.
Athleticism alone generally isn’t a good indication of what a player can do (see Harold Miner) but Graham seems to have a good work ethic and the kind of mentality Babcock likes in a player. While he has yet to take a real risk in the draft, Babcock has assembled players who are mostly likely to compete hard on a nightly basis and work hard before and after games as well. Graham’s rookie impact will be felt most strongly on defense and in Toronto’s rebounding totals. What his offense will be like remains to be seen but it should be safe to expect something like 10 points per game from him if he is incorporated into the offense on a regular basis.
Charlie Villanueva
When Rob Babcock said that he had a specific player in mind for the 7th pick and downplayed the idea that he might selected Danny Granger or Gerald Green (the players most Raptors fans wanted from the draft), there was a collective groan as fans remember the disappointment at the Rafael Araujo signing a year before.
What most fail to remember is that though Hoffa was foul-prone and did not post great numbers, he did exactly what Rob Babcock had said that he would do: He created a great deal of space for Chris Bosh in the paint when he was on the floor, set some wicked screens and made rebounding easier on his teammates by sealing his man away from the basket, which also helped on defense by keeping his man away from offensive boards. Hoffa’s foul trouble is a little overstated, though not entirely so. The refs give him a lot of “rep calls,” calls that go against him because he’s a no-name rookie. Sometimes, he actually got called for fouls that were clearly fouls but on the other player, not him. Now and again, refs would call a foul on him when they clearly had no angle to see what actually happened, so they defaulted to the guy with no reputation in the league. It’s a shame that the referees in the NBA are the way they are. In addition to that, Araujo is not a player who is afraid to give a hard foul to stop a gimme-layup. Sam Mitchell likes this about Hoffa but it does rack up the fouls from time to time. Other than that, yes, he is foul prone to some extent but it isn’t as bad as people think.
So what does this have to do with Charlie V? He’s the same kind of pick, the sort of “What the heck was Babcock thinking” kind of pick. Villanueva has been compared to Lamar Odom and it’s an apt comparison; his motivation has been called into question but he’s as versatile as they come with height, ball-handling skills, an inside-out game and good athleticism. Where he’ll play is of some concern given that he’s ideal spot is the same as Chris Bosh’s at the power forward slot but given his versatility, wherever he goes he’ll find a way to make an impact.
Villanueva is again a player who did not “deserve” to go in the slot he did because people generally expect more out of top 10 picks than any other players in the draft but the Raptors are slowly building a team that’s hard-working and versatile. When they click, and they will some nights, the Raptors will be a team that can play good transition ball and do damage from basically anywhere on the floor. They are already a team with perimeter threats (even though they lost their best spot-up shooter in Donyell Marshall) and now they’ve added more players who can do a little of everything. The freedom that this versatility will give Sam Mitchell is important. Villanueva could potentially be Toronto’s 6th or 7th man, a huge boost off the bench and that will be enough for his rookie year.
What Else?
In his debut season in Toronto, Lamond Murray tore the Lisfranc ligament in his foot and didn’t play. Then last year, his questionable conditioning and defense got him in trouble with Sam Mitchell and despite his excellent percentages, his shot was pretty inconsistent. He lost a lot of minutes to Matt Bonner, who proved a superior rebounder, higher percentage option and more consistent shooter. He also defended more actively.
Waiving him gives the Raptors the roster spot to add another point guard. Many hope it will be Jay Williams and I’m on that train… Williams has huge work ethic, explosive athleticism (even after the accident) and has been working not only on his physical skills but improving his playmaking skills as well, which were his biggest weakness when he did play. He’s a Duke product, knows the game and has all the physical tools; the Raptors would do well to hand him a low-priced contract for two years, maybe even with a third year team option. Let him get back to full health this year, practice with the team, learn the system, etc. When he does play this season, he can be an effective backup. When he’s fully healthy, he can be our replacement for Rafer Alston as the starter and can play spot minutes at the 2 in a small backcourt as well (or if Alvin Williams ever actually returns to the active roster).
