Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Revamping The Franchise

Apparently Free Agent Frenzy isn’t limited to the NHL. The NBA has gone above and beyond and possibly surpassed that of the hockey world. There were some huge moves that has made a few teams much better and have reshaped other teams into contenders. They even managed to mix in a few trades just to fill in some of the gaps. Shaq to the Cav’s may or may not be a good move, it will be interesting to see how he can go with LeBron. Richard Jefferson to the Spurs makes them much more dangerous.Rasheed Wallace to Boston, especially with the unknown health of Kevin Garnett is a big pick up. Trevor Ariza to Houston is interesting and connected to that Ron Artest basically trading spots with him and going to play with Kobe and the Lakers.

A little more close to home the Toronto Raptors seem to be doing their best to make their team a little better right now to show pending free agent Chris Bosh that they are serious about building a playoff team that is looking to contend. They apparently just locked up former 1st overall pic Andrea Bargnani for their big man, they have apparently have a deal ready to go for former Orlando Magic star Hedo Turkoglu to complement Chrs Bosh. They currently have Shawn Marion but are in talks with the Mavericks on a potential sign-and-trade deal that would see a Jerry Stackhouse to TO. Now if Jose Calderon can play at his near All Star level that he was 2 years ago and Anthony Parker and Joey Graham can contribute they may actually be able to field a very competitive team in an increasingly more difficult Eastern Conference.

The Raps may be a little weak on the bench, especially in the back-up point guard position so we will see if that gets addressed or if they see who on the current roster wants to step up and perform in that roll. For the first time in a few years it looks like they are actually ready to take a run and go a little deeper into the playoffs.

Like I said earlier, this could go a long way to convincing Bosh that he should stay past next year and not get mesmerized by big lights, by a big stage and a truckload of money.

2 comments:

Tom said...

Have to get rid of Parker. He's like Kovalev. When he's on, he's great. When he's off, he's just jacking up bad shot after bad shot. The problem is, he seems to be off more than on.

Gerrit said...

Yo man, in order to get Hedo, the Raps have to renounce Parker, Joey, Marion, Delfino. They're trying to work out a sign and trade with Dallas so they can dump either Hump's contract or Banks' contract onto another team and waive Stackhouse (only 2 mill guaranteed) in hopes of opening space for Parker or Delfino.

So There is no way Stack will ever play a game for the raps, and it may be far fetched to get Parker or Delfino back too. Joey could be back if they can fetch him for the vet's minimum.

I like the signing, but the biggest issue now is getting depth for the wing positions. As it stands right now, the raps have Turk and DeRozan (a rookie) starting with no back-ups and ZERO cap space. The only way they can go over the cap to sign backups is to either sign guys at vet minimum contracts or S&T Marion & filler (with a contract over 2 mill) for Stackhouse and then waive him and sign Turk.