Omar Cook wouldn’t be a bad 2nd stringer. In his stint with Toronto last season he proved to be an effective distributor and an energetic defender. He has no shot whatsoever, no range and no consistency on anything but layups but his passing was a welcome reprieve from Rafer’s late-season chucking.
So what else is in-store for the Raptors this off-season? It’s unlikely that there will be a big trade involving the Raptors right now; none of the pieces currently on the team have big draw and Babcock seems content on developing the team core that exists already.
What would I like to see personally? The replacement of Jalen Rose with a younger, more athletic player who defends would be nice but the Raptors do rely on him as their primary scorer. It is unlikely he would bring back someone of similar offensive caliber and as much as I dislike how he occasionally chucks and how he rarely Ds up well, it’s hard to replace a 19 ppg scorer. It’s also true that he shot almost 46% (45.5%) from the floor; he is inconsistent but he can get hot very quickly. When Rose is being used properly, curling off screens for open Js and posting up smaller guards and other small forwards, he can be a dangerous offensive weapon. Were the Raptors ever to add a true primary scoring option, he would be a nice complementary scorer. Unfortunately, they traded away that option because he was injury-prone, soft and wanted a chance to win. Chris Bosh is not a primary offensive option yet and the Raptors need a third scorer anyway.
All that and given the size of Rose’s contract, what he brings back will likely not help our cap situation. If he was going to move this year, it would have been through the amnesty clause. If he’s going to move at all, it will be next year, when he is in the final year of his deal and the size of his expiring contract will be attractive to teams looking to get cap space. In the meantime, the Raptors will have to shore up their interior D to account for Rose’s shortcomings and find other ways to score.
I wouldn’t mind the Raptors taking a flier on Shawn Kemp but it won’t happen. With his history of drug abuse, Babcock won’t even touch him. He is reportedly in his best shape since 2000 (jumping as high as he did then, weighing about 260 [he lost 20-40 pounds since he last played in Orlando], jumping rope like a boxer, working on his skills, etc) and he’s still got a few good years in him at 36 years of age. Ah well.
Outlook
So where are the Raptors going in the 2005-2006 season? Not to the playoffs, that’s for sure. Almost every other team in the conference made bigger strides than did the Raptors. Many of those were short-term strides and the Raptors have a very promising future as Rob Babcock has been preaching all along but in the short-term, the Raptors can look forward to a season of between 25 and 30 wins, most likely. If they really gel or if Bosh breaks out even bigger than he did last year, then the Raptors have a shot at 30-35 wins. The thrust of the matter is that they’ll be getting another top 10 pick next year to go alongside Denver’s pick.
The Raptors have, to some extent, addressed their point guard situation and by the end of the off-season will have likely added a third point guard. They’ll have depth and versatility there. They are already decent on the wing with Rose, Peterson, Graham, Bonner and the Williamses (Aaron and Eric, should they actually get PT this year). They also have a deep frontcourt, even if no one player besides Bosh is especially talented, with Bonner logging minutes here as well alongside Sow, Araujo, Woods, Bosh, Villanueva and Slokar (if he stays on the roster). The Raptors biggest needs at the moment are more potent scorers (at least one more wing scorer and another competent post scorer) and defenders. If all pans out, Graham will be a a nice third option on the wing and a good perimeter defender and Villanueva will be a nice inside-out kind of player. With the cap space that’s coming up next off-season, the Raptors will hope to add whatever it is they need after a season of potential deals and signings.
The long-term outlook is that the Raptors will be a perennial playoff team with a nice mix of youth and veteran leadership in a year or two and will have added a few new pieces to what is quickly turning into a solid core. Are they going to contend for a title anytime soon? Not a chance, they don’t have the explosive offense nor the stifling defense to do that. However, Sam Mitchell and Rob Babcock are creating a basketball team that will soon be fundamentally sound, hard-working on both ends of the floor and able to make some noise in the playoffs. They’ll start winning and take it from there, season by season.
